Teacher Time: Teacher Tired
And it’s only October.🤦🏾♀️
Although I’ve been working in schools for over 15 years, I am only in my third year of formal, K-12 teaching at my school (and my fourth year overall). But, it has happened every year. The onset of tiredness that only teachers really know.
That’s not to say that teachers don’t enjoy their jobs at all. I got to create this digital poster for my virtual classroom. How many careers let me do that? It’s just that, at times, the career demands that teachers are working for a larger part of the time than they are resting and that they are pouring out much more than they are pouring into themselves or their own families, which is a dangerous combination for any career…Particularly when work hours and ethical bar for teachers is set to the level of careers like that of doctors and attorneys…and the pay is so far beneath. Add to that a pandemic at this time where teachers who have to go back to the classroom are faced with the potential of teaching in hybrid environments and on top of that, have children of their own returning to school online or to hybrid situations…and that is a recipe for disaster if I ever saw one. The stress will likely wreak a lot of havoc on teacher immune systems this year.
Yep. If summer is the time where teachers can afford to let it all go, it’s the beginning of the school year where they have to tighten everything up…setting back up and getting all the routines back in working order to make the job doable. That can take a lot of planning and work on the front end so that the rest of the year has the possibility of running smoothly despite the workload.
It’s during this time that I normally start simplifying and prioritizing the things that have to get done because…bills. But, because I also have this lettering bug that doesn’t appear to be going anywhere, this year, I have also given myself a few graceful goals that I feel I can reasonably keep up with like…
Posting a weekly blog post.
Posting to my IG Grid weekly.
Posting to Stories for updates throughout the week.
Post lettering related content from my classroom, from time to time.
Participating in online communities as I can.
Letter every day regardless of what is posted.
Yes, I’m going to miss my summer schedule where I could post every day. But, if I’m going to get through this here year (???), I’m going to need to set some reasonable expectations for my creative interests in lettering (and my mind) to survive intact.
For the lettering piece, in my “free” time, I take on the role of student to keep my interest in lettering top of mind. For one, my Artist’s Licensing Portfolio is ongoing. I am also enrolled in Type Affiliated’s Hand Lettering class. In fact, aside from the communities and platforms that I subscribe to, I have A LOT of standalone lettering classes that I have bought access to now that are just sitting waiting for me to take or finish them. I don’t like getting bored. But I find that only a handful of those standalone classes stand out for the price. This one by Type Affiliated is one of those.
The best thing to me about the course is it’s not like most other handlettering courses where they are going over the same material and then charging a grip for what you can get from any one of the others. I hate getting duped by those. She definitely covers the basics. But, there are slightly deeper dives into them. Plus, students also are required to submit work before moving on to the next module. While I could probably be a weekend warrior if I was allowed to plough through the content, I know in reality there are times when I can look at a segment and feel like, “Meh…I’ve done that. I’ll move on to the next.” But just watching isn’t learning when it comes to lettering. Also, once work is submitted, the instructor records and gives individual feedback to students, which I don’t typically see in online lettering courses. I like that! There’s a good amount of encouragement and instruction for improvement and then you move on to the next module. I’ve progressed through a few modules now and I’m anxious to get to the topics that I haven’t seen in my other standalone classes like fancy drop caps and emotion.
Hey, when you’re teaching during Covid, it’s the little things.
