Week 1 – March 17 to March 20 (because Monday, March 16, was a student day and most of our students showed up).
School Closure Planning
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13
March 16 was our last day with students. I have to say I panicked. I focused on getting them ready for how they could work from home. I have a very blended classroom so a LOT of my work was already online. In an effort to impress upon my students how easy it would be to continue doing this class work at home, how much they could actually do at home, and how they could really finish the Hydro Dynamics Challenge we had been working on for a couple of weeks already WITHOUT their EV3 robot kits, I ended up doing a LOT of talking. I mean, I was showing but they weren’t doing, they were just watching. One student in my last class of the day had the courage to say it. By the time I stopped talking and let them work and plan with their teammates, I had talked for most of the 80-minute period, and she said so. Yeah, that is embarrassing. I just really wanted to get them ready (and yes, I even included ways for those with no computers and no Internet to keep focused on their Science).
That was Monday, March 16. The last day I would have with my 2019-2020 class of 6th graders and I spent our time together talking about what they could be doing at home for Science like it was no big deal. I was in shock. One student said it perfectly as we were walking down the hall to lunch. He said, “you know, I’m both excited and scared.” Me too. Me too.
March 17, the very next day, union members, including myself, met with the district admin team and we planned what this new teaching paradigm was going to look like. It’s times like these that I am grateful that I work for a small district! I can’t imagine what that meeting would have been like with more people and having to plan for a larger district! One thing that was agreed upon was that I would get to implement the training plan that I proposed!
We pushed out the following survey to prep my three-level online learning training plan (click here if you don’t see the survey below – questions 11 and 12 only showed up for those who answered yes to question 10):
Ten teachers out of the 56 or so teachers K-12 in our district, self-selected as comfortable enough using and integrating technology AND were willing to lead trainings in their buildings. Luckily, between all eleven of us who volunteered to lead small trainings, we had teachers from all three buildings, the primary school, the elementary school, and the jr/sr high school! So while our union members continued to nail down all the details of this new reality with the district admin team, I spent March 18 leading a train-the-trainer session, the Level 3 training I spelled out in my plan. It went very well.
For the most part our elementary and jr/sr high school plans were pretty similar, we would focus on using the tools we had access to and that many teachers were either already using or at least comfortable with – Google, featuring Google Classroom as our Learning Management System (LMS). The primary school used different systems, which makes sense since they work with the youngest of our children. So March 19 I spent the day with a small group of teachers leading a Google Basics workshop. Some teachers were with me physically in my classroom while others joined us virtually via Zoom. Here’s a recording of our Zoom session (it’s long and I didn’t always remember to pause during the quiet moments).
Friday, March 20, I spent the day giving a Level 2 workshop training. Wednesday was our Level 3 training, Thursday was our Level 1 training, and we ended the week with a Level 2 training for those who felt ready for more. Those who were still at Level 1 and not quite ready for more were able to spend the day getting ready to deliver their lessons online using Google Classroom with support from staff who were nearby. Here is the Level 2 workshop agenda with a Zoom recording that pretty much matched the times on the agenda (click here if you can’t see the embedded Google Doc below):
I was so busy planning, meeting, preparing, and leading workshops that I didn’t get a chance to let the reality sink in. I also noticed that I didn’t get a chance to prepare anything new for my students! And I pretty much left them alone at home without checking in! One of the reasons I was able to concentrate fully on helping my fellow teachers prepare for this distance learning was that no parents reached out to me and very few students reached out to me. I’m sure the shock mixed with excitement was just too much and most of our kids just didn’t get any school work done from home.
I get it. And it’s okay.
