Teachers (and friends of teachers!) Check-in for 8/9-8/16

Back f2f full time still.

I dragged my dh in last night to arrange my desks and measure for shields on my desk and table. The desks fit bit what a pain they will be.

I don't have a class list yet. Some of the schedule has changed. Not a huge deal. Normally. The changes would make me crazy but this will all be a mess.

Saw the cafeteria new arrangement. It works. I noticed our paper towel boxes at the student sinks were down. Curious to see what they race them with. The towel dispensers are still in classrooms. I'm also wondering where the water b bottle fillers will go. We only have one hallway water fountain in the building. The fountains in our sinks are covered. Guess they could use the faucet. I don't drink school water.

This year will be the fewest number of days I've been in to prepare. No open house makes it a bit easier.

Teachers go back virtually 8/24, students return virtually 9/8 and scheduled to be 100% online until at least 10/18. The district is working with parents of special ed and other high-risk students to have on-campus learning where possible. I suspect the extra late start has to do not only with the infection/positivity rate in our area, but also the difficulty of obtaining PPE, cleaning supplies, plexiglass shields, etc. for a district with 284 schools and 215,000 students. But boy, are some parents mad, and they're being very ugly about it online. It's been very demoralizing to the teachers in this area.

Our county's positivity rate has been slowly dropping, but the ICUs are still full to overflowing, and the state's positivity rate was a whopping 19% this past week. Good times.

I've been told I'll be required to provide an hour of music instruction per grade level, per week - I have a specific hour each day where I'm required to be live and teaching (125 students simultaneously in one grade level, six grade levels) or providing a combination of video instruction, live instruction/availability and independent work where I'm available on Teams for questions. I'm also required to take a grade from each student each week, so that's roughly 750 items to grade and input per week. Unclear how we're going to fit six grade levels into a five-day rotation. Should be fun!

Anyone who thinks that teachers are lazy or not working hard during this time needs to have their head examined. It would be much easier for me to be in a classroom with students.

We are headed back with a hybrid model. One group Monday/Thursday, one Tuesday/Friday, with alternating Wednesdays. So kids will be at school for 3 days one week and 2 days the following. I’ve served on the district planning committee and it’s been a good experience - upper level admin seems to truly have best interest of all in mind. I’m curious to see the expectations for what is to be posted for kids to work on on their at home days - that should be coming soon. Teachers report next Monday and kids come the week of 8/31.

Can we talk clothes? I am not a huge jeans person (I usually wear them on Fridays, but not usually other days). I did just get some black pants from athleta that I think can go either “athleisure” or dressed up a bit. What have you heard regarding dress code for this year?

School starts on the 17th. We have three choices for learning: face to face, 9 week commitment to being virtual, or 3 weeks virtual(because of county health guidlines) and then either go face to face or continue with virtual. At my elementary school, about half of each grade level 2-5 is going to virtual, with one teacher per grade level being the on-line teacher. Kinder and first are mostly face to face. Of my 17 resource and inclusion students, 6 of them will be virtual. I found out Friday, that I won't be teaching both virtual and on line...thank goodness. One of the other resource teachers will be virtual. I will be doing face to face teaching.

We've been in virtual trainings since 7/29. We had 4 days of "buy back" at our per diem. Then 8/5 we started contract days. My district moved the 3 PD days that are spread thru the year to 8/7, 8/10, 8/11. We were supposed to start 8/7. We were still training that day.

8/10 and 8/11 we are passing out books and chromebooks.

8/12 we start fully remote. We have a home study option in my district and about 140 kids are doing that. It is "flexible" in that if a parent decides it's not for them and there is room they can move into remote/in person, whichever we are doing at the time. If parents find remote/in person isn't working for them and there is room in the home study option they can move to that. If there are no openings, they cannot move.

I have 32 kids in my 1st/2nd period and 31 in my 3rd/4th period. I was emailed late friday that I should expect to get ANOTHER new student. I THINK we are capped at 33 for distance learning but not sure. I only have 1 kiddo who is doing home study. I do not have to teach that. We have dedicated teachers for it. I'm SO thankful for that!

I have to teach from my room daily 8-2:30, my school aged child cannot come with me. My first class is 8:15-9, second is 9:15-10. After that I will be support and online as needed for the kids to get help. They can initiate a meet for me to attend assuming my calendar is available for them. Need to figure out how to do that one. We do not have a MOU in place so we are going to be working the rule. I will be there at 7:30 (like normal) and be done at 2:30 (normal time). I will not be replying to emails/communications unless they are emergencies outside of that time. Grading will not be done outside of that time. I will most likely be recording math videos until 3 or 3:30 since I need to do those for my flipped classroom.

Maybe work on musical opposites with PreK - faster/slower, louder/softer, same/different, etc. - and of course steady beat. Lots of listening and movement for form and expression. That is roughly what I'll be doing with kindergarten - I don't have PreK in this school.

Are you allowed to leave an activity sheet with the teacher for them to do as a lesson wrap-up and a way for you to assess?

They probably want to start now to get as much in person schooling in before everyone has to shut down again. Because I fully believe that's coming. 

As far as a dress code, we can wear jeans whenever we want. We just can’t wear workout clothes or shorts (except on special days).

In the teacher FB groups I’m in, a lot of teachers are saying they’re going to wear scrubs. The thinking is that that we’re going to have to wash our clothes with hot water and bleach, and we don’t want to ruin our good clothes. But is that really necessary? Do I have to wash my clothes in hot water and bleach? If warm water and soap kills covid on my hands, won’t it kill it in the washing machine, too? I think really they just want to make a point—if you’re going to expect us to act like nurses, we’re going to dress like nurses.

I don’t want to buy or wear scrubs. If anything, I’ll get a bunch of cheap leggings and tunics.

Around here (northwestern Illinois) the talk is all about "when" the shut down happens, not "if." And then how long it will last.

And yes, how many positive cases happen before then.

That's how we are feeling.

You can also incorporate clapping games or guessing games where you play a sound and have the kids guess what it is.  Our kids also like to draw to the music, like really fast and sharp to raucous music and slow and swirling smooth for peaceful music.  Can they do movement activities to music?  Scarf dancing, acting out as animals to song, etc?  

Dress code - our principal has stated there is no dress code - to be comfy but presentable. He doesn't care if we wear jeans or leggings every day. hopefully no one pushes the envelope on this one.

We started back to teacher inservice in person last Monday. We have one more week of inservice and then the kids start 8/17. 40% of our students chose to do virtual. We only expected about 25%, so that threw everyone for a loop.

We finally got our job and room assignments on Friday. I will be teaching 100% virtually. I still have a classroom and will be teaching from the building. Now I have to move all my stuff to my new room. I’ve got so much to do!

Schools around me have been postponing because they haven’t gotten the cleaning supplies and PPE in that they’ve ordered. I’m wondering if we will end up delaying too. We definitely could use some extra time to get it all worked out.