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.

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!

A Space at the Table (Journaling during Covid-19 - Entry 5)

Photo 126902045 © Melpomenem | Dreamstime.com

(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?

• up early enough to have a reasonable devotional/prayer time before disturbances from others
• prepared packed lunches for the kids as if they were going to face-to-face school -- just sandwiches and apple slices (too much of the apple gets wasted if I don't cut it), but that's enough to keep them out of my hair when their main lunch-eating time conflicts with my teaching time
• morning class: Classcraft and Flipgrid sharing; notes on periodic trends to do with atomic radius and ionization energy; assignment given for them to start analyzing the elements of a fictitious planet; started a new habit of noting on a class list who contributed to the chat (and I let the students know I was starting that, which seemed to lead to some more participation -- and I asked my most eager chat participant to hold back a bit, which she indicated she completely understood -- and I also implemented some "wait time"/"don't answer in the chat yet!" for some questions)
• dentist appointment (the mall the clinic is in was a ghost town due to the current nonessential retail shutdown!)
• hosted the 30-minute weekly #flipclasschat on Twitter

I didn't blog this weekend, so here are some notable events from the weekend:

• brought some sanity to the kitchen, including setting up a special spot for myself at the kitchen table for work when I'm not "live"/on camera (trying this as my planning and marking spot for times when I need to signal to my mind that it's more serious than when I try to do it more comfy on couch while still giving myself a change from my livecasting station in the dining room)
• cut my youngest's hair

• dyed my own hair blue/purple (a mix of two Arctic Fox colours)

• watched church via livestream
• organized some credit recovery work and two drop-in sessions for this week for a few of my students from the previous quadmester; emailed the relevant students/parents
• the first episode of a new podcast series I'm a semi-regular guest on got released! It's called The Mustard Seed, and it's aimed at educators who are Christians. You can check out the pilot episode here if you're interested.

2. What did you enjoy?

It's always nice to connect with other "flippers" during the #flipclasschat.

3. What did you find difficult?

I had a case of the Mondays and didn't really want to do anything productive, but class started and was done with early enough that I didn't have much time to kvetch about it before it was time to carry on with the rest of the day. (Class itself did go just fine...I felt lazy but still did what we needed to do.)

4. What has changed?

Prepping the kids' lunches at the start of the day.

Doing some work at the kitchen table rather than only in the dining room (best place for livestreaming but not a great "feel") or on the couch/bed (too comfy/casual at times so I may not take the work seriously enough, or may find it hard to relax in those spots as much because they're now somewhat associated with work, too).

 The Stretch Questions

5. What are you grateful for?

I am once again so glad to be back to teaching only 1 course instead of 2. I am not a morning person, but being able to get the teaching hours out of the way this morning and then focus on everything else I need to accomplish today (including more work, don't get me wrong) was helpful today.

I am grateful to my weekend self for the cleanup she did. It made getting myself and the kids ready much more sane this morning.

6. Which changes do you want to keep?

I'm enjoying having a special spot prepared for myself in the kitchen. This seems to be working well. I might add a cushion to the seat, though the kids still have a habit of using the chairs as stepstools to the cupboards so maybe not (or maybe I'll just have one off to the side I can use when I'm here). I even had my oldest sit there for his breakfast, and had the whole family eating dinner at the table together, gasp! We really need to work on doing this more often...the oldest doesn't even have the training to ask if he can be excused from the table and seemed to take it for granted that it was fine to go resume video game time once he was full.

7. What are you scared of?

Scared may be overstating it, but maybe concerned about how much the kids are taking in through screens when my husband and I are otherwise occupied. I miss having daycare to provide activities and socialization for my youngest especially -- I used to stay at school after classes and do some planning while he participated in that for a bit. Mind you, I wasn't a daycare kid myself, but I also didn't spend as much time staring at a device/TV as my kids are doing these days.

8. What has stayed the same?

I've been reminded how much I enjoy getting an area cleaned up. While I may find it overwhelming and get super stressed trying to figure out how to start, when I've actually imposed order on former chaos I feel very calmed. Even folding a pile of laundry gives me an external sign that I am capable of bringing order to chaos, and so I must surely be capable of handling the less tangible chaos I sometimes feel I have inside my head, too.

9. When did you last laugh?

Someone sent me this physics joke via Facebook Messenger, and it amused me today:

Journaling during Covid-19 - Entry 4

(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?

• worked with 5 other colleagues on some planning around the destreaming that's happening of our grade 9 science courses next year (we'll no longer have separate "academic" and "applied" level grade 9 courses -- all the students will be together -- so we discussed some general strategies, exam questions, and resources/activities/etc. to use)
• this included indulging my normal habit of drawing during meetings -- it helps me focus better, honest! -- but I was too involved to do much. Here are today's sketches:

• afternoon class -- they had a diagnostic quiz, so we all remained connected to the Google Meet in case they had questions/etc. (they did, though the most frequent one was "Can you check to see if you got my quiz?"), but it was otherwise a silent class while they worked and then submitted their quiz
• made a call to a parent because this class has only met 5 times and I already have concerns about his attendance and rate of submitting/writing assessments...yup, I'm gonna be that teacher this quad
• grocery run for a couple things...turned into more things, oops
• mixed a drink, because it’s finally Friday 

• watched Toy Story 4 with the youngest, and he also drew some characters/things and wanted them cut out
• emailed follow up with the student whose parent I’d called — learned it’s partly a matter of a conflict with prayer time, but there was acknowledgment that I should have been informed, and I pointed out some concerns unrelated to that prayer time that he needs to address 
• [item withheld but I know what it’s about]
• got the kids to bed 

2. What did you enjoy?

It's finally Friday. It's felt like Friday all week, so it's good to finally know I don't have to teach class tomorrow (though I do have other work to do).

Enjoyed seeing and getting to chat with colleagues via Zoom this morning.

Also enjoyed my time with my youngest this evening.

3. What did you find difficult?

I wasn't crazy about the idea of starting the day with meetings today when it's a week when I really just want a break, but all that actually went well in the end.

4. What has changed?

As I mentioned above, next year we will be destreaming the grade 9 science courses, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out, though I hope the work we did today and will continue to do over the next few months will pay off.

The Stretch Questions

5. What are you grateful for?

A colleague at another school helped me with something significant today, and I am so grateful to her. (She knows who she is and what this is about and why I can't say any more.)

6. Which changes do you want to keep?

The closeness sometimes seen between my boys. Does it make a difference that being home all the time gives them more time together and not much contact with others?

7., 8., 9. -- These are too personal for here tonight.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

-- Joy

Journaling during Covid-19 - Entry 3

 

(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?

• had a productive phone call with the teacher who arranges credit recovery options for students; got 3 students (and one parent) connected with the Google Classroom for credit recovery and got some resources shared with me that I'll be using to help them recover a course they didn't pass with me last quadmester; emailed all the students and parents involved to let them know what's going on
• continued to get parents/guardians of my current students connected with our Google Classroom, in order to feel I'm doing a better job of connecting with families this time around
• visited the school building to pick up a bunch of personal items I'd left there before spring break (including the last of the candy stash I had there) and put away some delicate equipment left out after a lab a few weeks ago (lest a caretaker or someone else accidentally knock it over)
• texted with a couple colleague friends; got one connected with my dentist
• looked up some students' IEPs
• ran afternoon class: first time doing attendance via Classcraft with this group, as well as some of its "random events"; shared some of their Flipgrid intro videos with the class (random idle chatter resulted, and that is GOOD for building class community); further reminders/review and clarification regarding tomorrow's diagnostic quiz; put them into breakout rooms for about the last 10 minutes to get more team names developed (plus one team had an imbalance of Classcraft character types to work out). New amusing team name this quad: pHirst.
• booked appointments (dentist, chiro, massage) for May and June
• took the youngest for a short drive - I like doing this after work to break up the day a bit.
• played the ukelele a little ("My Lighthouse" by Rend Collective, "What if I Stumble" by dc Talk, "Ukelele Anthem" by Andrea Palmer). Made a post on Facebook challenging a friend to a duel of "My Lighthouse" next Saturday, so I guess now I have to keep practicing.

2. What did you enjoy?

My 4-year-old now has a Prodigy account, but they don't have activities for kindergarten kids, so he's trying stuff intended for grade 1 students -- he has to ask for help, but if I ask him the right kinds of directing questions he can figure some of it out, and he seems to be enjoying it! It's cool seeing my kids' little brains develop :).

Also enjoyed my ukelele time.

3. What did you find difficult?

Being at school felt difficult this time. I thought I'd accepted that I don't think we'll be returning to face-to-face classes this school year...picking up all my personal stuff from the building and moving some of the more delicate lab glassware to safer spots had a resignation and down-ness to it I hadn't expected.

My youngest destroyed the last of the candy stash I'd brought home :(. He poured water into the jar that had the last of my cinnamon hearts in it...by the time I discovered this, they'd pretty much dissolved. (I kicked myself later that I should have tried drinking the concoction that resulted, but I thought of that too late...and that might have been too much even for me anyway :).)

4. What has changed?

I took the time today to retry some products for curly hair. Still lots to learn about letting my natural curls do their thing but enjoying what we accomplished today anyway :). Would I take the time to do this if it weren't for the covid shutdown (i.e., when more people will actually see the results)? I guess we'll see, whenever it ends...

I wrote most of this post after class today rather than in the evening. It's good to have a "pause point."

The Stretch Questions

5. What are you grateful for?

I am so glad I was able to help my colleague get connected with a dentist I know she can trust at a time when she really needs one.

6. Which changes do you want to keep?

I've brought my exercise mat back home from work (one suitable for practicing breakfalls/etc.)...I'm hoping a change can be making more workouts happen at home. If the rain would let up, I could use it in the backyard...

7. What are you scared of?

Not really feeling scared. There are some things that will be background concerns for a while, but as I can't do anything about them right now I'm not giving them the emotional energy of real worry.

Very minor thing but part of me resists posting this now when some of the evening is still ahead of me and things could still happen that I could comment on -- so what? I can always mention anything of note when I post again tomorrow(?). I'm going to post this anyway.

8. What has stayed the same?

Still loving Classcraft :).

9. When did you last laugh?

Still not sure about this one, though I do recall one of the baristas at my local Starbucks amused me with some of his banter recently (lines he's used with me before and which he also used with the car in front of mine, but still amusing).

Journaling during Covid-19 - Entry 2

"Bruschetta alla caprese" flickr photo by erik forsberg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/hepp/5922705584/
shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0) license

(See my previous 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?

I taught in the morning today (again, fully online, from home). I spent about the first hour of class after attendance introducing the students to Classcraft, organizing them into teams, and trying to get each team to come up with a team name and decide on Classcraft roles (guardian, mage, healer) for each member. During their first "asynchronous" time, the students had an assignment to start on the history of the periodic table and various scientists who contributed to its development. When they came back, we did some notes on nuclear structure (including what radioisotopes are and why neutrons are important) as well as on calculations of the average atomic mass for an element given the masses and abundances of its naturally-occurring isotopes. They have practice questions to do for homework based on those calculations; they also have a diagnostic quiz coming up on Friday to study for, and part 1 of their ISU on ideal gases is due Monday. (I've connected that ISU to a Quest in Classcraft to reward them with story text for getting through each stage, so hopefully at least some of them will enjoy that.)

After the second live portion of class, I made sure I took care of some work stuff right away -- answering some emails, scanning the day's handwritten notes, and preparing an after-class LMS post for the students -- and then I made sure I walked away from work stuff for a while, making sandwiches for the kids and grabbing some away-from-home food for myself (partly because I wanted the drive). I even took a much-needed nap.

Newly refreshed, I made myself sit down and check off who has and hasn't done items that were "due" on Monday, giving feedback and asking for clarification as needed. I haven't fully processed the results of a loooong survey I gave them, but did take care of a chunk of it, and I've taken care of the other due items for all of those who handed it in. As I mentioned in the last post, I am trying to very intentionally schedule a marking time for each item as I assign it (or rather, I set for myself the scheduled due date and marking date before I even mention the assignment to the students). My reading of Atomic Habits by James Clear and my discussions with others are leading me to try out "intention statements" as a way of much more firmly committing to action on things I know I should be doing even though my avoidant tendencies make me want to put them off (leading to massive problems later). I also meticulously compared the parent/guardian email addresses against the school's official contact list and any associated parent/guardians with the students' Google Classroom listings, then emailed (as a group, Bcc'd) all the parents not already connected to our Classroom to see if they wanted an invite -- the kind of tedious task I absolutely hate, but I'm really starting to think investing effort in those irritating things up front does pay off by reducing the potential for bigger and harder problems later on. I've already heard positive responses back from a few of them and sent Classroom invites their way.

My husband is off this evening at the rehearsal of a wedding he'll be doing the A.V. for (and live streaming!), and I ordered dinner in for the kids and I from an Italian bistro my father-in-law used to like.

2. What did you enjoy?

The quinoa and black bean wrap I got for lunch really hit the spot, as did the bruschetta and Tuscan salad I got myself for dinner (those mushrooms though -- mm!).

3. What did you find difficult?

Getting up was difficult, and I ended up getting up later than I'd originally planned (I had wanted to get more done before school than I did -- it worked out fine but it could have been time better used). Maybe I shouldn't have blogged so late last night, heh :).

I didn't enjoy having to remind one group of students to talk more appropriately in one of the breakout rooms. I did learn that I had to mute myself in the main room because students in another breakout room reported that through me they could hear the students in the breakout room I had to address.

I didn't have a very successful first run with the technical side of the breakout rooms extension I was trying for Google Meet, though I was able to work around the issues I had. I think I know what I did wrong and will try again, as even today I saw someone in a Facebook group mention loving this extension.

4. What has changed?

Some of my priorities in the planning of my teaching are changing. I know I need to build in more support and feedback so the students really have a good sense of how they're doing instead of wondering so much and always asking what their mark is. I'm still thinking through the nuances of what that means and how it will end up playing out.

The Stretch Questions

5. What are you grateful for?

I am extremely grateful to be back to teaching one course instead of two this quadmester. The difference in workload and my ability to plan well for the course I do have is truly staggering.

6. Which changes do you want to keep?

I want to keep going with this new attempted habit of tackling annoying tasks head-on sooner rather than later and hopefully preventing some of the large kinds of issues I've had to deal with over the past few years especially. Maybe at midlife I'm finally growing up somewhat.

7. What are you scared of?

I have to be vague about this, but I'm waiting to hear what the next steps will be in a particular formal issue in my life, and it has potential to keep going on in a negative way instead of finally being over the way I really want it to be.

8. What has stayed the same?

Grade 11 chemistry is still my favourite course, and I'm so glad it's the course with which I get to finish the school year.

9. When did you last laugh?

I can't recall. I'll have to keep my attention open for this over the next bit -- I know I have laughed, I just can't recall why.

-----

Also, here's a random share of a tweet related to the #flipclasschat we had on Twitter this week, by Toronto colleague Andrea McPhee:

(Link to original tweet here)

Happy hump day, y'all, and have a good night!

Cheers,

Joy

Journaling during Covid-19 - Entry 1

Photo 3713471 © Jakub Jirsák | Dreamstime.com

Hello, blog. It's been a while.

I feel the need for a writing outlet. As much as this goes against the typical description of an INFJ, I think I'm missing the idle chit-chat we don't get when lockdown keeps us all away from those casual connections of seeing people you're not related to in the church lobby, lunch room, or non-spatially-distanced coffee and grocery lineups, and I guess Facebook isn't doing it for me right now. This entry isn't likely going to be anything profound, and it may in fact end up just being boring, but I'm mainly writing this for my own benefit and you all can take or leave this as you like <shrug>.

I've occasionally checked out an ongoing blog series by friend and Flipped Learning Network board member Ken Bauer in which he blogs about "life on the ground" during Covid-19 (drawing inspiration from a post by Ben Werdmuller). He's been using a simple Four-Questions-plus-some-stretch-questions format -- also based on a post by Ben -- and I like the way it seems that format can prompt some simple reflection about one's day without it getting overwhelming. I'm going to give it a whirl and see if it's something that can work for me, too. Knowing me, even four questions can be enough to spark a novel!

Since this is my first post in this series, I will give some context.

Here we are currently in a state of lockdown, with all students attending school online only and teachers teaching from home unless they have a case for needing to teach from the school building. Most of our retail is likewise shut down, as is in-restaurant dining (delivery and takeout options still exist). We have upgraded our Internet service at home, and so I am now teaching from home even though during the previous extended period of virtual learning I got permission to teach from the school due to some issues I was having with our service (especially when my husband working from home and my two children attending classes online often means there are four different videoconferences going on at the same time in this house).

In the high school system we recently changed to a new quadmester (started April 23), and I now have a lighter course load than I did in the previous quadmester. We are also about 10 weeks from the end of our school year: the regular classes for this quadmester end June 23, then there are 3 weekdays of "credit rescue" (to try to help students whose credits are at risk do something to try to pass their courses), and then the last work day for teachers is a June 29 P.A. day. The course I'm teaching this quad is one I also taught last quad; I do have to tweak it a little given that I taught it hybrid-style last quad and will be fully online this quad, and there are also improvements I want to make, but quite a lot will be the same. All this means that while I will be able to focus better on my students this time around, I am also definitely feeling a relaxation of the pressure I was under last quad. Summertime's coming -- there are now only 44 working days left -- and the living is, well, not easy, but easier than it has been for months.

The daily schedule for our high schools currently looks like this:

• 8:45 - 10:00am - "live" time with a teacher (Course 1 on days 1 & 2, Course 2 on days 3 & 4)
• 10:00 - 10:30am - break/asynchronous work time
• 10:30 - 11:45am - "live" time with the same teacher/course as above
• 11:45am - 12:30pm - break/asynchronous work time
• 12:30 - 1:10pm - lunch
• 1:10 - 2:00pm - "alternative professional assignments" and "professionally managed activities" for teachers (basically this is prep time and time we can be asked by admin to do other things related to our jobs)
• 2:00pm - 3:15pm - "live" time with the teacher the students didn't see yet that day (Course 2 on days 1 & 2, Course 1 on days 3 & 4)

In my current timetable, I only teach during Course 2 time slots, so I only teach in the afternoons on days 1 & 2 and only the longer morning classes on days 3 & 4.

My own children (as in my offspring) are in the elementary system at two different schools, so they are on different schedules from each other and both of those schedules are also different from mine. My husband has alarms set to remind him to check that the kids are in their various class periods on time; I help with that somewhat, but it's not easy given the overlaps in some of our class times.

The Core Questions

1. What did you do today?

Today was a day 3. I had my first morning class of the quad with this new group of students. After dealing with some unexpected technical issues, I finished going through a review package we started yesterday afternoon recalling several main ideas from the grade 9 and 10 chemistry units. I also set up the Classcraft interface for this new class and sent all my students their join codes through email, though we won't be able to have them set up their characters until we've formed the students into teams and they've decided who will take on what roles within their teams.

Once my morning class was done, I spent a lot of time setting up items behind the scenes for my class, including setting up the first 4 mini-assignments for their ISU in Google Classroom and tying it to a Quest in Classcraft to reward their progress with story text and in-game points (XP and GP). I spent a LOT of time on stuff for this class today, but that up-front investment of time should pay off, and it was made a lot easier by being able to reuse materials I developed last quad and earlier.

At 4pm I was part of a recording session for a podcast hosted by my friend Dan Jones. He has a few different podcast series on the go; I am a regular guest on two of them, with a few other people on the panel with me each time. The episodes are about 10-12 minutes long each, and we record them more or less as a conversation that doesn't take us much longer than the episode length to record once we get started. I record these sessions sitting in my van because currently that's the best way for me to avoid interruptions or noises from the family interfering in the background. Both the series that I've recorded episodes for are still in production, but I'll be sure to share links to them once they've been released.

After the recording session, I took the kids for a drive -- we picked up Dairy Queen and McDonald's (just cheeseburgers for them plus one box of fries for me) and then came back home. I tried to relax some, but I also spent some time continuing my course prep and sharing final marks with my students from quadmester 3 (since they won't get their official report card for the quad for a while but they still need to know how they did). I also looked into how to use a certain extension for Google Meets to get breakout rooms happening more effectively. At some point I put the youngest kid to bed, but then felt like I wanted to get up and blog...and here I am.

2. What did you enjoy?

I did enjoy little things a little - my morning mocha, the fries after school, my youngest giving me a spontaneous unexpected kiss at bedtime. I know I also appreciate the reduced workload compared to last quad, and only having to teach one part of the day. I am still a bit shell-shocked from that pressure, though, and it may take a bit of time to recover from it.

3. What did you find difficult?

Having technical issues with both attempted document cameras was quite frustrating. I know I know my tech stuff and don't like looking like I don't...but I'm also not the one to crack the case open and know exactly what the issue is when things don't cooperate. I had to kick everyone out of the online class, restart my computer, and then get everyone to join again, and not everyone who was present before that annoyance logged back into class, so I guess they may have already just left their computers logged on and physically checked themselves out/gone back to bed (this was about 20 minutes into the start of the first class session).

One student asks a lot of questions in chat that are pretty basic, and I wonder if he really has those questions or if it is a time-wasting maneuver. I do encourage questions but have a weird gut feeling on this one. I did make sure I told the students not to feel badly about asking questions, however, because they are important; I'll just have to monitor whether my intuition seems to be off in this one case.

The topic we talked about in the podcast interview today was a difficult one. It definitely provoked some good discussion, but after the host posed the question, there was probably about a good minute of awkward silence -- we'd known about the subject ahead of time, but no one was keen to jump into it! (Meanwhile, our host silently did the teacher "I'll wait" thing, heh...no rescue!)

I also didn't sleep much on Sunday night, and I find it's the second day after an all-nighter that hurts the most, so it was a bit of a tired, headachey, not-quite-here Tuesday.

4. What has changed?

I'm trying a new thing where I will actually use my planner for school and life stuff both, and each time I record that students have an assignment due or a quiz/test to write, I am also trying to record what day I will assess/mark that item. I need the intention of writing it down and the reminder to set aside proper time to give that feedback in a more timely manner than I have in the past. Hopefully this will also help me to get to know my students better in spite of the mostly-faceless context in which we find ourselves.

I'm going to pass on the "stretch questions" for now as I've already written quite a bit and I think it's time I went back to bed :). Thanks for reading, and I hope you're all well.

- Joy