It was bound to happen I suppose.
After seeing an amazing project to completion, there was bound to be a let down. A coming back to earth and the realities that all the work that had been put on hold for the past few weeks.
In one sense it was relief.
Project-based learning is unbelievably draining. It took an inordinate amount of creative energy to see the submission through to completion and I know I needed a break and to fall back to some familiar routines for a while. In the classroom I had a productive week getting through reading groups and maths groups and some other work.
Outside of teaching my hours were spent freaking out about getting learning portfolios ready for conferences next week. I don’t particularly enjoy this aspect of teaching. To me it highlights the massive disconnect between the juicy learning of the last few weeks and the things I report on. To be sure I understand that literacy and numeracy is important, but it isn’t the stuff that gets me jumping up out of bed in the morning.
Which is perhaps why I struggled to get out of bed a lot this week.
Throw in August 22 falling mid-week and a stressful situation in the later part of the week to deal with and you have one horrible week. Sure enough, Friday afternoon I started getting visual disturbances announcing the arrival of nasty migraine to end the week.
Yep it’s another bout of mid-term-itis.
That point in the term where the amount of work between now and holidays seems huge and my energy levels seem oh so low. As I look on the school calendar, I realize I have a few more late nights coming up this term and not much gas in the tank to get there. I am kicking myself for not budgeting my energy as it’s been over a month since I had a proper weekend and I’ve gotten back into the habit of staying at school until after five doing stuff.
So I head into the this week with the mantra ‘this too shall pass’ hopefully that should distract me from this horrible nagging feeling I’ve been dragging around all week that perhaps my greatest success as a teacher is already behind me.
Teaching the Teacher 
Hang in there, Stephanie. Mid-term is a tough time. I imagine you are now faced with a stack of projects to grade.
Can you spend some time celebrating the projects this week? Perhaps you plan time to group and re-group students into groups of 4 to share their projects with one another. This will bring joy to everyone.
I also hope you have time for a nice glass with a colleague :). My slumps come in October (http://wp.me/p1Dq2f-cT).
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It *will* pass. I’m just about out the end of a few hell weeks, and it has been no fun whatsoever.
Of course, it won’t be your greatest success as a teacher. There will be other successes in the years ahead. Perhaps it will be the greatest success for this particular year. But it really is a magnificent success. You have empowered those children, and in future years, they will simply know how to put together asubmission. That’s a tremendous thing to do for them.
And having done all that work, I think it’s okay to say to your class that everyone will need to knuckle down for the rest of the term.
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