Decompressing and Errands (Journaling during Covid-19 - Entry 12)

Image of Black & Red crepe
from the Crêpe Delicious site

(See this post for some background if this is the first entry you're reading in this series.)

The Core Questions

1. What did you do today?

• Took a long time to get out of bed - I always need extra time to lie in the first weekend after school starts!
• Chiropractor appointment
• Took my parents to vote in the advance polls for our federal election 
• More lazy/snuggle time
• Adjusted the pressure in my tires (finally got the warning light about this to turn off again)
• Went to the mall for shower gift wrapping supplies; saw a favourite clothing store and remembered I also needed to do a tiny bit of back-to-school shopping, too (grabbed a sweater and a new pair of jeans)
• Also grabbed a crepe at a favourite spot at the mall for the first time in aaaaages (the last time I popped by, it was closed, and even the Cinnabon next to it was only dealing with delivery orders and not walk-ins)
• Bought indoor shoes for my youngest child to take to school, then more wrapping supplies elsewhere
• Wrapped gift for shower tomorrow
• Watched some Doctor Who with hubby
• Printed off supplies to teach Sunday school tomorrow for the first time since March 2020.

2. What did you enjoy?

Definitely the strawberry-and-Nutella crepe. I ordered one delivered from a spot in this chain at some point over the last several months, but that's no comparison to getting it hot and fresh from the shop.

3. What did you find difficult?

Getting used to working and being productive again, heh :). I know, most non-teachers do not get the summer off, so this is not a complaint so much, but knowing that I have to prepare lessons for 5 days next week (remember I only had to teach my classes 1 day this past week) as well as my Sunday school lesson for tomorrow is definitely an adjustment.

4. What has changed?

The mall was busier today that I expected. It actually almost felt like pre-covid times -- not quite that busy, but not nearly as deserted as I've seen indoor spaces a lot over the course of the pandemic. I had to sanitize my hands on my way into the clothing store, and there was no seat in the fitting room. There were also no tables to sit at to eat my crepe (and the bench seats that were still in that area had too many people on them already for me to sit down without violating distancing). There were no more card and gift wrap stores in the mall - I was able to find most of what I needed at Walmart, but it felt like a loss to not have Hallmark and Carlton Cards available. The shoe store closed much earlier than I expected - I found shoes for my youngest, then just barely started to browse considering getting boots for my Halloween costume when I was told the tills would be closing in 5 minutes. I am used to many stores being open late evening, but that was not the case for this one.

The Stretch Questions

5. What are you grateful for?

New pants that fit and still look good even though I put some weight on this summer!

Also that the modified semester timetable means I only have one course to prepare for for this coming week, and hopefully I'll be able to use the "extra" prep time to get ready for next week, too.

6. Which changes do you want to keep?

Feeling more confident in car care.

7. What are you scared of?

"Scared" is overstating it, but it has been a long time since our Sunday school was open and first days are always a little nervous. Also nerves about having to put together a plan for my first full week of the modified semester timetable that will adequately get my students through the material I need to cover with them while still not stressing them out too much and considering all our mental health and also trying to incorporated things I want to like properly getting to know my students' strengths and needs and bringing in some authentic learning and moving them deeper along Bloom's taxonomy over the course of the week. Bit of stretching going on here and I hope I can grow to meet it.

8. What has stayed the same?

Strawberries and Nutella are an amazing combination.

9. When did you last laugh?

Pretty sure it was today, but I'm not sure what it was about.

Preparing to Enter the Jungle of Modified Semesters - Flipped Pandemic Teaching in Toronto

"Jungle" flickr photo by Anders Adermark
https://www.flickr.com/photos/cmbellman/2263652352/
Shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) licence

First, some context.

I teach high school math and science (chemistry and grade 9 science this year) in the Toronto District School Board in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I'm not going to get into all the details of our COVID-19 situation, but I'll share some of the factors that affect my practice:

• We still have to wear masks indoors in schools, though we can remove them as needed to eat or drink, and generally when we are on our own in a classroom/prep room/department office/etc. We can remove them when we are outside, so long as we can keep a 2 metre (about 6 foot) distance from others.
• None of the classrooms I teach in have windows, though those who have windows are supposed to have them open. All classrooms have an air filtration unit in them (these are to be run on high for an hour when we first arrive for the day, and then we can turn them down to a lower setting for the rest of the school day, turning them off when we leave).
• Desks are to be spaced apart as much as possible, not placed in groups/circles/etc., all facing the front. My largest class this semester has 32 students, and even though a few of them are virtual, this still means that I cannot maintain the 2 metre (about 6 foot) distancing that was the rule last school year.
• Group work is still allowed, as well as labs; any equipment that has to be shared during the same class is supposed to be sanitized before another person handles it.

The instructional model in my school board this time around is "simultaneous learning." This means that most of my students are attending my classes in person this semester, but I have at least one student attending virtually in each class, as my school board does not have a dedicated separate virtual school this year for those who have opted for virtual learning. I am required to teach my face-to-face and my virtual students at the same time (that is, simultaneously, hence the name of the model), which I did not experience last year (not all my colleagues were so lucky last year). I will basically be streaming my class through a Google Meet, paying attention to my virtual students using the chat (and, if they are gracious, the students' microphones and cameras, though they are not required to turn those on in my district), and I will have to determine ways to have my virtual students involved and assessed even as I try to get my face-to-face students back to hands-on learning. Some of my students have already asked me through our virtual classrooms how that will work -- I'm not fully sure how it will myself, yet, but I've told them we'll manage it together :)!

Modified semesters and our first day(s)

In an attempt to reduce the exposure of students to others, our high schools are running "modified semesters," where students take two classes in one week (one class in the morning, another in the afternoon), and then two different classes the next week, then switch back and forth from week to week between these two sets of classes. Here's a more visual explanation of that:

There will be no exams this year, although we will still have a division in the marks of 70% for term work and 30% for end-of-course summatives.

For various reasons, even though we normally start classes the first day after Labour Day (which is the first Monday in September), this year our students' school year started on Thursday, September 9. At my school that was turned into a grade-9-only day, where the students got to have a half-day getting their feet wet in the building, so to speak, running some icebreakers, hearing a video from admin and student leadership groups about the expectations put on them and the Code of Conduct, getting a tour of the school, and picking up some free school swag. I don't teach grade 9 students until semester 2 this year, so my role was solely to take one group of students on a tour of the school with another teacher.

My first day with some of my own students will be Friday, September 10, which will be a regular Week 1 schedule. I will have two courses that day (grade 12 Foundations of College Mathematics and grade 11 Chemistry). Next week (starting Sept. 13) will be a regular Week 2 schedule, so the students I meet for one day on Sept. 10 will not see me again until we return to a Week 1 schedule on Sept. 20. I have posted some welcoming announcements (including a 4-minute video I recorded of me talking to them) in our virtual classroom spaces, but it's definitely an odd start to the year, and a disjointed way of meeting everyone. (I wonder how long it will take me to learn names this year?) In Week 2 I only teach one course, and it is another group of grade 11 Chemistry students, so I will repeat with them the material I did with my Week 1 Chemistry class but of course adjust it to meet that class' needs. This is definitely a good year to have two sections of the same course in a semester to cut down on the overall prep, because there is enough to think about just teaching these two courses.

Guiding/overall thoughts for how to manage

The one-week-on, one-week-off schedule, coupled with a ban on assigning homework to students for their weeks "off" from our courses, suggests that students may have a hard time bringing information from one week forward to the next time they have the course. I need to divide the course material into self-contained one-week "chunks" that can be managed somewhat independently of each other. This is easier in one of my courses than the other: there are very large differences between teaching the trigonometry unit and the personal finance unit of the grade 12 Foundations of College Mathematics course, but in the grade 11 Chemistry course, four of the units really go through a progression of building on each other. I will have to build in ways of helping my Chemistry students recall and draw forward concepts as we go through those units.

We have been reminded that students may be feeling a lot of anxiety about doing school, as some of these students have never had a regular high school year or have a very fuzzy recollection of what things were like before the pandemic shutdown that started in March 2020 here. Our school board has provided a resource to us with a lot of mindfulness and stress management activities, including suggested activities for each date. I will be using several of these. Student voice and choice, and culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy, is also all supposed to play a larger role in our classes this year than ever before. Alongside that, I want to use this unusual schedule as an opportunity to explore how we can get the students more involved in some authentic learning, hopefully even bringing in connections to the community around us. My hope is that the more hands-on and "real" I can make the concepts to the students, the better it will stick with them, and the less it will stress them out.

How will I incorporate flipping into all this? I would have liked to ask the students to do an Edpuzzle with some embedded diagnostic questions about the coming mini-unit the weekend before each learning block, but every time I've asked for clarification about the homework policy this year I've been given the impression that that will not be allowed. Instead, I am considering having students do their final evaluation of each mini-unit in the first half of Friday classes, take a small mindfulness break, and then do the diagnostic for the material they will see in the next block. That will also give me time to plan ahead during their week "off" from that course to address any misconceptions or gaps that come up related to that unit. I will also likely use flipping strategies to assign video lesson homework in the first half of the week, using the in-class time to dive deeper into concepts and learn how to apply them in practice, moving them along Bloom's taxonomy over the course of the week. We're also moving away from tests this year in my science department, and that may also be a good idea with the clientele that take this particular math course, so something more authentic-like or analysis of a portfolio might be a good end-of-unit assessment each week. I'd also like to incorporate some of the "in-flip" model by having helping videos students can access during class time if needed to move them along in the unit.

The plan for Day One

Here's my plan for the first day of my two Week 1 courses tomorrow:

1. General welcome, attendance, and helping everyone understand how the "simultaneous" model will work (getting the in-person kids to wave to the virtual kids, and help them understand who's doing what)
2. Mindfulness activity: "Three Good Things" - and have them answer on a Padlet at least one of their responses
3. General course overview (with a more detailed trek through the course outline planned for the next time we meet)
4. The same 30-minute video from our admin and student leadership teams that the grade 9s saw Sept. 9 (Code of Conduct, who's who, getting involved in clubs, etc.)
5. Mindfulness activity: "Looking Back, Looking Ahead" (not including the Extension)
6. Going for a walk outside to our back field (including a mask break), relaxing a bit, and discussing how math/chemistry is involved in the world around us
7. If there is time after that, I have an activity planned for the math class using cubilinks (real or virtual), and the chemistry class will go over WHMIS 2015 symbols and play a related Kahoot.

I told some of the grade 9s today that one of the keys for our mental health this year is going to be being able to be flexible in the face of the disorganization and uncertainty we're facing, and trying not to get too tense about it. It feels a bit like entering a jungle as we start this new school year still facing upheaval caused by COVID-19, but we will all manage it together. Welcome to the jungle. May it be more fun and games and less fever and disease, by the grace of God.

Here we go.

A day of connections online and off (Journaling during Covid-19 - Entry 11)

That new gi feeling :)

(See this post for some background if this is the first entry you're reading in this series.)

The Core Questions

1. What did you do today?

• evidently, spent some time this morning writing a blog entry about yesterday's activities.
• today's class was a shortened one due to a staff meeting; focused on helping the students get a little more prepared for tomorrow's chapter test.
• staff meeting (fully virtual) - since none of my students turn on their cameras during class, it's always good to see many staff who do turn theirs on for these meetings so we can have some semblance of connection even if many of us are just silently reacting to things said by others. Reminder to self: I have to email everyone how to bring up the attendance report I'm pretty sure is available for Zoom meetings scheduled within Brightspace. (At one point the meeting chair said, "Joy has volunteered to..." and I had to comment to myself that of course I did...I seem to be always volunteering for things, although I have been getting better at not jumping at everything that seems to be calling my name.)
• one item worth noting from our discussion was whether to give subject awards to top mark earners this time around, and if so, whether to put those who'd done some face-to-face classes in the same awards pool, so to speak, as those who'd done the course fully virtually, given the differing sets of circumstances faced by each group...it was a somewhat controversial discussion, and a final decision was not made. Definitely an issue indicative of our "unprecedented times."
• chiropractor appointment
• drove to the still-shut-down gym to pick up my gear order from the gym owner and head coach. It was good to see and chat with him again, and I got to wave to someone else I saw biking in to get his gear as I drove away, too. I look forward to the day the gym will reopen and I'll get to actually put the gear I got today to a real test.
• came home to discover hubby had finished making a really good batch of chicken noodle soup, mmmm. (I also ate the last piece of my most recent cake today.)
• attended a meeting of several Flipped Learning Network superstars to work on putting together this summer's flipped learning conference. Details aren't being shared yet, but stay tuned!

2. What did you enjoy?

I was honoured to be invited to the flipped learning conference planning meeting despite not being a board member. I am happy I was able to put an idea out that looks like it will be incorporated into the conference, and I am awed by a task that has been handed to me (though shared by a couple others). It struck me as we chatted that I have not talked in person with some of these people since I met them at FlipTech 2018, while some I have only ever had conversations with via Zoom and Twitter (and some only via Twitter, so not even with a face/voice connection), and yet getting together in a meeting with these folks felt so natural even to this sometimes-socially-awkward introvert that I felt ready to jump straight into planning with them with no need for catch-up small talk or re-establishing our relationship. The "flip" community is real, y'all, and I thank those of you who are in it for making me feel so included.

3. What did you find difficult?

At times, trying to parent a 4-year-old and manage all I was trying to accomplish at the same time. I hate feeling like I'm neglecting him, and regret times I have wrongly seen him as an inconvenience and hindrance to my work.

4. What has changed?

Again, not sharing detail yet, but FlipTech 2021 necessarily needs to be different from the conferences we were able to have in person while also not being as overwhelming as FlipTech 2020. Don't get me wrong, FlipTech 2020 was amazing, but it was also a LOT of work for those who organized it (mainly Matthew Moore and Andrew Swan), and it would be unsustainable to try to pull that off every year...especially since some people are just "done" right now and rightly need the time and mental space this summer to recover rather than attend (let alone help run) a conference as long as last year's was.

The Stretch Questions

5. What are you grateful for?

I think I have to put another shout-out to the flip community here. It still boggles my mind that these awesome educators find value in my little contributions, but so thankful for their encouragement and inspirational leadership.

6. Which changes do you want to keep?

Seeing a couple of people from the gym again as well as getting to interact in some way other than the Twitter #flipclasschat with other "flippers" reminded me again that despite my introversion I do really like connecting with a variety of communities of people. I am not a social butterfly, but I do welcome the gradual return to reintegrating with these communities of shared interest and care...as long as I can still retreat back into the blanket cocoon to recharge as needed :).

7. What are you scared of?

We need to change #flipclasschat. It's been a comfortable place to connect with a handful of people from week to week, but it's not really serving the purpose it could. While the change is necessary, I don't yet know what it will look like, and so for now I'm naturally finding that a bit daunting and hope I don't let people down...but given the support I've already mentioned is present in the community, I don't think I really need to fear that; we will see what we can do with it, but I don't have to consider it to be a matter of high personal stakes.

8. What has stayed the same?

My chiropractor is not only skilled at what she does; she has also been a good listener as I've shared things that have stressed me out, and I'm glad to have her friendship, support, and positivity in my life.

9. When did you last laugh?

I don't know if it was the last thing that made me laugh, but the last thing I remember was when the other FlipTech planners tried to get me (the only Canadian-living-in-Canada in the group this evening) to say "about." I don't bother trying to say something for pronunciation analysis because thinking about how something is pronounced can make it come out differently than usual. They'll just have to go back over the recording of the meeting and extract every time I said it naturally for themselves :D.

Have a good night, all!

Cheers,

Joy

Pulse Check (Journaling during Covid-19 - Entry 10 - for Mon., May 17, 2021)

"Pulse" flickr photo by Eliot Phillips
https://www.flickr.com/photos/hackaday/6633061255/
shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC 2.0) license

(See this post for some background if this is the first entry you're reading in this series.)

This will end up posting on Tuesday, but it's mostly about Monday.

The Core Questions

1. What did you do today?

• a common breakfast for me lately has been a hard-boiled egg or two, my mocha, and a croissant. There are changes I'd like to make to this, sure, but it's what's working for me right now. (I've always appreciated PrecisionNutrition's encouragement not to overwhelm yourself trying to make every meal "perfect" but rather just looking at how you can continually move things up the "better" scale; right now, making sure I include protein in the morning is helpful. Also, I really hate that I feel the need to include sentences here justifying my food choices when I could be doing far worse.)
• today's PrecisionNutrition lesson was about a brand-new 2-week habit that wasn't in the program the last 2 times I went through it: finding your Bare A** Minimums (BAMs) when it comes to movement on even your crappiest of days. The concept has been in the PN program before, but this is the first time that considering it has been one of the 2-week habits. It's a helpful one for me to consider because various issues (physical and otherwise) can seriously drain my energy at times; it can feel really difficult during those times to extricate myself from the blanket cocoon and do some movement even though I know that doing so would probably help to increase that energy. I dug out my list of BJJ-related movements I'd like to make part of a regular mobility workout and will be working more with that list Tuesday.
• anxious frittering (though it did get me my "space at the table" back again - keeping that space clear will just be an ongoing thing I have to do, like some people make their beds daily) and social media-ing; set some Keep Calm tea brewing, set a timer for when it would be ready, and forgot about it for the rest of the day anyway, oops!
• taught afternoon class: I focused a good chunk of today on just checking how the students are doing, since it's harder to take the "pulse" of a class when you're not with them in person seeing who's sitting slumped and who's babbling away energetically with friends (though a very small portion of that does come through in the chat). After our usual Classcraft time, I gave them a Google Form survey to do for a few minutes (see pictures below; here's a link that will make a copy of the form for you, if you'd like to use or tweak it yourself). I showed them the graphs showing their answers to the questions with rating scales (also shown below) and commented on each briefly; I also opened the spreadsheet of their responses and copied and pasted their answers to the "word cloud" question into a word cloud generator and showed the students the results. ("Happy" was the largest word, but followed by "tired" and "stressful." "Happy" only had 6 mentions out of 24 students, so it being the largest didn't mean the majority of the students felt that way, but that did also seem backed up by the "how are you doing?" graph, so I guess that's encouraging.) I've also included an image below showing a selection of the answers they gave to the "word cloud" question; I will not share the answers they gave to the "private" questions, except to say that one students responded to the question about what he needed with "uh I could use a coffee right now but i'm good" :). We also talked some about chemical equations -- some really basic stuff they should know from grade 10 (like where the reactants are vs. the products in the equation, which elements do and don't get subscripts when they appear on their own vs. in compounds -- and for crying out loud don't put an equal sign in the equation because it is an equation but not an equality because hydrogen and oxygen aren't "equal to"/the same as water they just react to product it arggggh), but which I always find I have to emphasize at the start of this unit because at least a handful of students will still need the reminders.

Results:

(rating scale was from "Awful :(" to "Awesome :D")

(rating scale was from "Not at all" to "Severely")

• recorded as part of a team for a podcast (an upcoming episode of Flipped Learning Worldwide)
• grabbed Starbucks and went for a drive blasting some music (this is where going for a walk or doing a workout while also listening to music or an audiobook could have produced the same -- or better -- emotional effect while also giving my body some movement, but that's a takeaway to learn from for today maybe)
• ukulele time
• put together questions for the day's Twitter #flipclasschat , then moderated that chat
• got the kids to sleep...then dealt after a while with Secondborn waking up with one of the nosebleeds he gets occasionally :(.

2. What did you enjoy?

• receiving an email that started with this:

• seeing several students report that they're happy or at least doing ok, even if they are stressed
• recording the podcast went well -- even though we had a smaller panel than usual (only 2 of us besides the host, when we normally have 4), the conversation flowed really well. It was amazing to see how many good points we got out in the 15 minutes or so we recorded, and that's part of why I love being connected with other educators around the world -- I always come away inspired by at least one thing that someone said.
• reconnecting with some of my "flipfriends" during the #flipclasschat . It always makes me a little anxious when I put out the initial welcome and intro question and I don't seem to get any response for a few minutes, but once people started checking in we had a good conversation (the others involved seemed to appreciate it, too).

3. What did you find difficult?

I had a really hard time getting myself into a working mindset today. I had a short burst of readiness at one point during my quiet time, but it didn't keep up. In the past, when I've had a morning where I just wasn't in the mood to do my job, I've found that getting up in front of students and falling into my "teacher persona" has often swept those feelings away. (My "teacher persona" is not a fake; it's just a different aspect of me than those who aren't my students usually get to see, and her focus on "doing the thing" changes the emotional focus as well.) I did experience that to a certain extent today, but since I didn't teach until the afternoon today, I found the first part of the day very unfocused, and I didn't get done the things I would have liked to to help stay on top of things (like getting in both some movement and some marking). Not being in the school building makes this difficult, too...and I'm sure it being Monday doesn't help, either.

4. What has changed?

I often forget to stop and appreciate the ways in which I have grown in various areas of my life, yet I made question 1 for the #flipclasschat one asking attendees to reflect on how they'd grown in their flipped classroom practice. I'm patting myself on the back for recognizing my own progress for a change.

Kitchen time (Journaling during Covid-19 - Entry 9 - for Sat., May 15, 2021)

Got the sandals out for the first time this calendar year, 
and blinded the neighbours by letting my pasty white legs
out for the first time this year, too :)

(See this post for some background if this is the first entry you're reading in this series.)

This will end up posting on my Sunday, but it's mostly about Saturday's events.

The Core Questions

1. What did you do today?

• homemade mocha (cheaper & fewer calories) + quiet time...the rest of the family was up before I was, so "quiet" is relative, but was still able to get some more or less undisturbed focus time.
• eventually did a coffee/snack run for the rest of the household, and was amazed by the gorgeous warmth and sun out today
• finally cleaned up the stuff I'd used to make the last cake Monday evening/Tuesday morning (I mentioned it's my most labour-intensive cake -- it's also probably the one that sees me dirty the most items) and cleaned up the kitchen some again (including re-establishing my "space at the table" mentioned in a previous blog post)
• shared a late lunch with my youngest; he said it was the "best day ever" because he really liked this "breftest" (it was chili and a bun from Tim Horton's)
• my husband made chicken stock!
• gave in to a McDonald's whim for dinner, though the kids were out with a friend when I arrived home with it (after the shopping trip mentioned in the next point). When they returned, I happened to have left their meals on the kitchen table, and they sat and ate them there unprompted, which was interesting (still working on dining routines for our family).
• shopped for and baked another cake -- this one involves cocoa, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and something called "espresso powder." I'd thought at first this last ingredient was just instant espresso, but it turns out it's not, nor is it just espresso grounds; you can apparently buy this powder if you search hard, but it's also apparently really expensive, and you're supposed to be able to make your own by baking/toasting your own (used or fresh) espresso grounds and then grinding them super fine. I used fresh rather than used; despite using the finest setting on my grinder, I don't think I got them as fine as they were supposed to be, but I think what I did end up with is just fine for today's espresso buttercream. The cake has been frosted and is chilling; there is still another set of steps to carry out, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Also, again, since it's been a few days, a few highlights of things that have happened between today and my previous post:

• I became a grand-aunt again! My oldest niece had a second daughter this past Tuesday. (I did blog on Tuesday but couldn't talk about that at the time.)
• taught a mostly-full afternoon class on Wednesday and a mostly-full morning class on Friday; Thursday morning, 14 of my students were absent -- one because he's always absent and one for an appointment, but most of the absences were due to Eid. I did go ahead with some notes, but also included some time for practice and taking it up and generally tried to keep it so catching up would not be too onerous. The students also had a lab due Friday but I did tell them if they needed more time it was fine to get it in to me today sometime, too.
• I recalled that I did the notes for this part of the course differently (and perhaps more clearly) during the coronashutdown of school at this time last year, but I couldn't find them -- but I did find the videos I'd made for my students at the time, and posted them for this year's students to check out in case they found them helpful. Friday morning I also made an idea web for the students on the fly under the document camera trying to summarize part of the chapter better.
• I had a sore neck a few days and saw my chiro about it; I also woke up with back issues the morning of that appointment so got those dealt with as well (good timing, body!).

2. What did you enjoy?

• eating that "breftest" (late lunch) with my youngest and hearing his enjoyment of the shared time/chili
• receiving a message via Facebook this morning from someone from my church whose son I'd taught and helped adjust to various circumstance changes back in quadmester 1 -- she shared a passage that she had prayed for me that day, and some encouraging wishes for my day <3
• such a small thing, but coming into the kitchen and being pleasantly surprised that I had actually left the French press clean when I thought I'd have to clean out old coffee grounds before making coffee this morning
• connecting on Twitter with educators from elsewhere over a shared appreciation of #nerdytshirtfriday
• having a new cake recipe turn out (no, it's not completely finished, but I can already tell that my experiment of turning a recipe for a 6" cake into a full-size cake has worked out, and what I have sampled of the cake trimmings and frosting has made me happy)
• hearing my two boys play some make-believe together after dinner, mostly cooperating with each other and showing off their imaginations

3. What did you find difficult?

Today was okay. I did find it hard to be motivated for school the few days before it. In the past, when I've just not been "feeling it" on a given school morning, I've found that feeling tends to go away when I get up in front of my students and just start "doing the thing." I'm finding that's not usually happening right now, because starting up a Google Meet or Zoom conference from home is not nearly the same as standing up at the blackboard/etc. and seeing everyone's eyes on you and being able to take in their realness. I didn't do any school-related work today partly because of the same lack of motivation (and partly because I really want to get this cake done), but I'll get back to it tomorrow.

Someone also said the stress I feel about some work-related issues is almost PTSD-like -- I think PTSD is a very serious and hard thing for those who have it, so I don't want to make light of it by saying what I experience is anywhere near that, but I completely get why she said that and do agree with it in a small way.

4. What has changed?

We found out this week (was it just yesterday?) that our school board is planning for us to do "quadmesters" again next school year, since there will probably still be coronavirus-related concerns to consider. This system has led to feelings of burnout by so many of our teachers here (myself included), and the same mother who told me about praying about me this morning mentioned how hard quadmesters are when students have two heavy courses at the same time. I just don't know how we're going to do it again, and dearly hope the daily/weekly schedule at least will be adjusted to something more manageable to us all.

Have a good night, all.

Cheers,

Joy

multa et varia; many and varied (Journaling during Covid-19 - Entry 8)

I made this :). (It's a carrot cake.)

(See this post for some background if this is the first entry you're reading in this series.)

This one is a catch-up post, and it is going to get long, rambly, and random. I consider posts in this series to be mostly for myself, but some people have seemed to like reading at least a couple of them, so I'll keep going with them...but sort-of apologies for the length on this one.

The Core Questions

1. What did you do today?

Today was mostly a necessary wind-down from some recent busyness.

• mocha courtesy of hubby's coffee run (I had priorities other than making my own today)
• made cream cheese icing; levelled, frosted, and decorated the 3-layer carrot cake I baked yesterday evening
• delivered said cake to a colleague whose birthday is today
• picked up another fancy coffee (and snack) on the way home (imagine, I used to hate coffee...)
• helped my husband with some questions related to the census we had to do for the government in Canada today
• postponed drop-in meeting with my credit recovery students
• taught afternoon class (nomenclature more complex than in grade 9 & 10)
• recorded as part of a team for a podcast (an upcoming episode of The Mustard Seed)
• went for a drive (offered to take Secondborn, but he wasn't interested when I warned him I wasn't buying anything)
• made tea (raspberry oolong) and allowed myself to sit doing nothing until it was gone
• helped get dinner sorted
• lots of social media on and off all day
• now I'm blogging for the first time in days...

...so since I haven't blogged for a few days, allow me to add some of What's been going on lately?, not strictly in chronological order:

• recorded as part of a team for a different podcast (an upcoming episode of Flipped Learning Worldwide)
• I signed up for two Additional Qualification courses (more on that below)
• big for me since timely marking has not been my strong suit: over Wednesday and Thursday I recorded in my Markbook web platform all remaining items that had been marked but not recorded, and returned electronically to students all items that had been due to that point (with some comments where most helpful/appropriate). I also wrote the students' overall marks and maybe a symbolized notation about any particular issues beside their names on one of my class lists to help me recall a better idea of how they're all doing without logging into this web platform all the time. This meant that I had no marking to do this past weekend unless I wanted to look at work turned in early or from my credit recovery students (nope, I didn't).
• again on the Markbook platform, started trying a section I haven't used before to try to track learning skills (in this case, seeing if I can use the Collaboration skill to monitor their chat participation in part). Unfortunately, I don't think it's going to do what I want it to/what I've seen a previous platform perhaps do (admittedly, I didn't play with it much on that platform when I had access to it, either).
• in the afternoon class Thursday, we reviewed chapter 1 for the test that was coming up Monday, and I gave some guidance on assignments; Friday morning we had class sessions on ionic and molecular compounds (how and why they form, how to represent them/come up with their structures, and, for ionic compounds, what their properties are -- we'll come back to the properties of molecular compounds after we look at bond polarity and molecular polarity).
• had Internet issues about half an hour before students were to write the test online Monday, which interfered with some "tweaking" I'd wanted to do to it, but the issues did resolve in time and I was able to make one change I wanted to put in place (and shrugged off the rest as not critical)
• now that the students have written that test, submitted an assignment that was due Monday, and submitted another that was due early this morning, I have marking to catch up on again.
• the robotics club put a really sweet post on their Instagram for the end of teacher appreciation week, thanking me for being their staff sponsor and mentor, awww! I may have choked up a bit seeing comments and "likes" from some of the students I've now worked with for a few years, and even those who have since graduated but are still following the Instagram account.
• picked Mom up from a medical appointment and took her for a short grocery trip
• we've had a drippy kitchen faucet for a while. I learned how to change the washers in faucets from my dad growing up and have been quite proud to apply that minor skill in the past, but this is a washerless single-handle tap and outside my experience. My husband took it apart when he had a day off, and we learned more about what makes it tick. Retail deemed non-essential is closed for in-store shopping, but we were able to place an order for curbside pickup of what we thought the right parts might be to fix our problem. After I picked up the parts the next day, hubby was able to fix the recent dripping issue. There's another issue we've had with the tap basically since we moved in that we haven't yet resolved, but the dripping has been driving me nuts lately and I consider its fixing to be part of my Mother's Day present!
• also received a card from Secondborn on Thursday as his teacher had led them through making them and he wanted to give it to me right away / didn't know to keep it to himself until Sunday.
• had a dream early Saturday morning that I was at a jiu jitsu practice event; later than morning (when I was awake!), my gym owner and head coach made a post asking if anyone wanted to purchase gear to help support the gym (which has had to close a lot over the last year due to covid regulations) -- I took this coincidence as a sign and ordered some :). Later that day, between spurts of light rain, I set up my jiu jitsu practice mat in the backyard and the kids and I did a wee bit of exercise together. I learned that trying to run laps forward and sideways around my backyard is not the easiest experience -- the ground is a lot more uneven than I'd thought -- but we had some fun, and Firstborn and I went through some skills from some videos my gym has put out as well as some other things we could remember from our BJJ classes. The backyard is now my fight club ;).
• had a massage Saturday, followed by playing Dungeons & Dragons online with friends
• church online; it was Mother's Day, but hubby was on the A.V. team at church, but the kids thankfully ended up being pretty cooperative so not having the morning "off" for Mom's Day was fine; hubby was going to order some Cora's breakfast for myself and the kids, but they weren't open by the time he had to leave home in the morning, so I took care of the ordering, but I never mind an excuse for Cora's :). (He also got me a potted plant.)
• grocery trip, partly for cake ingredients
• curbside pickup order for cardboard cake bases and boxes (given that cake-baking has become my new thing over the last year, I figure it's time to start keeping some of these supplies on hand rather than having to pick them up each time like I had to for this week's cake)
• ordered my mom's Mother's Day gift; picked it up via curbside pickup; took hubby and the kids to deliver that and my mother-in-law's gift 
• more ukulele practice...and my church's worship director has asked if I want to play with the worship team sometime, and sent me a couple songs with chords...I'm still very much a beginner, but we'll see...
• at one point, Secondborn was playing around with the electric keyboard, and despite originally telling me he wanted to do that while I played the ukulele, he ended up taking it away from me for "interrupting" his music!
• baked my colleague's cake Monday evening...and admittedly left the kitchen a mess because I didn't have the energy to clean up after myself at the time. (It's my most labour-intensive cake recipe, but I am willing to put in that effort as long as I don't have to make this recipe frequently!) I ended up missing the weekly Twitter #flipclasschat for this, too.

Phew. 

2. What did you enjoy?

In my science department at school, we are all given responsibility for another science colleague's birthday treat. In the past, this has meant baking or buying a cake. When the school closure pushed us all online in March 2020 through the end of that school year, the May birthday of the colleague I was assigned was the first science department birthday that had to be reconsidered...so I baked her a carrot cake anyway and took it to her house. The rest of the department didn't get to share it, but she really enjoyed it! This year, we kept more or less the same people assignments as last school year (adjusted somewhat for people going on or returning from leave), but we made a rule during the weeks we were in the building that the birthday treats this year had to be individually-wrapped items instead, like cupcakes or Jos Louis or donuts. Well, guess what, we're back to fully virtual school, so I didn't have to abide by that -- hence the baking of the exact same cake recipe yesterday evening and delivering it to my person today. Her kids came to see who was visiting when she opened the door, and one of them asked me, "Are you the one who made the carrot cake?" Apparently he loved last year's cake and keeps talking about it. Compliments and thanks from adults are great, too, don't get me wrong, but children can be bluntly honest when they don't like something, so I will absolutely take this as a glowing review!

3. What did you find difficult?

I found myself feeling somewhat tired and drained from about noon onward. I think it's because of the busy busyness of the last few days -- not that parts of it weren't enjoyable and fun, but the number of trips for errands and getting things for people and delivering things to people and the amount of being responsible to other people over the last few days has been a bit, shall we say, concentrated. I let myself off the hook today for a lot, but I know I have to get back to putting in small, consistent efforts tomorrow in various areas to avoid bigger problems later. I didn't feel like I contributed as well to today's podcast recording as I wanted to, but I know that doesn't necessarily mean there wasn't something useful shared (we do have a pretty awesome editor!).

4. What has changed?

I knew from an early age that I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up, but the specifics of that vision have changed in various ways over the years. When I was in high school, I pictured myself eventually working with those with developmental disabilities, and saw that as part of my calling. However, despite being over 13 years into my full-time teaching career, I am still not currently working in that area; I have seen a couple of postings that seem to indicate I have the bare minimum certification requirement (a Special Education Part 1 qualification), but I don't have anywhere the knowledge or experience that would give me a successful interview for such a position, let alone success in the role itself. I did that Part 1 qualification back in the summer of 2014, but I have kept putting off getting more training of any kind in the summers because of feeling a need to recover from the school year or due to other priorities (I did do some Flipped Learning certification work more recently than that)...plus I had lost a feel of that original calling and was really more focused on either becoming a better teacher of my academic courses or maybe even moving upward into administration (not really serious about that last bit -- I was very frustrated with particular people when I first considered it several years ago -- but it's been an idea I've toyed with occasionally). Within the last little while, I've really considered whether some of the frustrations I've been experiencing in my professional life are to do in part with not pursuing the path I'd seen myself going down way back when I felt more calling and purpose. There are frustrations to be found working in special education, of course -- some huge ones! -- but I think it's time I explore again whether that's an area I'd find a more natural fit because that's where I'm supposed to be. I'll be taking Special Education Part 2 through Queen's University (in Kingston, Ontario, though of course the course will be online) June 28 through August 13, and the one-session qualification Teaching Students with Intellectual Needs (Developmental Disability) online through York University (in Toronto, Ontario) August 3 through September 2. Oh, by the way, our last working day of this school year is June 29, and September 2 is also probably going to be the first day school staff are back at schools for the 2021-2022 school year here (though it will be a P. A. day rather than a teaching day), so I really am devoting my whole summer to this. This may all just be some big midlife crisis thinking, but hey, I'm going to run with it for now, because more quality education on special education is never really wasted for any teacher.

Again...phew. I think you can understand that I'm not doing the stretch questions tonight; I hope to return to those in my next entry, which should be shorter due to not having to catch up on a backlog of thoughts (including some big ones!) and things done.

Have a great night, y'all.

Cheers,

Joy

Meet-ception (Journaling during Covid-19 - Entry 7)

"Recursive Picture Taking Recursion" flickr photo by liquoredonlife
https://www.flickr.com/photos/liquoredonlife/3767472525/
shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) license

(See this post for some background if this is the first entry you're reading in this series.)

The Core Questions

1. What did you do today?

• today I only had an afternoon class to teach...and I ended up taking my sweet time getting up and ready for the day this morning
• coffee/mocha, goat cheese on croissant (mmm) and an egg for breakfast
• still premade the kids' lunches, but about 2 hours later than I did the last 2 days
• I had told the students in post yesterday evening I'd mark something this morning, so I finally started that close to noon, and did get it all marked and electronically returned to the students before I had to do today's class prep
• did run out of time to prep something for today's class one way, but I knew I'd be able to handle it another way anyway
• afternoon class: I'm not teaching from the school building right now, so I don't have access to chemicals (and I didn't take any home from the school with me because I didn't want to worry about storage and disposal, plus the amount of time to which we were supposed to limit our pickup visit wasn't long enough to grab all my personal stuff and sort out chemicals). However, last quadmester I did have one face-to-face cohort and one fully-virtual cohort of this class, so I did have a recording of me doing a demonstration of this periodicity lab for that fully-virtual cohort while I had that cohort take notes for their observations on the same lab handout I use with the face-to-face students. After our Classcraft attendance this morning, I basically played that recording for my students (with my own camera turned off so as not to cause confusion with the other "me" on the screen), also having them use that same lab handout, and posing some questions via the chat as we went, and I also told them to chime in with answers when "my previous quadmester self" asked verbal questions of my then-students in the video. I played a recording of a Google Meet within a Google Meet...feels Inception-like (Meet-ception?). I wasn't sure how well this would go, but once we figured out some hiccups with the audio (I ended up having to turn on my laptop's speakers to be heard by my laptop's internal microphone rather than using my headset, since the computer audio wasn't picked up by Google Meet since I wasn't playing a video in another tab), it actually went really well. Several of the students DID respond in chat anytime I or the video asked a question, and they seemed to actually get into it, when I had worried it would be a bit boring. (There was a disappointing thing from a particular student near the end of the class, but I'll talk about that below.) We had just enough time to watch the entire demonstration before it was time to dismiss the class at 3:15pm.
• at 3:45pm I offered a drop-in session to my students who are doing credit recovery of one of my courses from last quadmester. Only one of the three students showed up; she had found the assignment in Google Classroom and found the relevant class recording she was supposed to review to complete part of the assignment, but she hadn't actually gone through the recording yet, so I told her to do so and check in with me at the next drop-in session (which will be Friday). She thanked me and logged off. I'd told the students I'd keep the session open until 4:15pm, but no one else showed up; I'd worked on some other small tasks while waiting, so it wasn't really any loss of time on my part.
• the rest of the day was basically lazy...entertaining myself on my phone, taking Secondborn for a drive, dinner, napping, being lazy in bed, entertaining myself some more, bath time somewhere in there for Secondborn...
• we did do a hot chocolate time with the kids.
• put Secondborn to bed while hubby took care of Firstborn, and now here I am writing a blog!

2. What did you enjoy?

Goat cheese on a croissant.

Hot chocolate time with the kids.

Seeing the students respond well during the virtual lab demo.

3. What did you find difficult?

While I am getting better at the "just do it" of tackling marking (especially as, again, I know it will help avoid the greater stress and self-criticism that results when I end up with a backlog), I do still get anxious about it. I don't really know why this is, and I have talked to therapists about it. Today I noticed at one point I just couldn't get myself to feel full even though it seemed like I was doing a lot of snacking...and then I wondered if it was because I happened to be doing marking at the time. I eventually made myself a real lunch (kicking myself because I thought I'd already done that, but no, I'd only given the kids their lunches and forgotten my own, like some moms do sometimes) and finally did hit a point where I felt satisfied...but was that because I'd finally eaten something decent, because the marking was done, or some combination thereof?

Near the end of the class, there were some unusual noises coming through the Meet. At first I thought they were some part of the recording (maybe a bug with a former student's audio getting picked up)...but my current students and I soon figured out one of my other students was playing a video game and wasn't always muted. This is also the student who normally asks a lot of seemingly obvious questions during other classes, so I am now wondering if his questions are because he's not paying full attention during those class sessions as well. I had to tell my firstborn off yesterday for watching YouTube videos while logged in to his class, too...ugh, this virtual teaching and learning thing definitely has its own struggles over face-to-face school.

4. What has changed?

I certainly had a lot more free time today than I normally would on this date any other school year (not complaining after the unbelievable lack of prep time and high stress level I had last quadmester). I am also not normally this on top of marking at this point (even though only a few things have come in so far), and I think I need to take my chiropractor's advice from yesterday and be proud of that (and also keep it up).

I'm not going to do the stretch questions tonight. Be well, and good night.