My short term goals for this month are pretty straightforward:
1. Financially, I would like to stop spending so much money. For the most part, I've been doing pretty good at this - lots avoiding my usually online shopping haunts and target like the plague. Right now the balance on my credit card is almost entirely from gasoline, and that's the way I'd like to keep it. My friend Steffy is putting herself on a spending freeze until January 1st. After I get my pots and pans, and pay off a couple of work obligations (my staff polo shirt and my dress down days through the end of the year) I'd like to try that for myself. I just bought some new work pants, and I'm set with work clothes for now. I don't need anything else for my house, and I have netflix and TLC/TBS to keep me occupied. Hypothetically, this sounds really easy, but I'm sure this is going to be tougher than I'm expecting.
2. Work wise, I really want to get my classes under my thumb. I have a great section of 7th grade, and an okay section of 6th grade which make work bearable. I have another section of 7th grade which is made up almost entirely of the most impulsive kids in the 7th grade. It tries my patience on a daily basis. My 6th grade chorus is okay. They're still learning the ropes and the procedures, we do a lot of reviewing the correct way to sit, the procedure to stand (without talking), all of that kind of stuff. My 7th and 8th grade group is like one step forward, two steps back. We had an okay rehearsal on Thursday, but only after I all but begged them to be more responsible for their own actions and to stop wasting time. My student to teacher ratio is approximately 85 kids to 1 adult. I'm exhausted, and they're trying my patience, to put it mildly. They're also being taught (or re-taught, for some of them) the procedures and expectations in my classroom. I came home this weekend with big plans to catch up on all of the grading and checking in of stuff that I haven't done this week - and none of it is done. I made the executive decision to NOT do it about a half hour ago. I'm exhausted, and I just want to enjoy what's left of my day off - not that there's much of it.
