It always takes 3 weeks

Eesh. I know that I still need to blog about my cruise, but I just had to take a minute and blog about school. It was definitely one of those days.

First of all, let me just tell you, I have the BEST students on the planet Earth. They are perfect little angels. I keep waiting on the "other shoe to fall" because I am SO incredibly blessed. I have 2 Pre-AP classes for the first time ever, and all 5 of my classes are under 25 students. I mean, that hasn't happened in like 3 years. Usually my classes are around 30 each, and they put most of the SPED inclusion kids in my room. This year, they chose to cluster them in my partner's class, so I only have one. ONE. I mean when does that happen? Two of my regular classes are sitting at 19 and 17 a piece. I mean. That is like under 20! I am SO blessed. I can like actually teach them!

At my school every teacher is on car or bus duty every day after school. Every.Single.Day. We are a "dock" school for the district, so we have 2 buses that leave at 3:45. The rest of the buses are at one of the other middle schools and at the high school at 3:45. So they load those suckers up, and then they come to my school. Well it takes about 30-35 minutes for them to get to my school and us to let all those kids switch buses, and then let all of our late bus riders out of the building to load. It has been SO overwhelming. Because if you aren't outside, you are inside trying to keep an entire classroom of middle schoolers from tearing down the building for 30-35 minutes.

Then today, we had a faculty meeting after school. We almost always have them on Wednesdays, and they usually only take like 20-30 minutes. Well today we had two people from downtown come and do abuse awareness training and bullying training (which we are required to do every.single.year). Then after they were done, we needed to meet about a few other things. I didn't leave school until 5:24 today. On a Wednesday. Kailey's children's choir started at 6:00, and we had to eat dinner!

So Casey picked them up, went and got dinner, and we all ate in about 20 minutes time. I felt so bad just stuffing Kailey back in another class after she was in daycare all day long. So we did that, came home, and the hubs stays at church until at least 9:00 on Wednesdays, so I have to bathe them, brush them, brush their teeth, read them books, etc. and it is literally my only time to spend with them on Wednesdays, which makes me feel awful. And I'm sure people wonder why the youth minister's wife used to not even stay for church on Wednesday nights...this would be why.

So, I am just now sitting down for what feels like the first time all day, and it is 8:00. I still have about 60 papers to grade before tomorrow, because it is "Meet the Teacher" night and I need something to hang in the hallway (by my own requiring it; nobody else requires it of me). I would just hang them without grading them, but I need the grade because Progress Reports come out next week and I have to have a major grade in the grade book.

So I will sit here and grade these papers and put them in the grade book and hang them in the hallway tomorrow and stay until 7:00 greeting parents and miss another night with my girls.

It ALWAYS takes 3 weeks. By that I mean, it always takes 3 weeks of the school year for me to feel like everything is going to be ok and that I am not going to run from the building screaming. I have 2 more days of my 3 weeks...We will see.

Isn't it strange to think that this would be my last week of maternity leave, and I would be starting school for the first time on Monday?? Crazy. I now know for sure that God definitely would have had my back for the start of school. I mean he literally put angels in my classes, and everything would have been ok. I worried for nothing. Obviously. :)