Laying out books, listing exact steps, creating a SMART board document, checking my plans twice and informing my students that a guest teacher would be arriving in the middle of reading group time are just a few things that I did to prepare for being out of the classroom for thirty minutes this morning.
It’s only thirty minutes I thought, but as I prepared my list to guide the guest teacher I realized we do so much in only thirty minutes. I would be sneaking away to attend a scheduled parent teacher conference with a translator and a parent in the middle of my morning.
As my scheduled time arrived, I continued teaching my small reading group. I would glance up at the clock periodically wondering when the guest teacher would arrive. A few more minutes went by and then she appeared..but it wasn’t who I was anticipating at our classroom door. Our secretary shared that my meeting I had planned for would not be happening this morning.
Instead, we would move forward with a phone conference at a completely different time of day. All of my best laid plans were unraveling in a matter of moments. Then, my mind began to fast forward and think about how I would plan for this new time slot at the end of day. I have recess duty and one special today. How will I prepare? I’ll spend some of my only 20 minute afternoon plan period to again plan, list and prepare for being out of the classroom for only 30 minutes.
March Moments 
No truer words typed… This happens all too often! 1 more day!
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How frustrating! It must have added a bit of stress to your day. Hopefully, two sets of plans were enough for one day!
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Ugh! I’ve read recently that teachers make more decisions in a thirty minute timeframe than a brain surgeon. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but this post shows the juggling act we go through. And in the meantime you were also probably answering students and directing learning! And you are so right!! We cram a TON of things into 30 minutes.
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20 minutes of planning for a 30 minute span of time. Such is the life of a teacher.
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UGH! This sort of thing annoys me so much! Why can’t everyone just stick to the schedule! haha I know life can’t always go according to plan, but I feel your frustration about planning for one thing and then having to plan for another instead.
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