Monday, January 17, 2011

stress

I cried today.

I was so overwhelmed last week that I quit every day.

I have an abundant guilt at checking off work that is not completed to my satisfaction.

while I am well aware that there is a 'liberal interpretation' and that you do not have to do everything in every lesson. FOR ME and mine, there comes a point that we can not do ANYTHING in a lesson. If all we did was use the 5 - 7 question assessment as an OPEN BOOK test and have unlimited time to research the internet to find the answer, we STILL do not stay caught up, and yes, we spend up to 12 hours a day struggling through the curriculum.

For instance, in order to GET THROUGH spelling each week, I am happy if he can just get through the spelling test with 100%, http://www.spellingcity.com/view-spelling-list.html?listId=4465749, I check off all the spelling helps for that unit. and move on. it gives him a chance to keep testing the words until he gets / guesses them correctly. I should be doing a better job of teaching him, but I am hoping that spell check will catch his mistakes later. That makes me feel bad because I know that it is wrong.

I send him to http://wordlywise3000.com with his headphones on and he listens to the words and definitions and I trust that the exposure will be enough, because am not really that good at the droning teacher at the front of the class that drags on for hours about crap that I do not care about, and I seriously doubt that my kids want to endure it either. when it comes to knowing this stuff, yes, I know most of it, but I get so overwhelmed when this one is asking about that, and that one is asking about this, they are not doing the same stuff, so I can not combine teaching moments, we have not even really had more than two opportunities to even get to the manipulative. out lives are consumed by moving the % across the dotted line, so we end up skimming the requirements just to keep up, never really getting to the meat of anything because we are paddling so hard to keep our head above water, we never realize that we are swimming at the beach of a Caribbean port, all we can see is the next wave coming in and from this perspective, it looks like a tsunami.

I spent 1 hour driving to the museum yesterday, and 2 hours driving home, 6 hours there and felt guilty that we are not working to get caught up. we took 4 days off for Christmas so that the kids did not completely mutiny. Magnus swears that he is going back to school just as soon as he wakes up early enough to get on the bus.

I must be an ineffectual teacher because it should not be this hard. we should not be putting in 12 - 16 hours a day, and then I still have to go in the last week and check off a bunch of lesson to get up the % goal even though we NEVER wrote that essay or read that passage, or even come close to looking at that art project. I discovered that we sit so long at the computer just trying to catch up that we have put on 10 lbs, the kids included, and we never see the light of day. we do not play with the kids in the neighborhood anymore because we never get close to being done before dark. it is always 5:30 before we stop, and then that only allows 30 minutes of free time before dinner must be served.

magnus: we hate it. because it is boring. takes time out my sleep and free time.

yep, I make a lousy spokes person for virtual schooling.

kat