Etch 'n Sketch Reflections

 Did you ever have one of those weeks where every day kind of bleeds into the next, and by the end of the week you have a hard time remembering what you did on certain days prior? That's how I'm feeling right now. I would say that the main reason for this is that I'm sitting in an empty classroom every day. Even though the students are at home, teachers are allowed to work in their classrooms (assuming that they don't have any illnesses or have been contact-traced). We do have the option to work from home, but I felt that I would get more accomplished at school (fewer distractions :-) Now that the assignments are starting to roll in, it has definitely been helpful to have the quiet time at school to manage grading and identifying what is missing. However, I would much rather have a classroom bustling with activity (as most teachers would). So, even though I couldn't fully remember what happened on what day, looking back at my lesson notes has helped, and it was a pr...

Well, we got a couple of weeks into school, and it happened. We knew it was a possibility, but it would have been nice if it could have held off just a little bit longer. Yup, we are back to learning virtually at the middle school. Since the very first day, students have been going home with some of the warning signs of COVID (not that they necessarily had it--we aren't testing for it, just simply watching out for signs so that we can contain the possibility of spread). However, last Thursday we had our first confirmed case, and an entire class of students (and the teacher) had to begin complete virtual learning for 2 weeks. However, things expanded early this week, and due to some close contact situations with individuals who had tested positive, it increased the population of people who would need to learn from home as well as put a strain on being able to allow for substitute teachers in situations where teachers were in close contact with positive cases.  So, on Tuesday we got ...

So, I usually post my blog on Thursday nights (sorry this one was late, but I was REALLY tired last night), so with all things considered (with teaching in the world of COVID), my post for last Thursday made it seem like the first week of school wasn't too bad. Then Friday came. And it was time for my science lesson (not that I'm actually into my science content yet--we are still working on launching procedures with the students). If things could go wrong with my science time on Friday, they did. It was an EPIC fail.  My focus for launching procedures with the 5th graders has been centered around using Canvas, our online learning platform. On Friday, my lesson was about showing the students the different ways that they could submit an assignment in Canvas. My hope was to show a short video over the Google Meet that we had going so that we could use it as a jumping-off point to discuss procedures. Well, the volume levels in the different classrooms didn't really jive well wi...

 Wow, I can say that I've never had a first week like this one! It was mind-bogglingly exhausting! Tuesday morning was the first day, and in some ways it was normal: the kids come into school with feelings of excitement, but they are still shockingly quiet as they sit in their seats. We talk about what we did during summer, get to know one another, and discuss procedures and expectations. However, in many other ways, it was clearly not normal: classes of masked students, plexiglass dividers on tables, and many (MANY) squirts of sanitizer. We talked about and practiced procedures that are put in place to keep everyone safe. Probably the biggest change of all is the combination of in-class and virtual teaching that was going on. I have a cohort (class) of 24 students in my room. We are with each other all day, so in many ways, it feels like my old experiences at the elementary school. This is my core group of students--the ones I am going to end up connecting with the most. However, ...