Our district leaders met this past summer to plan what the start of school was going to look like. We surveyed families and based on the results our re-opening team decided that since our county was at low risk with regards to COVID cases we could offer families at least their overall 2nd choice – open up schools on hybrid schedule. We opened on Tuesday, September 8, on a hybrid-model schedule. Our school created three cohorts of students, Cohort A coming to school Mondays and Tuesdays, Cohort B coming to school Thursdays and Fridays, and Cohort C, the fully remote learning from home all five days a week group.
At the elementary we lucked out that about one entire third of our classes chose to be remote-only, Cohort C (19 kids in the 6th grade), and that we had teams of three teachers. For the 6th grade, with me teaching Science, Gretchen Berg teaching English Language Arts and Social Studies (ELA/SS), and Mitch Brennan teaching Math we were able to divvy up the kids quite well. Mitch volunteered to be the remote-only teacher having no kids come into this classroom while still being responsible for all the Math curriculum. Gretchen and I, while still being responsible for all the ELA/SS and Science curricula, were the two classroom teachers hosting the Cohort A and B kids. We divided each Cohort into two groups, A1, A2, B1, and B2 giving us 9 to 12 in our classrooms at a time allowing us to keep the kids six-feet apart. In order to minimize moving the kids we each got to work with one group, one day per week for the entire day.
We thought having kids all day would offset only seeing them one day per week. It didn’t. Many kids only worked on our coursework the day they were actually in our class. That being said, the kids were amazingly well-behaved and industrious when in class. Something about being back in school and maybe also being in groups of nine to 12, sitting six-feet apart made for the best behavior I’ve seen in the 29 years I’ve been a teacher before this year. Aside from a few incidences of melting down and aside from some off task behavior and/or work just not getting done even in class when looking busy (not new btw), kids were kind and willing to engage.
Here’s where I started with my Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday schedule (repeating the same thing all week) having only worked with, and seeing, each small cohort 12 times in 12 weeks! In essence, I had worked for under two weeks with each kid in three months.
Gretchen and I built in time for kids to work on Math since Mitch was doing all his Math work online. Mitch would record daily videos getting kids started on their daily work and Gretchen and I were able to follow along and help kids who were in our room. Since two cohorts were always at home (Cohort C who worked from home five-days/week plus whichever cohort was not in school at the time) Mitch could answer any brief questions while Gretchen and I were teaching. So Gretchen and I never had to deal with the online kids during the day! The downside of that was all the work we had to review and provide feedback to after our face-to-face kids went home.
Every day after our in class kids went home, we still had to contend with any questions that Mitch could not answer as well as check any work submitted by the kids working from home. Cohort C, who had to do all their work at home required the most support in the form of detailed feedback and recorded videos. Thankfully we were given Wednesdays without students to record our asynchronous video lessons. We were also available to help kids who had questions, of course, but it was nice to have time to prepare for the next cohort coming on Thursday. I was able to review Cohort B’s work and better prepare for them on Thursday, for B1, and Friday, for B2. I still had quite a bit of prep work to do on Sundays to be ready for A1 on Monday, and A2 on Tuesday plus we were expected to drop assignments and information for parents by Monday morning at 8 am on Bloomz.
This is why I have not taken any time to reflect on my blog. I got to school ever day just after 7 am and I wouldn’t get home until after 5 pm, sometimes after 6 pm, while often still needing to check on things to make sure I was ready for the next day. I still find it amazing that I could get to work an hour and 40 minutes before kids start walking in my room and not only was that hour and 40 minutes not always enough but I still felt compelled to work late just so I wouldn’t fall behind. I want to respond to student questions right away if possible and I want to provide them feedback on their work as quickly as I can. Feedback is best when it is timely after all. So even if kids in my classroom were working so diligently that I was able to review the work of online kids, it was never enough. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have the kids in front of me and have the at-home kids joining us via Zoom or Meet. I thought I was going to have to do that and thought that I could do that but now I think that it would be too hard to attend to both!
I was pretty scared so I bought two extra lab coats and two sets of scrubs. Yes, actual scrubs. Every day I would come home by the side door and put my clothes in the laundry then shower. It helped me and my family feel safe. My wife had to leave her job due to the pandemic and my daughter was able to do all her running start college work from home so I was the only risk aside from weekly grocery shopping. And yes, I did shave my hair down to a quarter of an inch to make life a bit easier including not having to shower in the morning as well as in the in the evening.
Once November hit, and it got cold, those scrubs, even with the lab coat, just weren’t enough so I started to wear my regular winter clothes. I used the scrubs and lab coats for just over two full months.
Halfway through June I made my list of 10 things I wanted to make sure I did when this school year started. Then near the end of July I updated that list with a new and improved list of things to do for sure. From my original list, I tried to make connections with my students. It was much easier with my face-to-face kids, as was expected, but it was more difficult than expected with the remote-only kids. Mitch, being the remote teacher, got to meet with the remote-only kids every day. Gretchen and I didn’t even get that much time to work with, much less connect with, our face-to-face kids. Working with kids one day a week was not enough and now that we get to Zoom with kids twice a day, eight times a week, it’s nice to see them everyday but now we are dealing with 40 to 50 kids at a time. That also makes it difficult to connect with kids.
I did manage to do the rest of the items on that to do list. With regards to my July planning ideas, things went way better than I thought with kids being six-feet apart and wearing masks all day. Sixth graders are old enough that wearing masks all day went remarkably well. A few kids here and there needed reminders to cover their noses but overall they were great. The weirdest part was seeing their photos or seeing them on Google Meet and Zoom WITHOUT masks because I only ever knew them WITH masks! Their faces looked so strange! LOL Aside from my fear of the virus, working with kids was great and as I mentioned above, they were wonderful. Talking was not an issue and class discussions were respectful and enjoyable. The part that took me most by surprise was how quiet kids often were when I would give them time to work on something I had just shared or explained.
I have to admit, I was relieved when the call was made to go fully remote but I was at the same time sad to not have that one day a week with each of the four small groups of hybrid kids. Just like in the spring, I left like I didn’t have enough time with kids to prepare them to be independent workers at home. No amount of preparation can help a kid who is home alone able to do anything they want or able to help a kid who is so busy taking care of their younger siblings that they don’t have the time to do school work.
Next I’ll share how I made use of having kids all day by incorporating our Ocean Guardian School Environmental Stewardship Project into our daily activities.
