Consistency (Journaling during Covid-19 - Entry 6)

I took this photo of this sign at my chiropractor's office.
Sorry it's skewed, but I'm going to fight my perfectionism
and post it anyway :).

(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?

• got Firstborn to eat breakfast at the table, with no screen!
• quiet/prayer time, coffee/mocha and eggs before class (Martin tried to get me a croissant at Tim Horton's, but they gave him a chocolate chip cookie instead?? It was good but didn't fill me the same)
• second day of pre-making part of the kids' lunches as if they were going to face-to-face school
• taught in the morning: notes on electron affinity and electronegativity; showed them how to use Google Sheets to do the graphs required by their assignment to analyze elements from a fictitious planet and propose properties of a "missing" element à la Mendeleev; worked out with them an appropriate date for their first major evaluation given that Eid is next week (I was originally going to do a unit 1 test rather than separate chapter 1 and 2 tests, but it works better to break it up into chapters this time around) and organized what's happening over the next 4 days of class accordingly
• made sure I ate, but did spend lunch taking care of little work things
• marked the review quiz the students wrote last Friday, released their results back to them, and fielded several comments and emails in response
• I've broken up the last unit of the course into an ISU that's done in parts over several weeks and is tied to story content in Classcraft -- part 1 was due yesterday, so I marked that and released the next part of the story to all the students who've done it (only one hasn't). I haven't recorded or released those marks yet, but will do so after I finish marking an additional item tomorrow (something I want to go into the markbook before this).
• chiropractor appointment
• grocery run
• eating All The Things...spring rolls from the grocery store sushi counter, triscuit-like crackers with goat cheese and red pepper jelly, two croissants...well ok I thought I'd indulged more than that but that's enough for now [edit: Secondborn just got me to open the jelly beans, too...and then they turned out to be jelly beans I didn't like very much so I had some Sun Chips, too...]. I did a lot of snacking earlier in the day, too (gummy bears, leftover Easter bunny chocolate...ok, again, I thought I'd had more than that and my leftover sandwich wrap from yesterday but maybe I did better than I thought)
• we caught another mouse in the live trap today, ugh

2. What did you enjoy?

My chiropractor has known me for several years and really wanted me to give myself kudos for what I accomplished today. She told me she thinks recognizing what I accomplish is something I struggle with. It was nice to have someone tell me she was proud of me.

3. What did you find difficult?

I dislike marking things electronically. The last word of that sentence may be a bit unnecessary, but really, I do find electronic marking worse. I miss having these review quizzes as a stack of single-sided papers I can mark more quickly than their electronic equivalent and without staring at a screen, plus (going back to the laundry-folding example from yesterday) there's a much greater feeling of accomplishment when you have a stack of marked papers to show for your efforts rather than a bunch of intangible comments scattered through Google Classroom. Still, I know that having these items done now and trying to keep up the consistency should help me avoid the bigger pain of a future backlog.

4. What has changed?

Oh, see the comment before about electronic vs. paper marking.

Also, while the students and I were discussing test dates, I shared my quadmester-at-a-glance calendar with them; at least one of them noted the "43 days + 3 days CR" note at the bottom, and expressed surprise that there are only 40-something days of class in each quadmester...the students said it felt like longer. Yup, now that I'm done teaching for the day, there are only 39 days left in the working year (only 35 days of class plus 3 credit rescue days plus a final P.A. day for teachers to submit report cards/etc.)...it feels so odd that because of this quadmester system, I'm still in chapter 1 of the course with these new students and need to ramp things up rather than wind them down even though it's now May.

The Stretch Questions

5. What are you grateful for?

Longer days. As I came out of the grocery store this evening, I noticed that it was still light out, which it would not have been had I been getting groceries at that time in December.

Also, my secondborn brought me this at one point:

Awww :).
Hey, kid, aren't you supposed to be in class?
...but thanks :).

6. Which changes do you want to keep?

Being able to keep up consistency in various areas of life, including marking.

Still liking the habit of pre-making the kids' lunches, too; I may premake some of my own tomorrow!

7. What are you scared of?

This seems to be the kind of class that emails and posts questions in Classroom a lot more than I've seen with other classes lately. I hope that I can keep on top of helping them to feel supported and that they won't feel like they need to get admin involved even though I am improving my feedback habits over what they've been in the past.

8. What has stayed the same?

Red pepper jelly on goat cheese on crackers is still really yummy :).

9. When did you last laugh?

I'm sure I've been amused by various things today, but this being Star Wars Day, this was definitely my vibe this morning (seen on a friend's Wall and also in my Facebook Memories from 2 years ago):

Have a good night, all!