Reflection List #2 part one: Work Life Routines

So for List #2 I am supposed to outline all of my daily routines and then determine where to trim the fat of things that add stress and anxiety to my life.  As a teacher, it feels like I have two lives and sets of routines, one that occurs during the school year/school day, and one that is my out of school (afternoon or summer) routine.  Here are the breakdowns for both.

School Day Routine: So you want to know the crazy circus ride that is being a fourth grade public school teacher? Well buckle up because by the end of this ride you will either want a nap or an adult beverage or both.  PAG and I divided up drop off and pick up duties of the bubs to match our contractual time.  I drop off because I start later, and he picks up because he ends earlier.  I arrive at school around 7am-ish give or take the time it takes to stop and grab a breakfast sandwich and coffee at Sheetz (thank you Sheetz for keeping me un-hangry this year, I would have been much more of a monster without you).  I sit in my classroom and make a mental to-do list of things to take care of immediately and tasks that can be accomplished at a more relaxed pace as I read through emails, respond to emails, and eat my breakfast.

And here is some of the chaos I walk into (however this is mighty clean because we were getting ready for open house here!).

Until this year I would have stayed after school beyond my contractual time to clean up the holy-disaster that is a classroom after fourth graders have been learning all day.  Books, papers, pencils are tossed around willy-nilly and try asking them to maintain one square foot of space.  Seriously, try it and then tell me to get 25 of them to have the same standard of cleanliness that I expect.  Nope, it was just easier to stay after they were being bussed home and get all of the items back into their "should be" places (this is not just a school thing, I have "should be" places for lots of things in my car and in my home-it may drive my wonderful husband crazy that I want shoes on the shoe rack and keys in the key bowl).  This year, however, with two bouncing bubs at home to play with and feed and cuddle, I wasn't staying to do all of that, so I generally tackle it in the morning so my day ran smoother and I could find the materials we would need throughout the day.  This was not my favorite way to start the day, but I can't really get work done without a clean starting point.

The cleanest it ever is but that is because everything is packed away for the summer.  I love and hate this picture because it doesn't really show how vibrant and crazy our learning and activity is during the year.

I prepped the room with a new quote of the day, writing down homework assignments, and making sure I had all of the necessary paperwork organized and printed.  If we were using the smart board, I would look over programs and make sure I wouldn't be caught off guard with a strange math problem, or a smart slide that I didn't fully understand.  Sometimes if that was all I had in the morning and there were no meetings planned or papers to be graded, I would get some future planning done and make some materials for days or weeks ahead.  Day by day planning is the worst and I would rather have things ready in the case of an emergency than put the burden on my co-teacher or one of the other fourth grade teachers to figure out.

So that was three paragraphs and kids haven't even arrived yet? Yes, every minute of my day requires my time and often I could fill five times those minutes if I had the opportunity.

Kids arrive at our school at 9am.  The two hour working period is nice, because once the kids are there, I have had my introvert time to charge up for the day and am ready to expend that energy into working with them.  And I won't get crazy into detail about how each minute I can tell you what our class would be doing, but honestly, it is 9:19am now and I would be asking the student with the job of sending our lunch order to the kitchen to use the smart board and print the order to the cafeteria while interpreting silent body language from another student who was asking to go get a drink or fetch a pencil from their locker.  Any day off for appointment or sick day I could look at the clock and tell you where the kids should be and what they should be doing down to the minute.  I run on teacher time and this is how it works.  The first couple of days of the summer are sometimes rough getting out of that rigid routine and finding a more natural flow of doing things not at a bat-out-of-hell pace.

As I mentioned, kiddos are bussed home at 3:40, and I try to be out the door on my way home between 3:45 and 4:00.  As a twin parent, there is a lot of patience and work that goes into managing two nearly toddlers on your own.  So I try to be a good partner and parent and get my bottom home to help out with playing, feeding, and entertaining them.  Sometimes I am able to catch a nap as one of the bubs is sleeping, but more recently, the kiddos don't need that later afternoon nap and want to walk outside or play in the upstairs room or explore the other areas of the house.  This is great, but it is exhausting and leaves me looking forward to our evening bedtime routine with the boys.  Dinner is flexible and we take turns spooning out baby classics such as apple chicken or ban-blab-blub as the other has some food or takes care of chores.  More playing is done, sometimes we pull all of the books off of a shelf and read some of them.  When the kids are flinging themselves at us frequently, wanting to be held, but not too much because they might accidentally fall asleep, we move our parenting operation upstairs and often to baths, teeth brushing, jammies, Harry Potter, bottles and bed.  For most of this year, it took every ounce of energy to get to bedtime and I couldn't talk myself into writing or reading or even watching TV after we had gotten the fellas into their cribs.  I collapsed into my own bed and was trying to catch some minutes of sleep before someone woke up and came back into bed with us.  Again, every minute counted when there was the high likelihood that I'd be rocking, feeding, or soothing a restless baby.

So that was half of this reflection post without really looking at how to smooth out and de-stress-ify the routine.  But it is summer vacation, and I can come back to this and make this a part one of some series.
  
Bonus: Take action, circle all of the routines that bring you joy, and cross out all the routines you dislike.  What is it about the circled routines that bring you joy? 

Reflection List #1: What Makes Me Happy Right Now

This year has been hard.  The most hard I could never have really prepared myself for.  I wouldn't change it for anything, but I know that when I went in to have my babies in the wee hours on June 6th, I had no idea how different my life would be in the subsequent weeks and months and how what I expected it to look like was nowhere close to the reality of what this year became.  We crossed into the final month of our babies' first year of life yesterday with a trip to the zoo for a reunion with our RHS doctors.  I almost didn't want to go because it has been a hard year and sometimes when I am feeling blue, I tend to want to squirrel myself away and be a hermit to regain some kind of control of what I am feeling is nonstop chaos.  I am glad we went as the experience reminds me I have so much to be thankful for and so many blessings to be counting.

A few months ago, I picked up this journaling book for this blog, determined to put myself at least on a weekly blog schedule to do some personal writing and reflection.  And then more life happened and I pushed my writing aside for babies, school, this meeting, and that event.  I seriously looked at my May calendar this past Friday and cried looking at all of the ink on the page and not knowing when I will catch a break between now and July.  The writing is supposed to be one of my ways of making breaks happen.  Does anyone else have a successful strategy for making the best of their me-time or generating more of it?  I'd love some advice on how to make loaves and fishes out of the spare seconds (read none-I might actually owe someone my time right now) for things like writing and not folding laundry.

So in the spirit of getting somewhat on track, but not being to harsh with myself if I slip into the blog void for a few weeks, here it goes!

Things that make me happy right now:
Snuggles-I am not a warm and fuzzy person.  I am generally not comfortable with small talk and I find it draining to socialize outside my immediate family unit for long stretches of time.  However, I love to hold my boys and give them nose kisses and tickle their tummies and hold them at 3am even though I haven't slept a full night of sleep since Obama was President.  Today the day care called to tell me that Wall-E had a fever and was extra sleepy and wanted held more than normal.  As they get more and more kid like, I realize that my baby holding days are decreasing and that I need to get while the getting is good.  So bring on the snuggles no matter what time.

My coteacher-Em and I have been working together for three years, but the way we understand each other, you might assume it were longer.  She is a great balance to me in knowledge and teaching approach, and we have a shared philosophy that meshes well for our students.  We have had a challenging year, however, I can show up every day knowing I can rely on her completely.  She is also a mum to a toddler and a newborn so we get to share mommy-battle stories of sleepless nights and the joys of new baby accomplishments.

My husband-PAG watched the boys tonight so I could be a figurehead at our town band rehearsal and practice as he has already out practiced me so far this year.  I can count on this man to share the workload and hear what is burdening me and be my shoulder to cry on. Every momma deserves that kind of man, and I am blessed to have it.

A healthy mom and healthy(ish) dad-it is my parents' birthday this week and as a new parent, I realize I owe them all of the things.  I can't imagine life without them and don't tell them enough how much I appreciate what they have done and sacrificed for me and my siblings.  We had the best life because of them and we are functioning human beings because they taught us how to be productive and caring people.

Keeping Them Safe

I practiced for my own death today.  I scrambled to turn off the lights, but did our obligatory hall sweep to snag any straggling students who needed a safe haven from a hypothetical gunman.  My room is the first classroom inside past the main building doors, so as I am doing my hall sweep, I know in my head that were this not a drill, I would be dead.  I hid behind my desk with my co-teacher trying not to worry about the unthinkable, but after Florida and so many others, how does one not?  

It's the worst to fear going to your place of work and think that if the worst happens, all of the drills are not going to stop the bullets from coming.  Going into college to become a teacher of tiny people, I didn't plan on it being a high risk job.  I figured some bloody noses, days of germiness and puke, and the curmudgeonly family member here and there were as exciting as it gets.  But with every terrible, totally preventable tragedy that hits the headlines, I stop and wonder could it happen here.  And now as a parent, the thought makes me feel that much more helpless not just for my students, but for my children.

There were moments late in my pregnancy that I was afraid to get in my car and drive home.  I live in deer country and despite my love of animals have learned to hate their presense and proclivity for spontaneous road bouncing.  I am not a bad driver, but I worried that every time I got in the car, the worst was going to happen.  I wanted to keep my babies inside me forever near those last weeks because how could I protect them when there were so many chances for danger to manifest?

The arrival of the babies did not help ease this anxiety I felt as it was painful, scary, and traumatizing in ways I wasn't really prepared for.  I remember the tears running down my face as they rushed me to my emergency c-section, worried we were all going to die as they cut me open.  I never want my babies to be that scared or that sad or that worried.  However, one can't really live in a bubble and experience all of the highs of life without the potential of also enduring the lows.  So for a while I felt stuck in how to move forward and live and show my babies that this life is worth living for.

Today's news headlines cause such an ache in my heart.  I listen to the radio news in the morning and mourn when I hear about a young man swallowed up by the opium crisis.  He was someone's son, someone's brother, someone's friend.

There are things that we can be doing.  Phone calls made to representatives to demand action, marches and walk outs participated in to show that hate and pride will not stomp out the rights of children to attend school (and teachers to work) in safe places where they can worry about antonyms and algorithms and not lockdown procedures.  It is easy to feel stuck; I know I was in that place.  But I want a world where I am not agonizing about the dangers and hurt my babies will face.  I want a country that accepts that letting gun fanatics block sensible gun control legislation is why so many peoples' babies have been senselessly murdered.  I want to do my job of creating a caring and nurturing next generation that realizes that mistakes can be learned from and that they can stand up for good, rather than hiding under cabinets and waiting for our deaths.