I love teaching.  I really enjoy the five hours spent teaching and the time I spend with the students and staff during prep periods, lunches and after school.  I have structured my day so that I spend as little time on administrative work as I possibly can.  We paint murals, create documentaries, do book clubs, participate in community service, create websites and a host of other projects during every spare hour of the school day. 

I realize that every job must have some shortcuts and so I choose to short cut in the administrative area.  Don't get me wrong.  I spend time on lessons and grading.  It's the other areas that I try to avoid - filling out surveys, documenting pages of discipline contracts, participating in the staff football pool.  To me, it's connected to the bottom line: I can't imagine looking back at my career and saying, "I wish I had color-coded my calendar" or "I wish I had joined more committees."  Who knows?  I'm still fairly young. 

This year, though, it's especially hard.  We have more meetings and committees which are mandatory.  The special education department chair just sent me an e-mail explaining why I should have sent him an IEP Update Form (ten questions, three students) by today.  Mind you, he handed it to me on Wednesday.  He's a good friend, so I feel bad even mentioning it.  It's the same system that grinds him down as well. I am required to maintain a lesson plan notebook.  (Technically, I am using an iBook - does that count?) Yet, I also have to photocopy my lessons and send them to the Department Chair and send another copy to the secretary.  I have failed to update my sub binder in the front office and apparently it's not enough to keep an up-to-date binder in my teacher's desk. 

There are a host of tasks I simply have not even started: organizing my Weapon's Policy and Emergency Contact Sheets, creating my Student Intervention Plan (and setting it inside of a notebook), sending two weeks of lesson plans to the Teacher Support Committee (so that they can give brand new teachers yet another notebook - this time with lesson plans - because apparently teacher's didn't get enough of lesson planning in college)

So, right now I feel a little burned out.  I feel frustrated.  When I think of the students, I feel content.  Don't get me wrong, there are the moments of frustration when a kid talks during Bell Work, but these are momentary and understandable.  It's just that there are so many administrative tasks that get in the way.  Since when did I become a secretary?  When did my job description switch from "inspiring students to think well about life" to "guardian of the fat stacks of binders that now gather dust on a bookshelf?" 

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