Today's Teacher Workday

Final exams ended yesterday, and Dr. King's holiday is Monday, thus giving our students a nice 4-day weekend. We teachers, though, we had to toil.

And toil we did. As has been customary at our school for the 8 years I've worked there, on this "teacher workday after finals" our administrators make pancakes, bacon, and sausage, and serve it up to the staff first thing in the morning. It's an easy way to engender a lot of goodwill.

Then it was off to grading. I had already graded and recorded all the multiple-guess portions of the finals I gave, and today I had just a few dozen remaining short-answer portions of the finals. Had a "rigorous" visit to the gym last night and a few sore muscles told me that sitting hunched over my desk grading papers was not going to be a well-tolerated activity--so I put a note on my door, in case anyone showed up looking for me, and I retired to the nearby staff lounge (we have 3 on campus). I kicked off my shoes, stretched out on the couch, and started grading. It didn't take long before I was done.

Then we had a department meeting at our department chair's house--a working potluck lunch of lasagna, garlic bread, salads, and cheesecake. And yes, we did actually discuss work issues; it was a legitimate meeting. After lunch we headed back to school, I finalized all grades in our official software, and by then it was time to go home.

There are other things I could have done. I could have made new seating charts for my classes. I could have put the upcoming week's assignments on my web site. There are myriad minor administrative tasks I could have performed. They'll all be there this long weekend if I decide to head that way, and if not, I can take care of them on Tuesday.