Silver Linings

No, of course Quaran-Teaching is not what I want. I miss my kids. I miss my coworkers. I worry constantly about the health of everyone and the safety of many. Most of my identity is “teacher,” so I miss knowing who I am.

But let’s be honest. It ain’t all bad.

Teacher Bladder? Waiting for a time to use the bathroom used to be a challenge. Maybe someone will be coming down the hall? Maybe the 3 minutes between classes will be enough time?

Hey girl, I'll watch your class... Take all the pee breaks you ...

4 meals a day. Since high schools in the US start school as early as 7:30 in the morning, my lunch is scheduled for 11 am, which means I’m ready for dinner by 3:00. Which means I’m ready for second dinner by 7. Less than ideal. In theory, working from home should help me have a more “normal” meal schedule. That may or may not be working out…..you’ve heard of the “quarantine fifteen,” haven’t you?

A Collection Of the Funniest Quarantine Weight Gain Memes

Fitbit At work, I easily log 7,000 steps just in my normal regular day. A few laps around the block later and I’m comfortably in the 10,000 range. Working from home, it’s not unusual for me to check my Fitbit at noon and be in the 435 range.

GET INSPIRED. STAY MOTIVATED. FIND YOUR FIT. — You're Having A Laugh!

Pets. My pup is thrilled when I get home from work. She’s also thrilled that I am constantly home. More petting, more walking. The emotional well being of my dog is higher now than ever.

Quarantine And Chill Day 3: Why 'Love Is Blind' Binge-worthy ...

Commute? My normal work commute is about 1/2 hour each way – certainly not terrible. But an extra hour every day is such a gift!

my commute is so short i can't listen to my morning playlist ...

I get to meet my students’ pets. ‘Nuff said.

News about #zoom on Twitter

Muting kids. Actual time in class is far more efficient.

Appreciation. Everyone needs it. Parents trying to support their children’s education are starting to recognize the challenges of teaching, especially in the younger grades. Students who have challenges at home appreciate the structure we’re providing.

Hall Duty, Bus Duty, Class Coverages. All gone.

Perfectly.

Sunshine and roses? Of course not. But if you’re only seeing the clouds, look again. The daily annoyances are different now. There are silver linings.

Be well, Friends!

What’s a Teacher Worth?

For the decades of my teaching career, I’ve passed through myriad teacher evaluation instruments. There were the years of the checklists, years of narratives, and now we’ve had years of SGOs and SGPs. There are arguments to be made for all of these, yet I don’t think any of them actually measures the value of a teacher.

When my children were in school, I valued the teachers that held my kids to high standards and demanded excellence in their work. I valued the teachers that enabled my children to be their own best selves. I valued the teachers that helped my children engage with others and form opinions and defend them. I valued the teachers that had pretty bulletin boards and stayed after school for extra help. I valued the teachers that gave my kids a little emotional support when they were down.

Those things are immeasurable.

SGOs and SGPs and PDPs and whatever other acronym they’re going to make up and throw at us with the next iteration will never appropriately identify what it is that makes a teacher grand. You can’t measure relationships with a rubric.

Let’s talk about teacher evaluations in the Corona Era. Now that we’re at the bare bones of what education IS – teachers and students communicating together for the advancement of knowledge and skills – maybe it’s time to reevaluate how we measure the quality of a teacher.

I don’t know the right answer, but I’ve lived through several decades of the wrong answer. Leaders, please look at what’s happening now. With absolutely no training and little, if any, planning time, teachers are crushing it. Not to mention the hundreds of (viral) videos of teachers in their cars parading past their students’ houses or singing songs to remind their students of how much they care.

Find me a rubric that measures that.

Happy Quarant-Easter!

Our children are grown, living in their own apartments about a half hour from us.

I miss them so much. All the time. But especially now, in quarantine, when all I get is phone calls and the occassional Zoom. No hugs, as they are both in essential occupations.

Today we packed Easter baskets and Easter dinner and delivered them. Texting “We’re here,” to each child as we pulled up, grinning and waving as we (from a safe distance) handed off Tupperwares of pork and roasted potatoes and carrots and chocolate chip cookies (a rare treat in times of flour and butter and egg shortage), not to mention the Easter baskets with chocolates and jelly beans.

The we headed home to our dining room, already set with candles and crystal. And dialed in to Zoom.

It’s not the same. But it’s good. A small sacrifice for a greater good. Maybe with this absence, we can spend Mother’s Day together. Or Memorial Day. Or Flag Day. I don’t care.

Instead of seeing this as a loss, I’m choosing to see it as a sign of great love. I love these people so much that I’m willing to not be in their presence for some still unknown period of time so that we can all remain healthy and be together soon. It would be selfish of me to break quarantine for a hug, when I can have dozens in a few weeks (months?).

Happy Easter to you and yours. I hope you’re well and that you are able to see the great love that is all around you as strangers all over the world Zoom their Easter dinners so that you can have your hugs later.

Grading during Quarantine

Remote schooling or distance learning or whatever your district is calling it had plenty of obstacles to hurdle. Now that we’ve managed the who and the what and the where and the why, it’s time to get down and dirty and talk about grades.

There are two extreme schools of thought and a middle ground appearing.

  1. Kids should be held accountable for the curriculum. Mastering 9th grade algebra or 6th grade social studies means mastering a body of knowledge and students should be held to that standard. Now that some (many? most? all?) states have thrown away standardized tests, it seems to me that this argument is losing.
  2. This is unprecedented, unusual, and unplanned. Kids are stressed, families are stressed, teachers are stressed. What’s best for everyone is to call the whole thing a wash and give the kids busy work and straight As.
  3. Pass/Fail. If a student maintains a certain work ethic, he or she passes for the marking period. If the student doesn’t hand in a minimum number of assignments or demonstrate some minimum level of effort, he or she fails. Seems to provide the teacher with the most latitude, but is it fair for kids? What about the valedictorian honor bestowed upon the highest GPA? Do GPAs mean anything any more?

We all agree that education is important. Students need to advance their skills and their knowledge, and professional educators know how to help them do that. Now that we’ve stripped it to the bare bones – THIS is important, but THIS can go away – are we looking at a revolution in education?

Can grading be up for conversation now?

I wasn’t ready!

We had warning that this was coming, but we didn’t know when. And then one day we were told not to come back the next day.

My plants are still in my classroom. It’s been nearly 4 weeks.

The first 2 weeks were an absolute blur. Hunched in front of a laptop attempting to make some sense of what to do and how to do it. Worried sick about my students. Worried about my family and friends.

We made it through the first 2 weeks. Somehow. Adapted the lessons we had planned to do. Luckily for us, we are a 1 to 1 district and students all had the capability to connect. I used GoGuardian and email to “chat” with every student every day for 2 weeks.

Eventually I learned Google Hangouts and Zoom and were able to see their faces, judge their needs, evaluate their levels of comprehension, anticipate their questions.

Still logging 11-12 hours in front of the laptop every day. Fitbit stats in the toilet. Students struggling with asynchronous lessons emailing me at 11 pm for clarification. Parents, frustrated and exhausted and scared, emailing me at 4 am for help. Administrators imposing required faculty “meetings” using Google Hangouts, digging into my valuable and essential prep time. Parent meetings, team meetings, PLC meetings, and virtual class meetings all on Google Hangouts.

Now that we’ve hit our stride with lesson planning and sort of have the hang of how this works, I’ve started to get a different type of email. “I need more time to finish my work because my aunt died.” “My neighbor was taken away by ambulance and I don’t know how he is.” “My parents fight all the time.” “I can’t sleep.”

We weren’t ready for this. But one of the hallmarks of teachers everywhere is flexibility. Something not working? Adapt in a heartbeat. Thinking on our feet all day. So I know we’ve got this.

Virtual Field Trips

One way to take advantage of remote schooling is to let your students take all of those field trips your school would never approve or be able to afford.

Here are a few suggestions to get you started.

Museums:

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History -Among its truly fantastic exhibits, this museum’s presentation of the evolution of life on earth is engaging and easy to follow.

Visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island via a virtual tour.

Aquariums:

The Seattle Aquarium offers a 30 minute video tour.

The National Aquarium‘s virtual tour is a fun way to see still images of their huge collection. They also offer live webcams of coral reef ecosystems and jellyfish.

Monterey Bay Aquarium offers 10 live web cams of jellyfish, sharks, and penguins, among others.

The Georgia Aquarium has 8 live webcams including sea otters, beluga whales, and jellyfish.

Zoos:

The San Diego Zoo offers 11 live web cams of various animals including baboons, koalas, and giraffes.

Space Science

Learn the night sky with Star Atlas which shows you the stars and the planets in real time and also in the future so you can plan what you want to look for tonight. Take a virtual tour of Mars on the Curiosity rover. The International Space Station recently published a virtual tour here.

Take your students on a virtual tour of the Moon, or Mars, or the Milky Way.

Earth Science

Check in with an assortment of live volcano cams and compare action from one day to the next. Take a virtual tour of Meteor Crater!

Take a virtual tour of the Son Doong Cave in Vietnam.

Look for aurora on Fairbanks AK’s Aurora cam.

Take a virtual tour through the Grand Canyon, Antarctica, the Galapagos Islands, or a rainforest. Tour Easter Island, the Bermuda Triangle, the Himalayas, or the Hoover Dam.

Ocean Science

The Virtual Archaeology Museum offers fantastic virtual tours of 5 different shipwrecks.

Live webcams:

YouTube offers a panda-cam from the Atlanta Zoo, a Shark-cam produced by Explore.org, and a penguin-cam and giraffe cam by the Kansas City Zoo. Southwest Florida hosts an eagle cam which, as of today, has a nesting pair of eagles. Explore.org also hosts a polar bear cam based in the Scandinavian Wildlife Park in Kolind, Denmark. The African Safari cam overlooks the main beach of the watering hole at Mpala Research Centre in central Kenya’s Laikipia County. We saw giraffes, a herd of elephants, hippos, and a crocodile.

National Parks

Using Google Earth, you can take tours of:

Amusement Parks

What’s your favorite virtual tour?

Strange New World

Are your classes being held remotely? Mine are.

Steep learning curve. Students signing in, teachers wifi not working, miscommunication. Bumps. But nothing insurmountable, and today (day 2) was pretty smooth.

Then I went for a walk. To the park. Which had been overflowing with teenagers who were not socially distancing themselves.

Down the block were locked parks.

When people were on the sidewalk coming toward me, I crossed the street to keep from catching whatever they might be carrying. I lunge at the phone, eager for human contact. I do a check on my own health (Any sore throat? Any chills?) all the time, and scrub my hands whenever I see a sink.

How are you handling social isolation/distancing?

File Folder Games

Why do I love file folder games?

They’re easy to make, fun to play, and can be used at essentially any level to review basically any material at all.

After an initial investment of a few hours creating the game, all I have to do is print it and laminate it and it’s good to go for years to come! Kids love it – they ask to play all the time and it gives them a an opportunity to self-assess how prepared they are before an assessment.

My newest file folder game, designed to review basic planetary facts, can be found here.

Are you preparing for Distance Learning?

Whether your State has been hit by the Coronavirus or not, the admins in your district are probably thinking about a contingency plan in case they have to close school.

Some states have approved distance learning as an alternative if the local or state board of health forces schools to close. What are the best ways to maintain some academic continuity while working remotely?

Unless teachers are prepared well in advance and can print reams of paper worksheets and documents for students to take home for the duration, the only reasonable way to accomplish distance learning is going to be digitally.

Here are a few ideas I’ve been throwing around. I’d love to hear your ideas too.

  1. Skype or other video conferencing software. If you have the students sign in to a group call at the regular class time, you can do mini lessons in real time which can be followed up by digital assignments on Google Classroom or via email.
  2. Videotape mini lessons – easy enough using your cell phone. Follow up with a more individualized personalized email or phone conference and/or with an assignment via email or Google Classroom.
  3. Digital activities that work to extend the curriculum:
    1. quizzes
    2. digital Breakouts
    3. games
    4. review activities
    5. Cloze reading
  4. Massive Open Online Courses

I would love to hear how you envision distance learning happening in your district.

A great (free) tool for making Crossword Puzzles

My students love puzzles.

They especially love them when they are easy enough to solve without frustration but challenging enough to be interesting. I’ve always called that the “sweet spot” in classroom challenges and games – easy enough, but not too easy, as Einstein said.

Crossword puzzles are great tools for reviewing vocabulary. I used to make my own using a spreadsheet with each box serving as a letter. It was painstaking and time consuming work. If you haven’t already discovered Puzzlemaker, it’s a game changer. You can enter the words you want in the puzzle plus the clues to guess the words and Puzzlemaker does the rest.

I’ve used crossword puzzles as clues in my classroom breakouts also. Click here to download a list of tips and tricks to creating your own breakout.
Check it out!