Thursday and Friday’s have become major work days.  Between meetings with colleagues, students, grading, generating distant learning “optional” review lessons, and tallying which students submitted work or looked at your webpage for admin, and doing the write up admin wants, there is little time for anything else on these days.  The other days of the week are a little more relaxed with few meetings, etc.

I wish there was a way to encourage student learning when everything they do is optional.  I really wish the district hadn’t put that out there.  Of course, some teachers told their students about the optional status – what were they thinking?? Wouldn’t it be better for more of the students to stay engages intellectually?

John’s district is still having them do their official weekly PLC (professional learning community) meetings virtually and submit the meeting minutes.  Thankfully, my district said all of these type of meetings are cancelled and my union negotiated a weekly limit on meetings – I have never been so happy!  I’m on the District Science Committee as a curriculum writer and was having major anxiety that they were going to have us work on making distant learning modules for every one.  My school site has an awesome 7th grade science team.  We share all the time BUT making a few of us modify everything we’ve worked on over the years for distant learning would be unreasonable.  Again, thankfully, my district realized this is a unique situation that would need more time and thought to implement.

I’m assuming we are not going back on August 6th with normalcy.  I was pondering the 6 feet social distancing rule and the seating arrangement in my room.  That would allow me to have 9 students in the room at a time.  How would I sanitize desks during passing period?  What about lab equipment?  Goggles?  Pencil sharpener?   How do you do group work?  It would also prevent me from: wandering the aisles while they work; greeting them at the door; having “private” conversations with individual students; and working individually with them.  How will the district handle this??  WHO KNOWS!  Another reason I am so glad I’m not an administrator!

Have any teachers out there heard their district plans yet for reopening school?

And now a meme:  Only thing missing are face masks!!  Dated picture but …