Feeling Overwhelmed

Nothing feels worse than starting the week behind the eight ball.  Sometimes it seems like no matter how much time I put into my job after school and on the weekends, it’s just never enough.  Needless to say, I’m feeling quite overwhelmed.

As a special ed teacher, I am entering one of the most stressful times of year, Annual Review season.  For me, this means writing several IEPs, attending numerous trainings and meetings, and somehow maintaining lesson plans and countless numbers of activities in the meantime.  I think the most challenging part of this job is that there is an endless amount of paper and administrative work that takes away the time spent actually working with the kids, which is why we all want to become teachers in the first place.  Most of all, I just feel like I can never “catch up” on all the things that need to get done.

I try to have a few strategies in my toolbox to help deal with these stressful days and weeks.  My favorite coping mechanism is making time to go to my Bikram yoga class.  Sometimes it’s difficult to make room in my schedule for class, but I have to remind myself that I can make time for anything I find valuable enough.  I also have to remind myself to take at least 5 minutes to myself when I get home from work before jumping into the next task.  These are just a few ways I try to maintain my sanity when things become overwhelming!  I’m always open to other tips on how to reduce stress.   Thanks!

Women's Fitness Top 10 Ways to Handle Stress

Overwhelmed - to overcome completely in mind or feeling

Countless – too numerous to count

Meantime - the intervening time; meanwhile

Administrative – pertaining to administration; executive                    

Strategy - a plan, method, or series of maneuvers for obtaining a specific goal or result

Cope - to face and deal with responsibilities, problems, or difficulties, especially successfully or in a calm or adequate manner

1. I have a wedding shower to plan, but in the ­­­______________________ I need to keep taking care of my other responsibilities.

2. My mother has asked me ­­­______________________ times to clean my room, but I keep saying no.

3. That is an ­­­______________________ decision and should be left up to your boss.

4. She seemed ­­­______________________ by the large amounts of work that needed to be done on the project by a quickly approaching deadline.  I don’t know if she will be able to ­­­______________________ with all of the responsibility.

5. The group needs to devise a ­­­______________________ for exiting the arena quickly and efficiently.

Commas

Two of the most common places to use commas are before a conjunction, or when separating items in a list.  Another way in which commas are frequently used is to indicate pronunciation that is usually found in a speaker’s intonation.  Through a speaker’s intonation, he or she will separate a defining or non-defining phrase.  For example, in the sentence, “The boy, who is new to this school, just arrived from Venezuela,” the phrase “who is new to this school,” is part of one intonation group, as indicated by the commas.

Go on a comma scavenger hunt!

In my blog, I used commas twice to separate items in a list.  Write each sentence below:

1 _________________________________________________

2 _________________________________________________

I also used a comma before a conjunction.  Locate the sentence and list it below:

3 _________________________________________________

Now look back in your own writing and see if you can cite why you used commas!