May 17th: Anchor Days

I’m writing this post ridiculously early, mostly because there is a gym downstairs with 400+ eighth graders checking out all of the activities we have here.  Freshman Preview Night, they call it.

More like Freshman Preview NIGHTMARE.  You couldn’t pay me enough to be down there for extended periods of time, so I’m going to sit upstairs in my cave and blog, while my current students do the talking.

Despite my unwillingness to go downstairs right now, today was a great day at school.  It was the first Anchor Day back after AP exams.

Huh?  Anchor Day?  What is she talking about?

I’m so glad you asked.

Our schedule here is a modified block schedule.

Monday is an Anchor Day.  I see all five of my classes, and I spend one class period advising the yearbook.

Tuesday and Thursday are Blue Days: periods 1-4.

Wednesday and Friday are Red Days: periods 5-8.

The schedule never changes…except for big events like AP exams.

Yes, our school re-organizes it’s daily functions during the first two weeks in May because of the sheer multitude of AP exams that are given in this building.  So, for the last two weeks, we ran on a schedule that looked more like most of the schools in the county; we alternated Red/Blue/Red/Blue/Red the first week, and Blue/Red/Blue/Red/Blue last week.

Those were the longest two weeks of my life.

With Anchor Days, I feel like I only really teach for four days: two Blue and two Red.  It makes the week seem shorter.

But when you throw in an extra Red day here, and an extra Blue day there, the weeks DRAAAAAAAAAAG.

Even though today was Monday, and even though I had to take a couple of Simply Sleep last night, which made me extremely groggy, I had a decent day because it was the return of the Anchor Day.  Forty-minute class periods that fly by, subconsciously make it feel like the whole week is shorter.

It also didn’t hurt that it was Senior Skip Day, so there was next to no one in my sixth period.

Twenty-seven days school days left.

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