Seven Signs of an Overwhelmed Teacher

1.  Bringing hot dogs to school to heat up for lunch...not enough time to snag anything else in the morning, and they were still in their packaging.  (Chicken dogs take forever to cook in the microwave.)

2.  Looking forward to watching certain TV shows.  In the evening.  On your television in your classroom. While you're still at work.

3.  Taking a cloth grocery bag back and forth, from work to home, back to work and back home, sometimes 3 times a week.  The bag is so full of papers to grade, you worry that it'll bust open, and cover the neighborhood with a three-inch layer of worksheets.  Sometimes you don't even take the bag out of your car when you get home.  But it waits for you every day, patiently...

4.  Eating microwaved popcorn for dinner.  Or yogurt.  In the evening.  In your classroom.

5.  Noticing that every time test scores are mentioned, your left eye twitches uncontrollably for 8 minutes weeks.

photo by burnitblue

6.  During a choking incident, your teaching partner has to perform the heimlich manuever on you in the teacher's lounge because you wolfed down your lunch (see #1) in 12 minutes so you would have time to go back to...(drum roll, please) your classroom to grade papers.

7.  This school year you have not worn makeup once.  You took your makeup bag out of your purse when cleaning it out, put the makeup bag somewhere (at long red lights is when it's applied, usually), and do not have the energy/time to look for it.  (So now your school has a genuine "Scared Straight" program; just one look at Mrs. R without any makeup will cause trembling and paralysis.)

What is a sign that you are overworked or overwhelmed? (As a teacher? As a writer? As a parent?)