I can break you.

Okay, I am surviving. Got a little bit more organized but truth is, the work load hasn't hit. I'm not quite sure how or when it will... I suppose after the exam fervor has died down and everyone starts doing the stuff that they were supposed to do.

The other highlight of the week is that I completed trashed my tennis racket. I had the amazing ability to break it, on the head, while playing tennis, hitting the ball. Everyone on court heard it go. I suppose that might be what it sounds like if you bone breaks into two.

I was sore about it. I really liked that racket. It went for $400 when I got it 7 years ago but I only paid $80 (at cost price!) so you can imagine what sort of racket it was. Went straight to get a replacement yesterday for $230. Went from an ultralite Prince to a Wilson N-gage Savage for women. Oh well. I think its a pretty good racket too though.

Work measured - but who knows how?

Usually, I don't have that much time to blog during the work week - I'm blogging today not because its friday and the weekend is here. In fact, it doesn't feel like it should be a friday evening because I left work today thinking, "OMG, the load just got bigger."

Like a horse on a race-track, I have been trying my hardest to keep my blinders on so I can just keep on my race. My race that is the one I decide I will pursue, the end-point results I will get and the speed at which I get there. So, I kinda knew this was coming for me sometime... but that sometime is always sooner than we want.

Not that I haven't been on course with most of the responsibilities at work, perhaps my problem is that I have been? The point is, this week revealed the extent of responsibilities I had to assume.

I use the word assume carefully because that is exactly what I am doing. I am not 'assuming' a title and its responsibilities. The System, is making me assume what I think I have to do. And that System is some metamorphosed expression of 'fear'. Well, it certainly ain't one of love and that is definitely what it is not.

You see there is this Work Review form, all nine pages long in its empty glory. It's made up of templates of forms and tables for which I am to fill up. Lets start with the first major one, "Job Description". No brainer right? I am a subject teacher and a co-form teacher. My responsibility is to draw up lessons, deliver the lessons, measure and ensure learning, provide a metre of discipline etc etc.

"No! You're supposed to write down every single meticuluous piece of work that you do. Including the taking of attendance." The what?! You're supposed to because its official document that you are doing your work.

Okay, so they need to know I'm doing my work - so what work is it that I am supposed to do? Where is this job description and role responsibility that I am supposed to follow? No where to be found... I am supposed to make it out myself.

The best part about this, is that there are no models to follow. There is a verbal explanation of categories, but no one is supposed to show what their's looks like. I cannot take a copy/model so that I may know what it is and how it is I am supposed to do.

So, I am to fill up a review form that measures my grading as a teacher. But I have no models from which to follow and no idea of how they will grade me against a job description/role responsibility rubric. So, I have no real idea how I am doing.

Nobody's really told me what I am supposed to do. Just to "do it". So who knows if I have to do it or not? But see, the System won't tell you because if you don't know that you don't have to do it, then they can give it to you to do.

So now I have a hazy impression of how I am supposed to complete this form and with it, a hazy impression of my job description. This hazy idea of a job description that encompassess everything I don't know that I don't have to do means that I have to do everything. And that is an overwhelming task.

Days like these really stretch my patience in this country and its system.

Days like these I have to really wonder how it is I am going to cope, how it is I am going to find time to build a loving marriage, how it is I will find time to build a ministry, how it is I will find time to grow in the direction of missions, how it is I will find time to build deeper and stronger relationships with others who need people.

How.

This is OKAY

As I write this, there is a stack of grade 9 comprehensions waiting to be marked. But that is okay, because this week is OKAY.

And I am okay. Because this week is term break. Hallelujah! It's nice to have term break. As much as I relish every second of it, it wasn't like my last term break... where it was a seven day hiatus from ghetto school. So, school must be okay.

Heck, I'm doing better than okay. I think I'm actually enjoying what I have got to do now. Yes, the hours are incredibly long, but the kids are incredibly rewarding - at least two-thirds of them. :-)

I've decided to spend two days being productive - and procrastinating on marking - and the next three days of the work week, not working! (At least I hope so!)

The last ten weeks of school have been crazy, its another 3-4 more before the exams and then the countdown to my wedding begins. We've finally finished our Curious Incident of the Dog at Night Time and our poetry module and I'm am enjoying teaching Midsummers Night Dream. I think the kids like it too!

Best of all, last friday I got a note from one of my literature students... the note confessed his love for Literature and to show what he'd learnt over the poetry module, he proceeded to write an ode to Literature. I'll put it up later when I see it at home. I wanted my kids to love literature, but with the whole 'holistic child' learning mandate, I've kinda put it on my backburner for awhile. I guess when you love something enough, it shows enough for others to want that enthusiasm too.