I’ve updated our day numbers. We started isolation 2 days before the first blog post.
I haven’t left the house/yard since returning from dinner Friday 3/13.
On this day, I left for work and was dreading Friday the 13th at a middle school. We had already had RAIN (you know that wet stuff that occasionally falls from the sky in Southern California), FULL MOON, and DAYLIGHT SAVINGS! What more could happen??
Friday after lunch, everything changed. The county was shuttering all school at the end of the day until 4/6. By Tuesday morning, the closure was extended to 4/30. John found out his school was closing until 4/6 on the same day I found out 4/30. It wasn’t until Thursday that John received confirmation that his school was closing until 5/1.
I’m not sure if this is a positive or not, but we are not expected to provide specific lessons to the students. Because some students do not have internet access, we can’t assign anything we expect to have completed and turned in digitally. Some students have started the “assignments” I posted but not a majority by any stretch of the imagination. The district also feels this is a stressful enough event without adding parents trying to guide/teach as well.
So now we have to “entertain” ourselves for at least 6 weeks at home. Today we:
- did some yard work, we were out there for 2 hours! It was a beautiful morning here.
- contemplated what we will do for student semester grades IF we don’t return.
- Barb thinks we won’t go back
- John is optimistic we will.
- Can we just give a grade based on what they earned just before shutdown?
- Can the state just say “No Grades”? They’ve already said no state testing.
- AP tests will still be given during May. Not sure how this will look and how valid the test scores will be.
- completed another puzzle – we purchased this in Yellowstone National Park. It is OBVIOUS someone purchased it before us and returned it with broken pieces. Glad all the pieces were included. Would have been really annoyed if it had missing pieces.
- started another puzzle
Decluttering the Stuff 
I have to teach kindergarten remotely. Not even sure how that’s going to work, and quite frankly I’m overwhelmed by it all. We go live Wednesday.
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OMG! How do you do that?? I can’t imagine trying to do this with 7th grade students.
I think every teacher is feeling overwhelmed. While none of us want our students to suffer this loss of educational time, something has to give. Is your school/district also saying you must continue remote teaching, can’t count anything they don’t do against them, and by the way students, what your teacher assigns is optional?
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No, we are able to shift to teaching via video school. Now that we are up and running it’s going well. We have a packet exchange once a week and being careful to keep our distance.
The mute all button has been super helpful in zoom. They are doing really well overall!
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Good News! I’m still afraid to do it. I think I’ll try it first with my AVID class before I try it with everyone else. I’ve had them for 2 years as a group, so they are less inclined to do really stupid stuff with me.
We aren’t doing packets. No papers are allowed to be exchanged to protect everyone.
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I love puzzles but haven’t had time to do them in years!
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I usually reserve puzzle making to summer vacation. It’s weird having time to complete so many.
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Yeah, I think this year should be declared a wash and start over again in the fall.
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It’s not like anyone is going to forget the pandemic of 2020. This is stressful enough. How has remote learning gone in your house?
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Umm, I think she logged onto iready twice?? Oh well…
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Twice more than many of my students!
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