Wearing Pajamas to the Swimming Pool

I go swimming on Friday nights with my friends. It is a good stress reliever and social time after a busy week at work. This past Friday at school, I spilled some coffee down my pants while supporting my students with our coffee cart business. Unfortunately, when I got home and began to get ready for swimming, I realized that I no longer had any clean pants. So, I did what any logical person would do and wore a pair of pajamas out in public to go to the pool.

“Why didn’t you have any clean pants?” many people could ask.

The answer is very simple and a problem that I have had challenges with for the last 15 years of my career.

It is the month of September.

I don’t know what happens in September, but my work life balance goes out the window. My lunches are whatever I can find in the bottom of the fridge, my partner and I wave at each other as we come in and out of the house and the hours spent at work seem never ending.

This year, I was positive that it was going to be different. This was the year that I was going to get it right! I have 9 out of 10 of the same students as last year. Surely, I thought, September would be a breeze. From the picture above with me in my pajamas, you can see that things didn’t quite turn out that way.

There is so much to do in September: reviewing busing routines, introducing new students, setting up activities, lesson planning, creating lesson plan templates, communicating with parents, filing violent incident reports, writing IEPs, introducing new staff, creating new log in information about computers, requesting computer support staff to come to your classroom, joining the Terry Fox run committee, signing in OSRs, reviewing OSRs, completing Annual Learning plans, meeting with Occupational Therapists, preparing for and attending ISRC are just a few of the tasks that takes up your time. It is like the Mt. Everest of work in September that somehow always seems to be crested right at the end of the month.

I see some of my colleagues who don’t look phased by the first month of school and seem to manage their school and home life well. I honestly don’t know how they do it. Do they have a secret time vortex machine that gives them more hours in the day than me? Do they have a maid, cook, gardener and nanny that helps them run their home?

What is their secret?

If you are one of those people who have matching outfits, excellent lunches and a clean car throughout the month of September please leave a comment below and let me in on the secret of how you do it.

As tomorrow is the last day of the month, I will have to say what I have said for the last 15 years….

There is always next year!