Today, I thought I would share a Day in the Life: Teacher Edition! To be honest, I completely forgot to take many pictures throughout the school day, but I will do my best to share what we did!
I am a first grade teacher two days a week. Yes, a part time teacher! How cool is that? Our school is a hybrid school, so the kids attend core classes two days a week. Core classes include math, language arts, bible, science and social studies. While there are some similarities to a homeschool co-op, our school operates more like a private school. The teachers in the classroom are trained and paid employees, and we take the primary responsibility for the education of the child. We teach two days a week, but we provide the curriculum and most instruction- guiding parents in what they do on homeschool days. It is a great partnership, and while I know it wouldn’t work for everyone- it really works for our family!
Anyways, back to my day in the life.
My alarm goes off at 5:50, and I typically do my devotions for about 10 minutes. I get up and get in the shower and get myself ready for the day. Theo gets the kids up at about 6:30, and we are all working to get ourselves out the door by 7ish. Theo makes breakfast for everyone, while I make sure that everyone is dressed and ready for the day. Lunches, water bottles, backpacks, don’t forget the baby! Haha.
We drive to school in two separate vehicles, even though we are all going to the same place. More times than not, we need to leave school at different times, so we always drive separate. It’s about a 7 minute drive, and we are at school by 7:30am. I head straight to the classroom (all the kids are still with me) and start getting my room ready for the day- Alexa, play praise and worship music, turn my computer on, get my walkie turned on, hand out morning work, help my kids with any last minute needs for the day.
At 7:45, I say goodbye to my kids as they head to their classes, while at the same time my students start entering my classroom! We do morning work for 20-30 minutes, and then meet on the carpet for morning time. After carpet time, we sit at our seats for Bible, and then straight into Math. The kids are usually very wiggly by the time we have hit those two subjects (usually about 45 mins for both of them), so we take a bathroom and snack break, followed by 25-30 minutes of recess outside.
After recess, we hit our phonics block, where I teach the days phonics lessons and usually have some worksheets to help practice the concept. During phonics I usually let them work together and often let them get out of their seats and sit wherever they would like. We also take our weekly spelling test, complete a weekly writing journal and practice our sight words during this time.
Next up is lunch (20 minutes) and recess (20 minutes). During the cold months, the kids eat lunch in our classroom but when the weather is nice they eat in the cafeteria and then have recess outside. Once a month I have recess duty for that week, and it happened to be the week that I was taking pics for this day in the life. In my free 20 minutes, I use the restroom and heat up my lunch- then usually end up eating it while standing on the playground for recess duty.
After lunch I read aloud from a story while the kids play with play dough or color. I find this to be such a great transition time from recess into the rest of the afternoon. After read aloud, we have our reading groups/centers. My class is split into four groups and they rotate to each center in 10 minute blocks. My group reads to me from a guided reading book, and then we typically play a phonics game together. Today it was the game Sight Word SPLAT.
After reading groups, we do our Science/Social studies part of the day, and on this day we were learning all about maps! Also- my desk starts out clean every single day, and ends the day clean and clear as well. What happens during the day is entirely outside of my control, and let’s just say there are PILES. Also, please spot the fact that I have at least two drink containers on my desk at all times, yet still leave school every single teaching day feeling incredibly dehydrated and not having drunk hardly anything at all LOL.
Social studies flows into the end of the day where we begin the most hectic 30-45 minutes of our lives hahaha. We need to pack up, make sure that we all have our water bottles, lunch boxes, sweatshirts, binders AND backpacks. It’s a madhouse, I’m telling ya! At 2:30 I take the kids down to dismissal, and one day a week I work dismissal duty. Since our school is a private school and kids come from town all around, we don’t have any buses, so everyone is a car line pickup. Our administration team has done a fabulous job making carline as seamless as possible, but dismissal is still nuts and very overstimulating, especially at the end of a long day with small children! Usually after dismissal I head back to my classroom and just kind of sit in quiet and stare off into space for a couple of minutes.
My children go to aftercare so that I can get my desk piles cleaned off, grades in, clean my classroom, and make any preparation for the next teaching day. Then my co-teacher and I meet for about an hour to plan out the next week’s lessons. Aftercare ends at 4:30, and on this day Theo came and grabbed Tera, Ezra and Orion from aftercare because I needed to take Kiah to a soccer game where he was working ball boy. As you can see, I left my classroom at 5!
I hadn’t had much time to eat lunch, so I actually re-heated my lunch at this point and took it to the soccer game with me. Theo fed the three kids at home and I gave Kiah a bunch of snacks to tide him over.
The opposing team was almost an hour late for the soccer game, so there was a lot of sitting around and waiting before the game even started! We finally started and beat them soundly in the game- I think it was 10-0, which is pretty rough for a soccer game! The sun was setting as they were playing it was just the most beautiful evening!
As soon as the game was over, I took Kiah home. It was dark by the time we got home! I got him some late dinner, then got him ready for bed. Theo had already put the other three in bed. And very soon after that, I changed and crawled into bed myself! I chatted with Theo and read my book and then turned my light out by 10!
And there you have it- a day in the life of a teacher/Mom! This was a FULL day- we don’t often have sports commitments right after school until bedtime, but it’s also not entirely unheard of! You better believe I slept well that night- exhausted is an understatement! Also please notice how I didn’t manage to do any exercise or house chores on that day – we truly can’t do it all!
Next week I’ll be back with a day in the life of one of our homeschool days!
Great minds think alike! I posted a day in the life on the blog today too. That does sound like a busy day. I used to teach at a private school and I remember the craziness of after school pick up– we did have buses but very few kids were from the actual town the school was in and were able to take the bus.