How are you doing? What are you doing?

Fellow educators, how are you doing?

Me... I'm still in the process of establishing a new daily routine.  The stay at home and help my teenager adapt to his new schedule routine. The stay at home and help my teenager adapt to his new schedule while connecting with students and families routine.  The stay at home and help my teenager adapt to his new schedule while connecting with students and families at the same time I'm doing laundry and disinfecting frequently touched surfaces routine.  The stay at home and help my teenager adapt to his new schedule while connecting with students and families at the same time I'm doing laundry and disinfecting frequently touched surfaces in between learning new digital platforms and creating content to be posted to those platforms routine.

The do-all-of-the-above while attending multiple Zoom meetings, and then, when the videoconferencing is done for the day, sewing masks for the family routine.

For me, the hardest of all has been the do-ALL-of-the-above while reminding myself often that everyone is free to have their own opinions and coping mechanisms and latitude in how they express their emotions, even when it's in not-so-nice ways and inflicts additional stress upon everyone else while we're calling it all "granting grace" routine.  There's a very good chance you know what I mean.  Not everyone rises to the occasion.  There are even some who refuse to try. 

Yes, there are folks whose stay-at-home routines include health issues, and the loss of friends and family and security and safety.  I can't let myself wallow in either empathy or sympathy simply because I'd feel like I was drowning in sorrow. I experience it, affirm that I am still a human being, and then put it aside.  It's how I continue to function semi-effectively.

What are you doing?  Have you annexed some part of your living space to serve as a makeshift backdrop for your time with students? Are you scrambling to learn Google Classroom, Seesaw, Loom, or some other such thing?  Have any of your pets, children or spouses "crashed" your video recordings or meetings? 

Thankfully, my recent Master's Degree in Educational Technology has already served me well by planting my feet directly upon the baseball diamond, rather than on the edges or barely within the ballpark itself.  Seesaw, Loom, Zoom, and creation tools such as PowerPoint are intuitive for me, but I know they aren't for many other teachers.

Whether I'm recording "good morning," storytime, fingerplays and songs, instructional, or "goodbye, see you tomorrow" videos, or attending grade level, building or district Zoom meetings, Tish-Tish chooses to join me, enabled by the fact that my teaching backdrop is situated within my craft room downstairs affording her easy access.  Teachers in my district were able to retrieve essentials from our classrooms, our choices guided by the Kansas State Department of Education's Continuous Learning Plan. I brought home my document camera, manipulatives, some recognizable classroom charts and lots and lots of storybooks that have been stored on a bookshelf and in tubs on the floor near my desk.

I was also able to rescue plants from my classroom and grabbed some other decor to catch my students' eyes, though the wall of yarn was a really big distraction for the first few days.

I've worked ahead, creating ELA, Math, and social-emotional content four days in advance in an effort to avoid the frequent internet outages that take place in my neck of the woods. Reading and recording a story the day that it's to be enjoyed by kindergarteners is a gamble I'm not willing to take. Has it helped that my internet provider was bought out at the start of the pandemic and is now owned by a company whose customer service has yet to yield an actual human being with whom I can interact in real-time as I inquire about my account and service?  No, not so much.  I know, they're experiencing the same difficulties we all are. 

If only we'd had, oh, I don't know... advance warning that this type of situation was on the horizon.  But I digress.  

I've found humor and joy in the little things, like drinking my coffee out of previously not-appropriate-for-school mugs:

... and lending my smiling face and a sweet sentiment so that a colleague could create  a "we miss you" video for all of the students in our school:

 I've also discovered new things about myself, such as:

1) I'm not a pajama-wearing teacher even when I'm at home.  I'm a business-on-the-top-and-yoga-pants-on-the-bottom professional. 

2) I have never wanted sneak peeks into my colleague's bedrooms, especially not during meetings.  Didn't have to worry about that until now.  As it turns out, I still don't want sneak peeks into their bedrooms.  I don't care if you're comfortable rocking your best bed-head hairstyle, just do me a favor and choose to flaunt it while you sit at your dining room table or out on the back porch during our meetings, okie dokie?

3) I'm not a big fan of motion sickness, which is probably why I've never enjoyed videos featuring hand-held videography or subjects who insist on always being in motion. Lordie, people, put the device down on a sturdy surface and plant yourself in front of it. 

4) I go into withdrawals when I don't have access to my students, our routine, our schedule, our laughter, our... us-ness. It's not pretty. 

5) Though I'm a kindergarten teacher, I would love to do read alouds for upper-elementary and middle school students.  The Girl Who Drank the Moon would be the first book I would read and record for middle schoolers if I had the opportunity.

*****

I hope you're well, and that your friends and family and co-workers and neighbors are experiencing good health while exercising good judgment.

As for me, Tish-Tish has decided it's time to collaborate and sort through activity pages for next week, and I'm not one who tends to argue with administration.