The last week or so has been pretty hectic/stressful/tiresome for me. I haven't been able to connect with my PLN as much as I'd like, but that will hopefully soon improve. I am part of the negotiations team for my Teachers' Association that bargains our teacher contract. This year, I'm the lead person, which while I help guide the team, basically means I take all the crap that goes with it. Anyway, this past week, we came to a tentative agreement - I'm not going to go into the details, but it won't pass unanimously, as no contract does. However, the vote is not until June 11th, during our last week of school, so until that time, I won't be completely comfortable with the situation. Nonetheless, this past week presented a couple of tense days for me because we had to present this TA to building representatives. There are always a handful of people who question everything and complain a lot. These are the ones that stress me out. I should know it's coming by now, but it still bothers me. I'd like everyone to be happy, but I'm beginning to realize that it's impossible.

My new puppy has been waking me up pretty early these days, but this morning I decided to grab my laptop and sit outside with the dog and enjoy the great weather. This is my view from the bench I was sitting on. It was quite peaceful sitting out there with the only sounds being the birds chirping and my keyboard clicking. I'm catching up on Google Reader and writing this blog. This weekend is going to be pretty busy, but hopefully stress free. We have a birthday party to attend at 9:00 this morning at Pump It Up - a great place for kids, my wife's work friends coming over this evening for a cookout, a get together tomorrow at another friend's house, and finally, a birthday party for my daughter on Monday. While it may seem a bit much, I'm looking forward to unplugging, forgetting about the teacher contract, and simply enjoying friends and family.

I'll wait until Tuesday to worry again.

I'm not sure how many of my "readers" are actively involved in their Teachers' Union, or if they even teach in public schools. Regardless, I'm involved in bargaining our next contract and recently began looking at some comments some staff members have listed on a recent survey that was given. I'm not going to list a bunch of them, but one of the thing that baffles me is the lack of understanding some people have about the real world. In my state, where health care extremely expensive and taxpayers are all over our benefits, many teachers still feel they are "entitled" to great benefits, even though the costs are outrageous. Some also believe that in order to "get what we want" in negotiations, we shouldn't have a collaborative, working relationship with our administration. I guess these people don't understand that the positive relationship is a benefit to us. In addition, there are some complaints that we teach too long into June. Well, since a state law requires us to start with students no earlier than September 1st, and we have to put in X number of days, the math forces us to work into June. Some would like us to get out of school earlier and yet add some record keeping days to work on reports cards. Is that even possible? This entry has turned into a little venting session, a rather calm one nonetheless, but I think I'm going to stop your misery for now.

In an earlier post, I stated that I hoped more people would find my blogging interesting. Well, after rereading what I've just written, I'll probably lose the readers who recently stopped by. I hope to provide a much better read soon.