...and we're (VIRTUALLY) back.

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 the news from our principal and district administrator that the middle school would be going virtual. You could tell that it was a very stressful situation that they were in, but they were very straight-forward about everything. Letting the kids know that they would need to take home some of their needed supplies was hard since we couldn't actually tell them why, but I could tell that many of them were putting the pieces together pretty quickly. The looks on their faces were heartbreaking as they asked if they were going to have to do virtual learning again, and all I could really say was, "I don't know yet." (we hadn't actually been officially told until after school, but we needed the students to be prepared).

Due to the sudden shift in plans, Wednesday became a transition day, with no school for students and a preparation day (from home) for staff. One nice thing is that, as long as we have not been informed of contact tracing, staff will be able to teach from our classrooms. I like being able to do this because it provides some sense of normalcy (being in the classroom teaching), even if it is just a slight sense of normalcy. Today brought some hiccups, mainly with the computers being able to keep up with the demands of the Google Meets, but we made some adjustments after the first Meet and that helped. Here's to hoping that tomorrow goes smoother! And hey, at least after that it's the weekend!

Mindfulness thought of the week--with the abrupt change in plans, we didn't have a chance to discuss it, so it will need to wait until next week.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Day is It?

 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...
Read more

An Epic Fail (and a Recovery)

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...
Read more

Just breathe...

I'll be honest, today was a tiresome day. My students seemed more amped up than usual. So I tried something today that I haven't been able to do with my class in awhile--mindful breathing. I had attempted it several times last year with my class, but I had several boys who seemed to make it their mission to get their classmates to laugh during our mindful breathing sessions. So after some reflecting, I decided it was best to not offer them an audience. But this is a new year, and a new group of students, and I don't really have those attention seeking entertainers, so I thought it was worth a shot. In my daily schedule, we have a TRIBES/Mindfulness time to allow for community building opportunities and moments of reflection. This time period is right after recess, so I figured some mindful breathing might be good for them to cool down a little. When the students came in from recess, I put on some music from the Nature Sounds channel on Pandora. I let that softly play...
Read more