Every year, my teaching partner and I think we have assignments perfectly timed out.
We never do.
You think we’d learn, but we don’t. A few weeks ago, we were laughing and celebrating the freedom we felt because our grading was caught up and we could just concentrate on being good teachers. We complimented ourselves on the schedule we’d created and how well spread out assignments were.
We were fools.
Here’s what I brought home tonight so I can start chipping away at it.
73 Teen activist books
73 Book reports
73 tests
You know what I’ll be up to for the next little while.
booksandbassets 
Very familiar. I always wonder how there can ever be any work, life balance?
I wonder too. It always seems to be feast or famine.
I really don’t miss that!
No matter how far ahead we think we there is always that bump in the road. Of course, we all know that teachers only work 7 hours a day. Yeah, sure.
I know! No matter how well I plan and use my time efficiently, there is always more to do!
My bag looks the same. It’s a little overwhelming to me right now. Tomorrow will be better, I’m sure.
I am notorious about doing this to myself, and this is year 25! I think I have blown past anyone’s reasonable definition of slow learner and am just destined to remain hopeless in this area for the duration.
Take time to decompress this weekend in addition to scaling Mount Paperwork. 😊
It’s like laundry! The pile never seems to completely disappear for long. In Primary grades, there is less of this marking and carrying marking back and forth. But the planning or organizing of activities takes the same amount of time (but has to mostly be done at school!)
Fools, indeed, sigh. I’ve heard from other educators who manage to spread and stagger due dates, but I have yet to master that trick for breaking the feast/famine cycle. Plus, I figure that would trade the cyclic grading crunch for more complex daily planning demands. Once, I tried offering deadline windows — a range of dates when work could be submitted — yet human nature dictated that all of the writing arrived just before the window closed. I wish you well climbing this latest mountain.