M.I.A.

I've been pretty MIA as a blogger lately, and it's definitely not for lack of stories. May was - for some reason I still can't figure out - unbelievably busy. Literally every weekend was booked with plans from sometime in February or March. Besides that I was also working full time for all of May and most of June, teaching 9th graders about important things like Juliet's hormones and pearls the size of grapefruits.

Finals week is usually a time for teachers to start winding down and getting ready for the respite of summer, but instead, I was gearing up for an entirely new undertaking. In May (at some point but now I can't imagine when) I replied to a random grouping of vague postings on Craig's List for tutors, teachers, and SAT instructors at various locations around the county. (I was staring summer - and it's pending 4 months of no paycheck for substitutes - in the eyes for the 3rd summer in a row and just knew my savings account would be sorely diminished come winter if I didn't at least attempt a search for potential income. I've never taught an SAT class or had any interest in doing it, but since I now know that I am capable of teaching a first grader how to read, 2 of the 3 SAT section tests are officially in my qualification wheel so why not?)

I'll admit that when I first received a phone call and had a preliminary phone interview, I couldn't even remember the names of the companies with which I had applied for jobs. That's how much attention I had paid to the application process. But I talked to the director of a particular institute for about half an hour on my cell phone while roaming the aisles of Target and we hit it off nicely. Within a week or so I had a job teaching 9th and 10th grade "Book Camp", 4 days a week, 4 hours a day. Not bad at all for summer. Maybe two weeks later, my new boss asked me to take on the additional responsibility of teaching SAT Critical Reading in the mornings, 4 days a week, 4.5 hours a day at a separate office for the same company.

So that's where I've been. I spend 8.5 hours a day teaching. 12 hours a day commuting, working, or on one campus or the other. Officially I work 4 days a week, but seeing that I'm up late on Sunday night reading one of the book camp books and I've just finished several hours of prep work including taking an SAT, reading 2 articles aloud to my mom, and writing discussion questions that my students will do for homework this week, in reality I'm working 5 or 6 days a week. In 9 days, I logged 90 payable hours... A calculation that doesn't include the additional 20 or 30 hours spent doing other work-related activities.

But here's the really cool part about all of this: I get to read abundantly and I find over 80% of the material interesting, some of it downright fascinating. I get to spend all day laughing and talking with some really smart, motivated, hard-working teenagers. My colleagues are intelligent, interesting, and generous. In short, I'm LOVING my job. I feel rewarded. I feel like I'm growing as an educator. I feel like the work I put in in genuinely valued and I am compensated accordingly.

Overall, I feel like this: