A day in the life of a tired teacher

Today, my students managed to drain all my energy. I thought the day would go smoothly because we had just come back from a four day holiday, but I was entirely wrong. Firstly, the internet was abnormally slow and the connection was going up and down. My first group is online, with only one student face-to-face and she was especially chatty, wanting all my attention to her and forgetting her colleagues were online patiently waiting for my connection to work better.

In my second class, there is a boy who drives me insane. I already know him, but today he was testing my patience. He is the kind of child who pretends to be dumb and keeps asking silly questions, but not in a funny way. I would say he is kind of mean and likes to watch me suffer. Because I know what he is doing. He knows I know what he is doing. And there we have an infinite cycle of patience-testing. He wore me off in a way that I began to feel a pain in my arm and I am still feeling it until now. I refuse to die because of a misbehaved child, though.

In this boy's class there was also a student who had to stay online because she was not feeling well. At least that was what her parents had told us. So, besides having to deal with the mean boy, I also had to adapt my already planned lesson (only for face-to-face students) to a hybrid one. In addition, there was the logistics of all the gadgets necessary for a hybrid lesson. And - remember? - the connection was still working very poorly. To my surprise, when I was walking home, I saw the "sick" student walking her dog and looking healthy.

The last face-to-face lesson was also crazy, but normal crazy. My 7 year-old students cannot keep their masks covering their noses and mouth, so I am constantly saying "cover your nose", "put your mask on", "don't stand too close to your friend", "don't touch your friend's mask". And then I had to deal with a student who can't lose. He gets frustrated and doesn't want to play anything anymore. I mean, you would think games were supposed to be fun... go try and bring a simple Baamboozle or a back to the board game to a class of (mostly) spoiled 7-year-olds and your mind would be changed forever.

So, when I got home and I had only 25 minutes to feed my dogs, feed myself (only had time for some peanuts, cookies and coffee today), go to the restroom, before my final online class of the day, I was already exhausted. And I had to explain the past simple and past continuous to a group of insecure intermediate students. I don't understand why so many students reach intermediate level feeling so traumatized, like they aren't good enough. And it translates to their production, which is mostly good for their level. It is so hard for me to motivate this kind of students.

My day finally ended and I was just too tired to do anything else. But, surprise! I still had to prepare tomorrow morning's class and after that I decided to write about this insane day here. Well, insane for me, at least. I'm well aware that there are many teachers who go through worse stuff every day, but, you know, sometimes we just need to vent.

It has been a long time since my last post here and I would like to get back to my blogging activities. Nothing better to get back at it by bringing a day-in-the-life sort of post, which mostly involved me complaining about students and poor internet connection. Maybe - hopefully? - next time I will bring something more useful to share.