Monday Meeting Miseries

Mondays have never seemed like a good day for a staff meeting. Yesterday was no exception.

I went to bed later than usual the night before and found myself once again tossing and turning for hours in the middle of the night. Actually, it was early morning. You know how it is: you wake up, look at the clock and tell yourself, "If I fall asleep right now, I'll get another three hours of sleep." This invariably leads to a countdown as you try desperately to fall back to sleep but to no avail. "If I fall asleep now, I'll get two more hours of sleep. . .one more hour. . .15 minutes. . . ."

Somehow I managed to get through five hours of teaching. Mondays are early release days, so they go pretty quickly, not allowing me much opportunity to sit, let alone fall asleep at my desk. After school there was just enough time to run to the office for a quick bathroom break before heading to the PLC meeting. My grade level team had a lot to talk about and work out in preparation for our upcoming round of interventions, and we had only 50 minutes to get it done, so again there wasn't much opportunity to let the afternoon slump take hold.

That all changed at 3:10 when we moved to the library for the staff meeting. Standing at the front of the room was someone from the district office that I didn't recognize, but was later introduced as being part of the special education department. Once everyone was settled in their seats she began her presentation, complete with colorful slides that included charts and quotes and all sorts of information that perhaps on another day would have been somewhat interesting.

Yesterday, however, all I wanted to do was fall asleep. I felt my eyelids get heavier and heavier and fought off the temptation to close them, just for a minute. I tried to focus on what she was saying, honest I did. I sat forward, attempted to read what was written on the screen, but all I could think about was just how tired I was. I looked around the room, and judging by the looks on everyone's face, they were all thinking the same thing: Why today? We just made our clocks move ahead an hour yesterday, and we're all sitting here wondering why spring break is still four weeks away.

After about 15 minutes that felt like an eternity, her presentation came to an end. My team and I looked at each other with the same half-asleep expressions and shook our heads.

"I'm so tired," one said.

"I almost fell asleep three times!" exclaimed another.

Then we quickly downed the M&Ms our principal, assistant principal, and instructional coach had left for us, hoping the dose of sugar would be enough to get us through the rest of the meeting.