Productive Day!

I stayed late at work today.  The realization that if I gave a bit of my time here and there it might help alleviate the overwhelmed feeling I get from time to time finally sunk in.  Today was great and extremely productive.  I have a former student (now a 4th grader) who comes in daily to offer assistance.  I have not been too good about taking advantage of this sort of thing in the past, mainly because I have taught 5th grade and when my students leave my class they leave the school so I don't have any former students on campus.  Since last year was my 1st year with 3rd graders I now have 20-something former students on campus and only one that has been consistent as this one has been.  My former students used to tell me before they left my class last year that they would come help me next year...my reaction to them had been "Mhm...you all say that but we'll see.  I know how it is, you want your recess, not helping your former teacher inside, filing and grading and cleaning..."  I had a fair amount of former students come by my room at the beginning of the year, and it has finally tappered to the one.  She is fantastic.  She is extremely reliable and loves helping.  I reward her willingness to help with fruit snacks and school raffle tickets, plus any odd or end in my classroom I don't need or want anymore.  I have learned over the years students just LOVE old teacher stuff...worksheets, books, etc.  So the relationship with this former student and I has been mutually beneficial.  She usually only helps during her morning recess, and has offered to help after school.  I had never taken her up on her after school offer as I usually have a meeting or just want to go home.  But when she offered again I remembered that I was planning on staying late tonight as well as tomorrow, so I took her up on her offer.  As always she was prompt and willing to help and did help me quite a bit.  I am really enjoying this new relationship and I am already hoping she stays in the neighborhood for her 5th grade year as well, I have never had a better more reliable helper!

I have a rather large work to do list and one of the things at the top of it was redistributing my classroom computers.  Without getting into all the boring details of it, I used to have some newer machines in my room.  Due to the budget situation our school wasn't able to buy as many new computers as it needed to replace the super old ones.  So the principal began taking a close inventory of the machines on campus.  Long story short, my new machines were replaced with old ones.  I tried to make due with a relatively old laptop, but doing anything at my desk with this 5+ yr old laptop that could barely handle Windows 7 was a huge headache.  I found I was taking my computer related work home and then not really getting to it fully because of all the other things I would rather be doing at home.  I have managed to hold on to one relatively fast machine in my classroom and reclaimed it for myself, trading the slower laptop for it as to not take from the total number of student machines.  I should have totally done that sooner.  Have a faster machine at my desk to mutlitask on is wonderful.

So in the end I leared that my room still wasn't quite how I need it to be for me, so with some computer rearranging and general cleaning I was able to get it to a much better place for me.  I have a much better machine at my disposal (and I am already willing to fight for it should my principal come scouting for another machine!) and an overall more functional workspace.  I even managed to find the power cord for my little fountain...I have missed the water trickling down that little rock wall!  Listening to it now just makes me smile.  And I was finally able to log into the Weight Watchers site as well!  So things were just falling into line today and that really did a lot to lessen the tension in my life.