overwhelming wednesdays.

i hate wednesdays. wednesdays are early dismissal days. that means the kids leave early and the teachers get to spend two and a half hours in meetings. last year, i found this time to be a bit of a mid-week relief. this year, i've come to dread it from the depth of my soul. every week i go in feeling fine and come out feeling terrible.

i went to school this morning feeling pretty good about things instructionally. by the time i left, i was overcome with the complete overwhelmingness that has become common place in my professional life. turns out i don't actually know how to teach third grade. it seems like a weird, in-between phase of still learning how to decode words, but transitioning into a bigger focus on comprehension and critical thinking. it's a vague and murky place and i don't really understand exactly where the balance falls in terms of what my kids need. which means that i constantly feel as though i'm not doing enough things or the right things for them.

every time i walk into another teacher's room, i find at least 3 things that i think, "oh man, they are doing a great job. i should be doing that." which is incredibly overwhelming because the thought that immediately follows is, "when will i do that? what time can i possibly squeeze from what we are already doing, to do that?" but it seems like an important thing that i should make time for. which is completely at odds with the constraints that i feel have been handed to me by the powers-that-be concerning how i should be using my time. it all feels like a giant juggling act where i've been trained to juggle 6 pins but every time i look up someone is trying to throw something else into my hands and i think it would really add to the show but i just don't know how to fit it in.

i know that i am not completely failing. i know that i am doing much better than last year. i know that on some things, i am doing a great job. the thing is, these small successes get completely obscured by what seem to be my much larger failures, which is a big problem emotionally because i care so much about what i do. it's frustrating and stressful to constantly feel like i'm not doing the best i can for people that i care about very deeply. i want my students to be the best that they can be and i feel like, no matter how hard i work, i'm just not tapping into all of that potential.