Back after Six Months!

 Wow, it's good to be back. I had no idea how much I missed my kiddos until I watched them playing at afternoon recess, laughing and talking as they hit a volleyball around a socially distanced circle. 

The days/weeks leading up to the first day of school were not fun. It's always an adjustment going from summer freedom to school structure, but with all the restrictions and regulations we have to follow this year with covid, it was even worse. 

But school went really well today! My six students are peachy and do what they're supposed to when they're supposed to. One boy had a little trouble staying in his area, but overall they did good. They wore their masks, used their hand sanitizer, raised their hands, asked good questions... It was great. We didn't finish everything I wanted to today, but I always overplan just in case. We can always do it tomorrow. 

Lunch was interesting. Our cook brought us our lunch in takeout containers on a cart. Milks were separate, plus there was disposable silverware. We all ate at our desks and got a break from wearing the masks. It takes some getting used to, wearing them all day. I've had to wear them at my summer jobs, but you can take the mask off when you're the only one around, so I haven't had to wear them for hours at a time. And I haven't had to constantly talk while wearing one. This morning we discussed building stamina in reading for Daily 5. At lunch when we could all take our masks off, one boy said, "Wow, I'm glad I can take my mask off. It's not that bad for a little while, but... Miss H! We need to build stamina with our masks too!" 😊 Proud teacher moment!

Since I was putting off school stuff for as long as possible, I only prepped my lessons for the first day. I always do a lesson plan outline for a week at a time the week prior to teaching it, then go through the plan over the weekend in detail to make sure all the pieces are ready to go. So I have my week plan, but I need to polish W-F's lessons. That's my priority for after school. Tonight I have a Homeownership Counseling webinar starting at 5:30, so I need to use my time at school wisely! I was good last night and went to bed on time. Let's see how long I can keep that up! I'm feeling positive.

Beef Article Update

I'm not sure if I'm going to keep posting this summer. Normally I don't, but with the world in a strange place from COVID-19, perhaps I will post every once in a while. Once a week maybe?

This morning I got an email from a parent (don't worry, it's good this time). I had forwarded the anti-beef Jr. Scholastic article to her. This parent sent me the link of an article the popular beef blogger, Amanda Radke, had written in response to Jr. Scholastic. I had emailed Amanda to let her know about the article and she'd said she'd be writing a post about it. She even used some of my facts in her post! You can read Amanda's article here.

Grades are coming along. Still waiting on three kids to wrap up their work. I'm still missing a bunch of text books. It's a strange feeling to have all of these things to do to wrap up the year, but I have to wait on other people to do them...

0!

Today was a mix of productivity and nonproductiveness. My first morning of summer vacation started off well; I crossed a bunch of things off my to-do list right away. A parent had asked to drop assignments off at school at 10:30, which I agreed to, and she was in a talkative mood when she arrived at 10:45. She stayed until 12:45. The things we discussed were good though. That pretty much killed the day's productivity.

I ate lunch, sent messages to parents/students what late work I was missing from them. This weekend I had sorted through all the papers dropped off on Friday. I was pleasantly surprised at how few things I was missing. My 7-8th graders who were behind turned everything in! Only one student needs to drop things off and she's getting them to me tomorrow. My class was not as great... about half the students still need to hand things in. Three of them have a bunch (one kid told me he threw all his papers away because his dad said he didn't need them any more). Two only have one or two assignments to turn in. I'm hoping they'll get them to me tomorrow.

At 3pm we had our last staff meeting of the year. Mrs. L forgot and was in town getting groceries, so she sat in her car and we kept her on speaker phone for the meeting. It's kind of good that she did forget, because while Mr. E tried to get a hold of her, I read the agenda and realized it was my turn for devotions! Oops. Thankfully, I have a few devotions saved on my computer and I had just enough time to find one. Whew! That was close.

After our staff meeting, Mr. D had a question about spelling books and we talked for a while. By then it was 5:15. I wrapped up my day by cleaning out the last two student desks in my room. Their crates will go home Friday. At home, I went for a walk; the weather was perfect, just a little cool with a slight breeze and crisp air. After supper I started filling out report cards for the kids who've turned everything in. I still have a lot on my list, but things are starting to get crossed off!

1!

My kids said this one was too easy. Oh well, it's the last day. We finished Where the Red Fern Grows without going over time today. I just teared up a little; I didn't full out cry! Yesterday I went through two tissues during read aloud.

This morning got off on a bit of a rough start. I got to school five minutes before class was supposed to start (not great, but doable to start class on time). But as I unpacked my bag, I realized I forgot my school laptop at home. My desktop doesn't have a camera or mic, so I wouldn't be able to have class. I was about to message my students saying class would start late when I remembered the broken laptop someone returned to school a month ago. The screen is cracked and parts are dark, but it has a camera and mic! So I quick started it and logged on. But Microsoft Teams wasn't installed. Okay, just sign on via the website. That worked just fine for most of the morning.

Even though we're ending the year virtually, I tried to make it a little special by doing a class Kahoot for science. Everyone had joined in the game, so I went to share my screen and discovered that you can't screenshare while using Teams on their website (at least when your browser is Microsoft Edge, I think Chrome would allow it). So. What to do. Try to use my desktop to run Kahoot and make everyone re-join a new game? Quick download Teams on the laptop while they wait? I decided to download Teams while we did highs and lows. One kid had the great idea to do highs and lows of the year. A lot of them said Camp Omega as a high, virtual learning as a low. My high is that we read a lot of good books this year and my low is we couldn't do the musical.

The 7-8th graders convinced Mr. E to have 5-8th grade trivia. I make a class that had all 20 of them, plus Mr. E and me. Then while they did their last day of math, I speedily made a Kahoot. I was just going to do random trivia, but then I had the brainstorm to do trivia of our school. I took pictures of places around school, teacher desks, kids' cubby areas, etc. and asked which room/teacher they belong to. Other questions involved our school theme, mascot, name of Christmas program, field trips we did earlier in the year, how long teachers have been here. Since I put it together, Mr. E could play! He started off okay because he'd helped me come up with some of the questions. But he didn't do so hot on the 'guess this teacher's desk' questions.

My favorite quote of the day was for the question about Mrs. L's desk. Before I took the picture she made me wait while she cleared everything off so it looked neater. The first thing the 7-8th graders said when they saw the picture was, "oh, look, she must've cleaned it." 🤣

It was really fun and made our last day a little more festive. It was the bit of levity we all needed. My kids have been working really hard to get all their work done. Some have been slacking on their daily work and now they're facing the consequences. I've heard from a few parents that their kids are having meltdowns and panic attacks at home. Sigh. That's not what I want to have happen. We've extended deadlines for those kids to hopefully ease some of the stress. I will be really glad when this year gets officially wrapped up. We are having one more pick-up day next Friday for families to get their report cards and everything else that might have been left at school.

2!

So close! A lot of my students have told me they are almost done with their to-do lists! A few said memory work today and are officially finished with memory for the year. Others have done calls with me to go over questions about assignments or have requested copies of certain assignments they've misplaced. I hate reprinting things for them, so it's nice to be able to send it and make them worry about reprinting it.

Two kids still haven't sent me their bible verse word pictures for the nursing home card. I'm being buggy about it because I want to finish it! They keep telling me, "Oh yeah, today, when our dad comes home we'll do it."

A few students want me to keep/return their graded papers. The majority said, "Eh, toss them." I was hoping everyone would say toss them so I don't have to sort them again. Oh well. It shouldn't take too long.

It's really nice out! I think it's finally safe to take the plastic off my porch. This is the latest I've ever kept it on and the plastic is getting dingy and ripped in places. But I wanted to baby my plants a little, so it stayed on. My lilacs are blooming and they make my whole porch smell lovely.

3!

It was the last day of class with the 7-8th graders. We played a Kahoot review game as a class, which was fun. A bit anticlimactic. They thought so too. They asked if we could have another Kahoot game just for fun on Friday, and maybe the 5-6th graders should join in too. And Mr. E. So, they're going to bring it up with him in class tomorrow.

I actually only have live class for one hour tomorrow. The 5-6th graders and I wrapped up the Civil War today, so they get the day off tomorrow to catch up on late work. I stayed late at school last night putting together the list of what each person owes me. There were five no-name papers, so I posted a picture on Teams and asked kids to claim them. One boy who is worried about how much he has to finish still tried to claim other students' work. I know his handwriting better than that though. Plus he claimed papers that had already been claimed by others (or a paper he had already turned in). Hmm... nice try buddy.

4!

Well, this has been a busy day. Last night after bible study, I drafted/sent emails to all the US beef organizations I could find and I drafted my email to Junior Scholastic. I wanted to sleep on that one before sending to make sure my wording was just right. This morning I already had responses from a number of people I'd contacted. Many said they were going to take action or would forward my email to the people who could do something. After school today I contacted a few more beef people/organizations I found on Facebook (Peterson Farm Bros or Farmer Derek anyone?) and I sent my email to Scholastic (after editing it about fifty times). I hope they get a lot of feedback!

Before school, I sorted the papers from Friday's drop day. They're all in piles by assignment. Now I need to go through and check off who has turned their papers in. Then I'll send my students a list of what they're missing for the rest of the year. Whew!