Pandemic Back to School
Week 23
Day 154 – Sunday, August 16, 2020
I woke up at 5:30 this morning. Not as early as a school day, but certainly not late. I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I got up and fixed breakfast. After breakfast, I lay back down, and slept for 90 minutes. It was quite nice. Napping is just something I don’t normally do, since it tends to just make me feel worse.
I let the kids sleep as long as they wanted.
Elijah came storming out of his room at one point and said, “Have you ever heard of en passant in chess”. I told him, I had heard the term, but didn’t remember what it meant. He’s been playing a lot of chess, both in person and online. I don’t believe he has ever sat down and read all the rules, he knows the basics and is trying to improve. So, when a rule he’s unfamiliar with pops up, he’s beside himself. I suppose he’ll remember it now!
Leah has been wanting me to make her cheese fries (or tots), so I made her some bacon cheese tots for lunch in the air fryer. At one time you could buy frozen fries that came in a microwavable box to make them crispier. I didn’t see any when I was at Walmart, but maybe Pandemic isn’t the time to look for such things.
I made a quick trip to Aldi to get a block of cheddar cheese (and some random snack for the kids) so I could make a cheese sauce for our broccoli tonight. It was pretty good and went well with grilled pork tenderloin (that was amazing).
I had a ICT/EVV book club on Zoom where we discussed the book, Circe. I had only made it through the first chapter. I didn’t do much reading this month, and it sounds like Circe was a slog until chapter 5. I may have to check it out again. Since I’ve been having a hard time reading, I’m guessing that I’m experiencing some low-level stress about school starting. Kind of like back in March, I’m having a hard time focusing, at least on books. For September, we are reading Black is the Body, which is a series of essays, so should be easier to read.
Tomorrow is the beginning of the first full week of work (half the kids start Wednesday). It will be interesting for sure.
Day 155 – Monday, August 17, 2020
Our second teacher workday is in the books. My FitBit says I did nothing, but I sure am tired!
Teachers made a “how to” video for pick up and drop off… It took a lot longer than expected, lol. Please remember that we are ALL learning new procedures, not just the kids (and parents).
Our staff meeting was via WebEx even though we were all in the building. Being muted during a meeting might be the best thing ever. There were a couple of times where I heartily laughed at inappropriate times. Probably no one even noticed, lol.
I got all of my new students added to my spreadsheet, and I have 90… Ten of them will be virtual, and I don’t even know how we are supposed to fit them into the schedule. I refuse to stress over this.
I spent most of the day printing off IEPs for new students and adding their info to my spreadsheet. I also spent a fair chunk getting together papers to send home to parents.
Tomorrow, speech therapists have an in-person meeting… all 30 of us. We will be spaced out in an auditorium, but I guess I’ll wear my mask.
My librarian friend loaned me a copy of Circe for when I get around to finishing it.
On the way to pick up Elijah, I had one of those, “Is this for real?” moments. It’s been a few months since I had one of those. I had gotten pretty comfy in my Pandemic-at-home routine. We all wonder how long we will be meeting in person.
Day 156 – Tuesday, August 18, 2020
Tomorrow is the first day of school. In person. Only half the students at a time for the first six days. It’s fine. It’ll be fine. Everything’s fine.
There is never enough time. I got parent letters ready and passed out to all the elementary teachers. I will pass out the middle and high school papers soon, maybe tomorrow.
I sat in on an IEP case conference that should have been super short. It wasn’t.
Another student moved from in-person to Virtual Academy (maybe two), so now I have 11 or 12 students I’ll need to see virtually. Fantastic.
I had a two-hour meeting with all the speech pathologists. Good information from the director of special ed.
(Apparently, my tired brain only functions in bullet points, lol)
I have an evaluation that I need to finish up tomorrow (started in March!), but that should be super short. Other than that, I can continue to get organized…. I still have to populate my Google Classroom, figure out the skeleton of a possible schedule, take care of the stack of student files I was handed for transfers into my buildings, and a million other things.
I promised kindergarten that I would help get their students back to their parents in the afternoon.
I suppose as long as we don’t have any kids sent to the nurse with COVID symptoms, we’ll call it good.
Unless, I’m in my office by myself, my mask will stay on.
Day 157 – Wednesday, August 19, 2020
First day of school for kids with last names that start with A-J! Most of the classes were really small…. 3-8 kids in most of the elementary classes. Blended families with last names at both ends of the alphabet are supposed to come this week. Teacher’s kids are allowed both weeks (my girls opted to stay home until next week). That’s fine.
I started the day inventorying all the new files I got yesterday. No surprises, which is nice.
I headed off to Reitz High School to drop off parent letters to my life skills students. I forgot they had moved classrooms until I walked into their old one… I love their new classroom! It has a bathroom attached which is super nice for them. They had about 2/3 of their students today. Then I headed to the nurse’s office where my files are housed. Apparently, I won’t be able to see my students in the office I’ve always used (because it’s inside the nurse’s office). I spent a good deal of time filing a year’s worth of IEPs that I printed in May, lol. I brought a stack of really old inactive files (birthdays from the early 90’s) back to my office to house until I send them downtown to the special ed “dead letter office”.
Then I headed over to Perry Heights and dropped off files for new 6th graders that came from Daniel Wertz. I left parent letters with a special ed teacher who will see those students (next week because they were all K-Z)
I went back to Daniel Wertz to eat lunch. Then I worked on a photo “cheat sheet” of all the speech therapists. A few years ago, I came up with the grand idea of taking everyone’s picture at the beginning of the year, so all the new people could figure out who was who (and It helped everyone learn the newbies). We only see each other once a month, so it can be hard to put faces with names. It took way too long, and then I realized that I’d missed someone….
I went to help one of the kindergarteners to their parents after school. The class I helped had 3 kiddos, lol. The other class had 5, but they had a helper already. I had them get their hands washed, get their backpacks from their cubby, unhook their mask from the lanyard that stays at their desk, and put their mask on. (Kindergarteners masks are DISGUSTING by the end of the day, and they didn’t even wear them while sitting at their desks). I took the kids out when their names were called… had no idea which vehicle to put them in, but it worked out. The process seemed to go super slow, but we were done by 3:20 which is the “end of the teacher workday”. I was super impressed until the gym teacher noted that we only had 1/3 of the kids today. Oh yikes… it will get better.
The teachers loved having super small classes!
We keep getting notifications of more and more kids signing up for Virtual Academy…. (in 9 weeks, I think most of them will come rushing back to in-person school).
The high school added a 4th lunch period, and now first lunch is at 9:20am!! The first elementary lunch is at 10:15… crazy days.
Day 158 – Thursday, August 20, 2020
Day two of soft start. I think it went even smoother than yesterday. Most of the parents of my students who received their parent letter yesterday actually signed up for Remind like I asked. A few of them returned the papers saying that they had when they hadn’t, but I was smart enough to ask for their email and text number on that sheet. So, I signed them up, and a couple quickly accepted. It’s exciting to think that I might actually be able to communicate with some of the parents better.
I finished up my speech therapist visual aid and realized there was one photo I simply didn’t have. Three people who were absent or I missed taking their photo, I had older photos of them. I used those for now.
I spent the majority of my day making a schedule. Three schools, four self-contained classrooms (three of which have many students on a reduced day and are in the building at different times. I try to see the middle schoolers during their 20 minute “flex” period. The high school now has FOUR lunch periods, and upper classmen who go to morning programs at other locations. Normally, the high school is on block schedule and I try to pull kids during their 90-minute homeroom, but no block schedule and no real homeroom this year. No one is supposed to be pulled from reading and preferably not math. If I have kids in my office, I have to have time to clean the room immediately after. Then there are the virtual students for which we have received zero guidance, and their numbers keep growing. I simply don’t have enough spots for all of my virtual students. I did get most of the schedule created though I still need to put in some individual students from the self-contained classrooms, but I know which classroom I’ll be in at what time.
I have to say the socially distanced lunch with half of the students per grade is super quiet. The lunch monitors must love it. The kids, not so much.
Dismissal was WAY faster, at least the car pick-up line. Some of the busses were running late, but there’s not much we can do to fix that on our end.
Tomorrow is Friday! Then Monday, we get to start all over with another group of kids.
I watched the lunch procedure for the high school and got an update from Hannah’s boyfriend (last name starts with B). It’s sad, and there’s no way to get a school lunch in time to actually eat it. My girls have already decided to take their lunches.
Day 158 – Friday, August 21, 2020
6:30am
I went to bed nice and early, my FitBit says I was asleep by 9:15. Just before 2am, Oliver woke me up and I noticed that the lights were still on. Alexa normally turns off the lights at 10pm. It’s great. I love it. When I got up to sequester Oliver in the laundry room, I told Alexa to turn off the lights. She said, “Lights are not responding”. Fantastic. I decided it was no big deal since I went to sleep with them on, what does it matter. But I couldn’t go to sleep. I started searching the internet for why two smart plugs that were bought and installed at separate times more than 18 months ago would stop working at the same time. Nothing. All I read was “unplug them and reset them”. Both plugs are behind the sectional and not easy to get to. Then I started worrying that the plugs might overheat since they weren’t working right and start a fire. (Also, maybe the Chinese government was overheating our smart plugs to cause fires and general chaos… but it was the middle of the night). I got up and moved the sectional, unplugged both smart plugs, reset them, and left them unplugged for now. Now I think it was an internet issue as Elijah is complaining about it being really spotty. Later, I awoke to a constant rumbling noise that I couldn’t place… until the train whistle started blowing. I rarely hear them anymore, but last night was the night.
Bring on the crazy dreams! First, I dreamed that the power went out and neither Elijah nor I woke up on time, nor did we realize we were late until we were LATE. The girls had gotten up, but didn’t realize what was going on. Next, I dreamed that the garage door raising woke me up, and when I went to check on it, there was a camera crew and a reporter. I let loose with some language, lol. Then when I left the house, I was pulling out of our driveway and realized that our house was no longer in the same neighborhood… it was now much more urban. There was an apartment complex across the street that looked just like the one downtown at MLK and Court. Down the street to the north, there was an elementary school and I could see the swings on the playground. Next door, through the window I could see that my neighbors were taking care of a newborn. Seemed weird since I’d never seen the wife pregnant. Last I dreamed about a movie about a young woman who always goes to summer camp. She had gone to a pre-camp clean-up day, but when asked about it, she denied ever being there. Weird, weird dreams, lol.
8:45 pm
It was a fairly productive day at work. I finished up my schedule… until something changes. I watched two required professional development videos and did the assessments. One of those took significantly longer than I was led to believe, and I ended up skipping through the last half (I still got 100% correct). I received a few more files, so I inventoried those (they need to go to the middle school).
I spent the majority of the afternoon on my first language lesson. I’m going to teach my kids to play “Guess in 10” (an animal 20 questions type game), but I need to teach most of the vocabulary and concepts before we can play. I’m working on phase one. We’ll probably end up playing it more like Guess Who…
My first lesson with all of my students will be to get them logged into my Google Classroom. That should be a fun, good time.
I had Friday pizza night with my kids, and then I did yard work. I finally did the backyard edging (yikes!), and I mowed. I do think that maybe the grass is starting to slow down on the growing. That would be welcome. I’m not really a fan of mowing.
I got my smart plugs reset, and they are working again. If I’d left them alone, I wonder if they would have started working again…. I’ll never know.
Day 159 – Saturday, August 22, 2020
This is the first real weekend I’ve had since March. When you are quarantined every day is the same. If you don’t get the floor swept, you’ll have time to do it tomorrow. Saturdays are my ‘get everything done day”. I did sleep until about 7, since a was up cleaning cat barf a few times over night. I spent 8-10 grocery shopping, including drive time. It took 40 minutes or so to put everything away.
I’m finishing up the 7th load of laundry, but I won’t have any left to do tomorrow.
I felt bad that Leah has been unable to see her BFF, so I got everyone Chick-fil-a for lunch. On the way, I dropped of a DVD at the library, and stopped at Schnuck’s for the things Walmart didn’t have. Why is always puffcorn and Diet DP?
I cleaned toilets and cleaned out sink drains (barf) because they were slow/clogged. Hannah and Leah cleaned and organized their sink and linen closet with some “book tubs” I found this morning. I looked and looked for some kind of bathroom caddy for each kid, but all of the “back to college” stuff had been picked through. When Leah was cleaning out the linen cabinet, she called out, “Why does Elijah have 8 empty deodorants?” Why, indeed? He has a tendency to think that all of his toiletries should stay out on the sink permanently. And apparently, he never throws away anything when it’s empty…. Hannah also scrubbed their shower which was definitely a first.
I should be getting back my biopsy results soon but haven’t yet.
I need to reschedule next year’s wellness visits with our family doctor, because I received emails that they were all cancelled (like a week after I scheduled them). I guess the doctor decided to go on vacation that week. The office isn’t open when I’m at home, I don’t get cell service in my office, and my office phone doesn’t work… Fun.
I called and left a message with the eye doctor about Leah’s contacts which haven’t arrived yet (I have a feeling they never got ordered). They didn’t call back. They probably just ordered them…
I made an amazing dinner, honey ginger teriyaki pork chops, broccoli, and wild rice. I haven’t made it in a few years, and it took about twice as long as I expected. Twenty minutes into the process, and I had only gotten the teriyaki made. Hannah and Elijah liked it (Hannah had requested it), and Leah ate part of the meat, all the broccoli, and turned up her nose at the teriyaki and rice…
I’m exhausted. Tomorrow ought to be more restful since most of the chores are already done.
0 comments:
Post a Comment