Not Enough Time? Use What You Have

You can't have it both ways.

You can't complain about how much information students lose over summer vacation anymore.  You can't gripe about the time lost on the two days leading up to winter break and the day or two it takes for you to get students back and settled into the groove.

You don't get to say that you don't have enough time for everything you are expected to teach, or that you don't have the opportunity to try new teaching techniques.  Don't even think about saying something about how your students waste time or procrastinate.

You can't complain about those things while simultaneously cueing up the movie for your class to watch all afternoon, running copies of mind-numbing, holiday-themed worksheets and activity pages, and hosting holiday parties.  You can't gleefully waste class time with such fluff and then turn around and complain that, when you do decide it is a good day to learn, your students don't retain the information.