April 4, 2004

• Do you ever feel like it would be a great thing if you could just manufacture and sell time somehow? I know it would be a successful and highly profitable business!

  I suffer from a serious lack of time lately. I do not get to my computer often enough to even sort out all the forwards in my email, let alone to write blogs that anyone would care to read. I feel bad about that, but there is nothing I am going to be able to do about it in the near future. Meanwhile, I blog when I can and try to visit the people who visit me. I think I am managing to visit slightly more often than I blog. It has been ages since I have made it through my entire SIR list. I also used to try to visit all my subscribers periodically, but that’s just a dream for now.

  Why do I have this time crunch? I used to do a lot of Xanga-ing when I subbed, and subbing used to be my primary job. Subs often just supervise a classroom while students work on projects that they can do on their own. That gives the sub a lot of free time to use the computer if it is on or if the password can be bypassed. There is also the teacher’s prep time when the sub is alone in the classroom. Prep is irrelevant to the sub unless he or she is subbing for more than one day, so prep hours provide more good computer time.

  Now, Adult Basic Ed is my primary job. I teach 1560 minutes of face to face time per week. That means that I have students actually sitting in front of me for that length of time. A regular full time teacher in our district has 1200 minutes of face to face time per week, plus they have different students for each class period and usually only have 2 to 3 preps. (In this case, a “prep” means material to teach a class period. Secondary teachers in our district would have 2 or occasionally 3 different 40 minute presentations to prepare each day. For instance, my husband teaches junior high English. He has four seventh grade classes, two eighth grade classes, and one ninth grade class, so he has 3 preps and he repeats the material for each prep the required number of times. He has a course overload. Most teachers in our district only have 6 classes.) Monday through Friday, I have the same students for 240 minutes each day, so I have to have 240 minutes of new material ready for them every day. I do have a lot of speakers who come in and I also supervise some computer time, so it is not as bad as it sounds, but it is still more material to prepare than most teachers have. Then on Tuesday evening, I have another group for 180 minutes, and on Thursday evening, still another group for 180 minutes. Basically, I have to have 1560 minutes of new material ready each week! If you have ever taught, you know that that is a lot! My class alsp runs 12 months a year and does not take the usual school breaks.

  Besides working, I have to spend some time battling the tendency of my house to become unfit for human habitation, and I have family time to work in there. I am feeling the time crunch pretty badly and long for more free time, but I am digging myself out of a nice deep financial hole, so I am going to be doing this for at least a year. Meanwhile, please bear with me and I will be here in Xangaland as much as I can! And if you find someone who can create time, please let me know!

  • 6:48 pm
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