Swamped: One teacher's to-do list

I stole a couple extra minutes today and wrote down my full to-do list. It was scary.

-Teach my regular classes (200 mins)

-Grade quizzes on Ch. 5-6 of The Great Gatsby (40 mins)

-Input grades and comments into Power School online gradebook (10 mins)

-gather/create/print/copy/staple materials for activities for classes for the rest of the week (60 mins)

-Proofread/format 270-page senior class literary anthology for publication, must be finalized and ordered by end of next week (BUMPED TO TOMORROW)

-Teach 60-minute “junior seminar” classes twice per week to help 11th graders with college application process

-Prepare lesson plans and materials for junior seminar classes (30 minutes)

-Create differentiated versions of a final exam (BUMPED TO TOMORROW)

-Call/email parents whose students are currently earning F’s (Handled 1 of 7 students— took 30 minutes)

-Meet with English department to plan creating summer reading assignments, summer reading book ordering, and distributing books and assignments to students (needs to be executed next week) (25 minutes)

-Fill out and email daily behavior grids for students with IEPS (10 mins)

This is all basic, end-of-the-year stuff. Life threatens to get really hectic when I throw in some extras like eating lunch, checking email, preparing for National Board Certification “assessment centers” (6 essay tests), changing classroom bulletin boards, having a conversation or two with a colleague, arranging a field trip, experimenting with developing a brand new lesson plan, and cleaning the hurricane scene on my desk. It’s wall to wall action from 7:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. and my to-do list only seems to grow, not shrink for the next day.

What’s on your list? And who says teaching is a breezy, part-time job?