Today was a day of preparation. Rosol for tomorrow; lots of cleaning; a bit of discussion.
Tomorrow is the Boy's first communion. We're having the god-parents and their families over for dinner tomorrow after Mass.
Prep
Month: August 2020
Boston Diner
Stop Everything
How do you plan for elearning without computers? It's a paradox -- an oxymoron, even. You can't do it any more than you can have a book-free book club or a cycling club with members who don't own bikes.
Nevertheless, I spent the day trying to do just that. And when I'd come up with something that wasn't entirely meaningless but not critical for students to complete, the AP comes in my room and tells me, "Don't hate me. I just found out that all the lesson plans for next week will be supplied by the district." It seems there are issues with technology -- Google Classroom, to be specific -- that make any significant rollout next week all but impossible.
What could we do but laugh at that point?
More Surprises
For next week, we're to prepare a week of elearning for the kids. All the students will come in for one class period (for the week), but they'll spend the rest of the time doing elearning at home.
I found out today, though, that I can't make any plans that assume they have computers because they won't be getting their Chromebooks until they come to class that one day. (Never mind that the district set aside this week for students to come in and get their Chromebooks...) So I'm to plan elearning that includes no elearning.
I'm still trying to figure out just how that might work...
Trim
The beard was getting out of hand.
I'd sworn that I wouldn't trim the thing until we went back to school, back to school for good, not in some awkward, inefficient once-a-week/elearning hybrid. Real school.
When I put on a mask, it looked absolutely horrible.
And it left this awful wrinkle in the beard, a little curl that forced the lower part of the beard to shoot straight out, away from my face like a cowlick from hell.
So there was only one thing to do: let L do what she's been begging to do for some time now. "When you trim it, let's put the mask on and the cut around it.
The results, after the initial trim, weren't that promising. I went in and cleaned it up but never got a real "after" picture.
But she enjoyed doing it, and the Boy enjoyed photographing the adventure.
Working with the Dog
The Day After
16
It doesn't seem like that long ago. Yet it does. Worlds away.
Happy 16th anniversary to my one and only love -- I have no idea how you've put up with me this long.
Family Sports
"Can we play some family sports tonight?" the Boy asked during dinner. He's always interested in doing something as a family: a family bike ride, a family film, a game of family soccer. But our busy lives (busy even in this time of pandemic) being what they are, it's rare that we get to play together. Tonight, for example, K had to write an offer on a house for one of her clients, and that takes a fair amount of time. So I went out with the kids and the dog and played some soccer and volleyball with them.
Tonight, the Boy learned a lesson during the game. He'd been bragging to L, insisting that he was a much better soccer player than she. Had the Boy developed fully the critical thinking skills a thirteen-year-old has, he would have looked at relative size, relative experience, and relative speed and thought, "It's unlikely I'm much better than she."
Then again, I've had plenty of thirteen-year-olds challenge me to chess, swear their going to beat me badly, and then ask as soon as the board is set up, "So, how do you play?" that a thirteen-year-old's critical thinking skills can be less than ideal.
So they played. E lost. E fussed. I encouraged. And in the end, instead of giving up, he kept trying, kept attacking, and made some really good plays in the end.
More Questions
We’re meeting with our kids once a week: each class is divided into four groups, with each group meeting on a given day. The other days the students are engaged in online learning or e-learning or whatever it’s called now. So here was my question: how do I plan lessons around that. Two options seemed obvious:
- Teach a special lesson on the day that the kids are with me and something else for the other kids. This seems to make the most of the fact that we’re together, in person. We don’t want to spend that time on activities that don’t need me right there — like reading a short text. We want that time for discussions, for one-on-one help. For things like that.
- Teach the same thing to the kids at home and at school.
Obviously, from the argument I just made, I was leaning toward option one. But then there’s all the potential disasters:
- It will be almost impossible for the kids to keep up with what’s what.
- Forget the kids — it would be tough for me to keep track of who’s where doing what.
- What happens if we have a fire drill or something on that day? Those kids just lose out on that particular lesson.
- What happens at the end of the quarter? Everyone is not at the same place at the same time. How can I equitably grade them?
Yet the second option has similar issues. I have to make sure that the activities are equitably spaced out among the days: I can’t have Monday kids always doing close reading with me and Thursday kids always writing things based on Monday’s close reading. Then there’s the question of how to assess and provide feedback to the kids who were at home that day. Do I come home from school and spend another six hours going over what kids did online?
The argument for e-learning until things to back to normal grows stronger…