My New Bad Habit

After my first year of teaching, I decided that leaving school at 5:00 p.m. was imperative to my sanity. Staying much later than that each day was simply far too detrimental to my stress levels. Luckily, leaving my that time was fairly easy. Sure, my classroom was right between my other team members, but I found it very simple to keep to myself and get things done. It was a very productive hour after the little darlings left.

Fast forward to the first week of school this year. I am now located on the opposite side of the building from my team members. This should make it really simple to leave by 5:00 at night. And, since school gets out at 2:55 instead of 3:45, I should get TONS done before a 5:00 departure. It all sounds like a wonderful plan in theory. It's the execution that gets a little tricky. Somehow, every night this week I've managed to botch the 5:00 departure time. Of course, I've had a lot of help with that. In the past 5 days, I've danced the Chicken Dance in the halls, beat one of my team members in Wii boxing, and all sorts of other crazy shenanigans that could probably be considered juvenile. Despite being on the other side of the building, I can't seem to be productive in my after school hours and I can't seem to leave until the 6:00 "kick-out" time. Oh well. I guess it could be worse. I could hate being at school and actually want to leave early each day. I'll just have to buckle down and tell myself I can't play until I get my work done. After all, that's what I tell my students: work first, then play. I'm sure they'd love to know their teachers have the same problem sticking to that as they do!