Positively tuckered, positively

To say the least, I am exhausted from the daily grind of school. I normally spend a full 11 hours at school each day. That means that I am on of the first 5 people in the building when it opens at 6:50 am, and I'm one of the last, if not the very last, to leave around 5:30 - 6:00 pm. Today, the Friday of a three-day Labor Day weekend, I didn't leave my classroom until 7:00 pm.

My brain is a constant dull-achy mush.

But, things are going well at school.. Very busy, but good. I'll elaborate more in my teachery blog.

...Well, I don't really have a life outside of school, so what else should I say if I save the school stuff for my teaching blog?

Aaron, of course! Aaron has been supremely amazing throughout this whole school year. He makes dinner every night - and good food at that! None of that pbj, forzen pizza stuff. He helps me brainstorm ideas for lesson planning, he puts up with my classroom crap spread out from pillar to post in the apartment. And he does the vast majority of the housework now too, since when I get home, I just keep working until it's time to crash in bed around 10:30.

And then! Last Sunday I had the ultimate melt down. Stress KO'd me. I was crying hysterically - to the point where I couldn't breathe kinda crying. Completely inconsolable. Poor Aaron tried to convince me that I'm a good teacher; I yelled at him b/c "how could you know? You're in my classroom and even if you were, you're not a teacher so you wouldn't know!!" He tried everything he could think of.

And then he tried tough love. He told me (after I'd been sobbing uncontrollably for around 20 minutes) to pull myself together and move on. Or something like that.

That did not sit well with my frame of mind. Instead of focusing all my attention on how crappy I thought I was, I flew into an immediate rage. I was not clinically sane for about 5 solid minutes. I would have thrown punches at Aaron had he not been walking away. So I kicked a hole in the wall instead and then threw myself on our bed, pushing tne mattress around with my body weight and trying to smother myself in the sheets as I screamed bloody royal murder. I then melted into the carpet, unable to physically hold myself up anymore, where I lay convulsing between fragmented gasps of air and sobs. Out of sheer exhaustion, Aaron was finally able to talk to me again, where I was too worn out to do much more than quietly cry myself to sleep, a puddle on the floor.

And why this meltdown? My thoughts at that time were thus: that my lessons are miserable and do not keep the kids interested, nor teach them anything, and that means more discipline problems; that because so many of my students were failing, it was a direct reflection of my crappy teaching ability; that 90% of my classes were completely uncontrollable and that my classroom management was a joke; and that because it was already the 4th week of school, things would only get worse from here.

For the record, I have since changed my mind, in some form or fashion, about the above statements.

Classes are still rough, but I am feeling exceedingly more optimistic than at any other time since school started. For the record again? Without Nancy and Aaron, I'd still be puddled on the bedroom floor.