After a week of reading different comments on twitter and teacher blogs, I thought it time I'd share my daily schedule, now that things have "abnormalized". Maybe it will make you feel better to know that your schedule is better or worse than mine, or maybe it will just remind you that everyone is in the mix and trying to make things happen. I am leaving out all of the home things I do between the things I listed here for school. I just want to focus on the teacher elements. (I read several tweets saying the pace is unsustainable, and they are correct. I felt that way last spring and found that my health suffered as a result. Nothing too terrible, but not a win, for sure. This time, I'm trying to draw the line at that level and trusting that whatever I don't get done will be okay., and I will avoid a bad review at work. I mean, no pressure, right? Oh, and that it won't damage the learning of my students and their futures. Yup, I'm completely relaxed. So, so, healthy!)
After my 40 minute commute, the schedule begins.
7:00 am Arrive at school, bring in the million pounds of items that I carted out to the car yesterday and into my living room to work on last night, and traipsed back into the car at 5:30 am.
7:00 - 7:25 am Put away said items. Organize desk and board for the day. Create the links for the days' sessions and post in classroom. Takes about 15 minutes to do all five classes. One day, I hope to use my planning period to schedule them ahead of time, but thus far, I'm in the last minute club. Also, disinfect all of the desks with the CDC approved disinfectant. I am supposed to wear gloves, but honestly, I'm just glad if I get the tables all wiped down.
7:25 am Either hall duty or mandatory staff meeting which is devotional in nature. This week was hall duty and I got to take the temperatures of each person entering the building. That was actually fun! I pronounced each one healthy. :) They rolled their eyes. Mission accomplished.
7:50 am Head to my classroom. Set up all of the computers needed to teach the morning lessons while greeting all of the in class students. Make sure they are all plugged in because batteries are not eternal. Turn on TV, set up chromecast, greet the early arrivees on Google meet. Pay attention to the attire of students to make sure that all are uniform code compliant and maintain pleasant conversation with students about their interests. Try to glance at emails to see if the world blew up or if there are any new things I need to do before getting the ball rolling.
8:00 am Take attendance and continue to let students in the meet. Don't forget to smile! Review homework. Watch for cheating online and in class. Maybe notice what they are getting wrong. Thumbs up if you got that right. Look for patterns of errors and provide clarity. Maybe just grade it without the clarification. Honestly, the goal is clarify daily, and as the year has gotten older, I am consistently doing that. However, the first few weeks, not so much.
8:18 am Welcome more kids who are late. It is up to us to determine if they are excused or unexcused tardies, a new feature of our job this year. Sorry, but all are unexcused because I'm not going to take the time to do an investigation at this point. Realize that this is something that is just not being done correctly and press on. Oh, back to the lesson. Keep the online kids engaged. Keep the at school kids from becoming frustrated with the lagging mute - a - thon. Eye rolling is not preferred here. We still have to be respectful. UNMUTE!!!!
8:50 am Class concludes with school wide announcements. Keep the online kids from logging out until you say class is dismissed. Make sure everyone is listening respectfully to the announcements. Keep track of the million things that are changing in the schedule. Write them down if you can. Check email for new disasters and responsibilities. Don't open anything that doesn't look like 911.
8:55 am Class dismissed. Log out of the meet. Open the next meet. Get in the hallway to supervise. "Keep your social distance, please." "Yes, I can help you with your locker." "Yes, you can go to the restroom after the bell rings. Be sure to sign the log with your own pen/pencil. Yes, we have to do that because of contact tracing. "
9:00 am Class begins. Wash, rinse, repeat first hour. This time, wait for the interruption that comes from the office asking for a student who is not really in your class. As you take attendance, remind students that we have to be able to see them the entire time. (I know one teacher who takes attendance 3 times every period. I'm just glad if I can remember to do it once during the actual class and not have to recreate it in my mind later.) YOU'RE STILL MUTED!!
9:18 am Yes, another interruption. "At a convenient time, Mrs. Teacher, would you send so and so to the office to get their lunch?"
9:20 am Keep calm and carry on. Try to remember to return physical papers. Collect manipulatives and put them in the "needs disinfection" pile. Remember to speak to the students who are submitting blank assignments in Google Classroom. Keep an eye on who is learning and who needs scaffolding. Are they learning or just good at copy and paste?
9:50 am Time to dismiss. Again, get in the hall while disinfecting the desks and wishing students a great day, and logging out of the meet and opening the new meet and maintaining conversations with those in the physical space.
SIDEBAR: Notice at no time did the teacher get a drink of water or use the restroom. During the next hour, teacher makes effort to sip some of the same water from her car this morning. Maybe she can finish the 16 ounce bottle by lunch. Let's try!
9:55 am Class begins. Wait, did I forget to let them in because I was talking to the school campus kids. Guys, I'm sorry. I forgot to hit "admit". No, we didn't do anything yet. So sorry! Okay, let's begin. This is a block that ends at 11:20. I permit them (in violation of school policy) to have a drink and a snack in my class at 10:45 am. I don't know, I just prefer my students to be conscious when I teach them. Famished is not a good learning environment. It took us a few days to figure it out, but we decided that they could use the restroom and have a snack while we kept working on the class content. So far, so good. It's a smaller class, so that helps for that procedure. I don't know what I would do otherwise. We are social distanced, and wearing masks, except while eating so I don't have concerns in that way.
11:20 am Dismiss. Monitor the hallways. Make sure everyone gets to their designated lunch areas. Try to get to the restroom, but not often. Supervise lunch students.
11:40 am Dismiss. Monitor students.
11:45 am Planning time begins. A moment of self-care for the teacher. Yay. Oh, wait. There's a line. There's always a line. Oh, and can I watch someone's class so they can use the restroom? Yes, I will. I'd want someone to do that for me if I ever had time to ask someone to do it.
12:05 pm Just ran the gauntlet of anyone in the office who needs something from me. Back to my classroom to get something done. Answer the million emails. Record new policies and information. Yes, this is daily. Work on extra curricular activities for students (at this time, NHS and NJHS. How we will volunteer remains to be seen. We shall see.) Help colleagues with tech stuff. I will always do this. I never complain about this. If I can help a friend get better at the tech it helps elevate our team. Try to find videos for new prep in next hour. This is a block class that has a wide range of abilities and a low range of energy when they get to me. It is their 3rd 80 minute class of the day. Yikes. I'm trying to make it more to their level of energy and interest in an effort to generate real learning. This takes time. Not all videos are appropriate for my school. Love crash course, but they often say things like "sucks" and "crap" so I have to find other things. So, that takes time. I use this time. Simultaneously, I'm grading papers, entering data, and working on getting things situated in my room. (At this time, I still don't have my desk operational and I have files that are in boxes. We were going to have to be without a desk because of social distancing, but in the end they worked it out. So, in the spring, we had to come in and put all of our materials in boxes. I've yet to unpack. I have had to dig for some items. I'd like to unpack a box a day, but that has not materialized as yet.) Sometimes, I listen to the news or listen to a Hallmark movie or a house renovation show while I work to remind myself that there is life outside the walls here, and that we need to finish so we can have a life separate from the walls here. Still a work in progress. Oh, and disinfect the desks and surfaces.
1:20 pm The bell rings. I didn't get enough done, but some things were accomplished. I now have to be satisfied with incompletion as progress. My work ethic is screaming in protest.
Run into the hallways to supervise and greet.
1:25 pm Open the meet and watch the students stagger in. I don't know why, but this class struggles to be on time. I'm considering giving them a 5 minute break mid class so they can get a snack and hit the restroom, but given their natures, I'm not sure that will be a win. I'm still going to give it a shot this week.
PLEASE UNMUTE YOURSELF! NOT YOU--YOU NEED TO MUTE! THE PERSON I CALLED ON NEEDS TO UNMUTE. Stop groaning. They are our classmates too.
Keep teaching. Keep waking up the sleepers. Keep engaging the online and campus students. Keep on the standards. Keep the activities going. This group work is not going so well. Social distancing and collaboration is challenging. We keep doing it. Each time gets marginally better.
Lagging Google meet. Is all of America using the internet right now? I can confirm that every living person is connecting right now in a diabolical plan to ruin this class period. At least, that's the conspiracy theory among my colleagues in my of the building.
Oh, and join the meet with your phone to use it as a microphone with your computer during this hour. It's the only work around.
2:50 pm. Relieved students leave my class. I know they are enjoying their material and learning. They are teenagers of various ages and are not enjoying the length of back to back blocks. I get it. They have other teachers that complain about it openly, and it is a long time on one topic. However, let's make the most of it. Log off the meet. Get in the hallway. Disinfect the desks.
2:55 pm Open the new meet. Welcome everyone to our class, both on screen and in person.
This is an all year AP class rather than the other blocks that are all semester long. We are working diligently to get all of the material introduced and practiced to prepare for the test at the end. We have enough class hours. It is simply a matter of using them correctly. They tend to be fragments not chunks of time. Stringing them together will be the challenge. So far, so good. This was the class I was worried about most, and it is going so much better than I could have hoped. Students enjoy being there, but are antsy about the rest of their day after school.
3:30 pm Dismiss. Close out the meet. Get in the hallways. Supervise students.
3:40 pm Begin office hours.
4:00 pm Official school hours conclude. However, I will be there until 4:30 pm at a minimum 5:45 at a maximum. 40 minute trek home, sometimes 45 depending on traffic and time of departure. Lug out to the car all of the bags of work to do tonight, hoping to actually finish it, knowing I may not realize that hope.
Homeward bound. Listing in my mind what priority items I can accomplish before bedtime, hoping that exhaustion will not set in and have me falling asleep at my computer. This has been an exhausting season. Usually, the beginning of the year is grueling, but satisfying. This year has been all gruel, no satisfaction. As the weeks have rolled on, either I am doing better, or I just don't feel the pressure of not doing well anymore.because I've been desensitized. I hope it's the former, not the latter.
So, how do you stack up? Chances are we are in the same place. Hang in there. We can do this, because there is no other choice. It's one of those things where you know it isn't good, but it's something and it's done. Kind of like serving drive-thru fast food for dinner from the place that has its food not even remotely resemble the advertisements, and that its very lukewarmness, food like resemblance is totally unsatisfactory, but it was a meal. That's how I rate myself right now. Fast food drive thru meal. I'm used to being a 5 star restaurant, but hey, a meal was served.
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