I have finally settled into a routine for teaching. Every other Friday I go to my classroom and prepare my students two weeks worth of schoolwork. I set out the packets for each student on their desks and a well prepared schedule/agenda to go with it. Every Tuesday I Zoom (is that a verb now?) with my First Graders and we have an hour long writing class. Fridays I Zoom with all my students for story time, to keep in touch with everyone and give them a chance to connect with their friends. This is the ideal goal....
However,
I have a student who I haven't heard hyde nor hair of since the beginning of the apocalypse and his work sits on his desk just waiting by its lonesome to get picked up. My first Zoom class was basically trying to figure out the ins and outs of leading a class that way and my second one was me reading a story while half of my students (and their siblings 😊) giggled while making faces at each other. I cracked up a little myself as the whole thing was just so surreal. I tried to channel my six year old self from the early 1980's envisioning story time with my teacher on a live computer screen. If someone told me then, that that is how school would be in the year 2020, I would have thought it was just an unlikely scene from Back to the Future.
Next time I am going to tell the kids to bring their drinks, call it "Capri Sun Hour" tell everyone "Cheers!" as I hold up my own:
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| https://www.facebook.com/pg/The-Brass-Lantern-115804898448954/about/?ref=page_internal |
On the home front schooling is like me asking my kids if they've brushed their teeth: they say yes, I say smile, they do, I say BS go brush them!! Where did I go wrong?! Can I rent an Asian mom who can "motivate" my kids to be self-starting A+ earning, musical instrument playing students for another month? (sorry for the stereotyping, but seriously!!)
I did, however, educate them on the importance of knowing their rights and how to make their voices heard when they feel their freedoms being trampled upon:
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| Washington State Capitol 4/19/20 |
...And then I educated them on how to handle backlash from people who think differently than they.
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| Late night dinner and break from moving. |
Thursday evening at 7:30 pm, the boys got the notion to switch bedrooms with the girls. They were convinced it was a good idea and that it had to be done right THEN. I sat back and said, "Ok, if you don't want to wait until tomorrow, you are going to do it all by yourselves then because I'm tired!" So they began....
At 1:30 AM I tightened the last bolt on the fourth bed that had to be taken apart and put back together.
To their credit, they did most of it. I just had to lend a hand to speed things up so I could get to sleep.
With many of Sam's Senior year's momentous events cancelled his stepmom has decided to throw a "Prom" at their house. So Sam was intent on doing a "Promposal". I guess the invite is as important as the prom itself these days (maybe it always was?). That boy ordered some candles and light up balloons on Amazon and made a trip to Walmart for sign making materials and got to work! He devised a plan and worked it all out with his girlfriend's mom. I drove him to the dock down the road from her house, helped him decorate and waited for nightfall. It was pretty adorable.
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| I'm thinking his marriage proposal is going to be one heck of an event! |
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| She said "Yes!" |
The week ended with dinner and game night with the girls and a good friend. This week began today with going to a Mass offered privately by our priest. I can say I am truly blessed. Writing about a week that seemed monotonous and lazy makes me recognize that it was actually full of grand moments, moments that I might not have treasured if we were still living the 'old normal'. I still long for normalcy but vow not to let the day-to-day blur my vision and make me blind to the small but grand moments that make up life.
