And the chaos begins...

Tomorrow begins the first day of my 13th school musical...
It is always an exciting and terrifying endeavor that takes much planning and a whole lot of of chaos.
We begin with our 2nd through 4th grade auditions. I have 117 kids signed up to attend. They will be showing up around 7:30 to sign in and begin learning a one minute song and dance. We then perform in groups of about 10, followed by a minute of standing in line while I madly write down notes. Having done this quite a few times, I have a pretty good system, but no matter how organized or prepared I am, it never works out exactly as planned. There are bound to be papers that are forgotten, resulting in kids that can't audition. Mom's that wait anxiously at the doors the ENTIRE audition so their 2nd grader can come out and say, "it went fine."
Thursday I audition 5-6th graders, about 70. And Friday anyone brave enough to sing a solo brings their big 30 seconds and gives us their everything.
The casting process is never easy. Cutting a 7 year old is heart breaking no matter who you are. But I'm one person, with my faithful assistant (another teacher I've suckered into helping me) and we can only handle so many kids. The hardest part is explaining to parents (yes, parents, not kids) that life is actually not fair, and sometimes you don't get what you want.
In real life, not everyone gets a trophy.

Meetings...

I had 12 meetings last week.
12.
I don't work in the business world where you might have a meeting before lunch and another after lunch and then call it a day.
I work in the education world where you say, "Sure I'll come in at 8 for a meeting and then stay until 6 for another meeting, and yes I'll still work for 8 hours somewhere in the middle there."
I had 5 meetings on one day.
I didn't get home until after 9 - twice.
And that's just meetings... I taught, important stuff... like 5 part essays, 4 strategies to multiply, the routes of the top 12 most important explorers, how to discuss a book in 5 minutes, and lots of other things that I can't remember because I can only remember stupid meetings!!!!
And it was midterms.
And 5th grade is hard.
MUCH harder than 4th grade.
And 5th grade teachers are too hard on students. (Revise that - I (the mean Mrs. Reina) am too hard on 5th graders.)
Deal with it. 5th grade is hard.

So when you're scheduling your meetings, don't pick "the second Tuesday" or "the second Thursday"...try a different week, or try an email, or just skip the meeting idea all together.

Sorry to complain, I would report on other aspects of my life, but I don't have any.