Teachers in 2020.
What a summer break, unlike any ever before. Just so you know, my summer break is coming to an end. As a teacher, I have some online training that I need to get done and they are asking us to go back next week. The good news is that we have been given the option to stay home and do our teacher training online for our teacher work days (or go up in person and sit in our classrooms doing the online training). Thank goodness!
But that's still lots of work for me to do. With so much in up in the air, with parents choosing either online or in-person school for their kiddos, the school districts have been thrown into chaos. The schools had to throw out the master schedules and are redoing all of the assignments for which teachers are going to teach which classes and which students will end up in those class sections with different teachers, etc.
Locally, here in Texas, I saw the rhetoric being used by school districts. While they wanted to qualify that they cannot guarantee anyone's safety from the pandemic, the rhetoric clearly made the online learning options sound much worse for students and for teachers (when given the choice). Despite that rhetoric, I was one of the teachers who volunteered for teaching online.
Admin has said they are surprised that more than half of the students at most of the schools around here have signed up for online learning. That means more shuffling around than they realized they would have to do.
At this point, I don't know what courses I will be teaching for the school year, but we will be getting started soon. That means I will need to spend the first 2 weeks of August kicking it into high gear figuring out what school will be like for the year and what they are going to assign to me. During the 2nd half of August students will be doing online classes, no matter what they signed up for when their families were given the choice. As of now, we are scheduled to begin in-person classes about a week into September (for those students who signed up for that; the rest of them will continue online).
I've enjoyed doing the mostly daily Personal Log (PLOG) during the summer, but I think it's time to switch to a weekly system. Maybe on Sundays? That will free up my time to focus on my work, but it should also give me more to talk about with each weekly entry. We will see what happens. Just like with the school system, it's all up in the air now. I'll be happy to go with the flow. Who knows, maybe I'll miss the daily therapeutic writing and come back to it sooner, rather than later?
In the meantime, I'll keep organizing the Lego, playing some Minecraft, and maybe even get back to that Sims 3 family Legacy Challenge I started this summer. I'll keep reading books too, especially being around (virtually or in-person) my fellow teachers.
Take care. Seriously. If you've been reading this, know that I appreciate you. It's nice sharing my thoughts.
Be safe out there and I'll be safe at home (as much as I can, but - OH MY GOODNESS - I'm going to have to go back out into the world). OH MY. I've just been getting the mail and putting out the trash. I'm actually going to have to go out into the world in August. Ok. I can do this...
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