Teaching From Home

I'm teaching from Fulda today, the rest of this week actually. That is one of the perks of virtual learning; you can do it from anywhere. I have everything I need tucked in a crate, plus I have two laptops set up for live class. It helps to have one that I'm teaching from and the other to watch the comments and see if any students have their hands raised. 

The day was pretty typical, though everyone was moving a little slow after a long weekend. The 5-6th graders learned about infectious diseases: yellow fever, chicken pox, measles, and scarlet fever. The 7-8th graders learned about how DNA works. 

It's the last day of NaNo and three students are still a ways off from winning... this is the most kids I've had waiting to the last minute to finish. I'm doing the same... I still have two thousand words to write before midnight tonight. Just a little ways to go!

Virtual Lab

It was a much better day of school today! 

I taught from home since I had packed up all my school books yesterday. One of the kids asked where I was because he didn't recognize my surroundings (I had blurred out the background but they could still tell I wasn't at school). Another girl was visiting her grandma, so her background was different too. Her little cousins came in to see what was going on from time to time. 

We just did religion, read aloud, and our science lab today. A nice, short day before break. We're at the part of Exodus where God gives Moses the 10 commandments and all the other instructions for things the Israelites have to do. We skimmed over most of it, but I showed them pictures of the replica tabernacle I visited a few years ago. 

The science lab was interesting. It was a titration of vinegar/cabbage juice to ammonia. I wasn't sure how it would go because some of the cabbage juice had been sitting out a long time, plus I couldn't control which measuring utensils my class used to put vinegar in the cabbage juice. I gave each of them a pipette to control how much ammonia they added to the solution, but some of them couldn't find the pipette in their packet, so they used a teaspoon instead. That actually worked better because it put more liquid in at a time. The pipettes hold 5ml, but you have to work really hard to get the 5ml in the pipette each time. It usually holds a smaller amount. 

Some of the kids got frustrated with how long it took to turn, so I let them switch to a teaspoon. I figured it's only 5-6th grade science; it won't skew the results that much. One boy accidentally dumped the cabbage juice in the ammonia instead of vinegar, so he had to do his experiment 'backwards' and get it to turn from green to red. I could tell he was frustrated, but at the end of the lab he said he still had fun. 

No class with the 7-8th graders today! We did double class yesterday so we wouldn't have to meet. 

The Christmas program planning meeting last night went well. We decided to pare down most of the program. We'll keep the bible school parts the same, the congregation will sing all the hymns, and school families can sign up to read the bible verses about Jesus's birth. They'll have to come to church to be videotaped and our AV coordinator will tape/put the videos together. So, more work upfront for Mrs. L and me, but overall less work for both of us. If not enough families sign up, the congregation will do responsive readings with the speaking parts. There are only 11 speaking parts, so there's a good chance we will only be missing a few parts. I'm not super optimistic about families signing up to do speaking parts, but I could be wrong! 

The other topic of discussion was how many services to have. One person thought we might need three services to space the people out. I don't think there's going to be nearly as many people, especially if school children don't need to be there. I think we could probably have one service and be fine. But we're going to start with two and see how much of a response there is. People have to sign up ahead of time to reserve a spot; up to 150 people can be at each service. There will be one the Sunday afternoon before Christmas and one Christmas Eve. If there are so many people signing up, we'll have a third one Wednesday night. The plan is to videotape one of the services and put it out for people to watch at home, which makes me even more sure we won't need a third service. 

Frustrating

Today was a frustrating day, all around. :/ 

A friend stayed over at my house last night, but accidentally locked her keys in her car and realized this at 6am. Thankfully that was soon enough to get a tow truck to come rescue her before she had to leave for work. 

During class, school's internet quit working for five minutes, so I was kicked off the Teams call with my class and had to wait around for it to turn back on. 

At school, I found out that two kids don't have their cabbage juice because their parents didn't pick it up at packet pick-up day yesterday. This is extra frustrating because they need it for a lab tomorrow and because yesterday I sent a text reminder to all the parents (with a picture) saying they needed to grab a bottle of purple cabbage juice along with their packet. Sigh. Thankfully, both families made arrangements to pick up the juice today, so we'll be all set for tomorrow. 

Class with the 7-8th graders was fine, but some of them had a hard time following along on the worksheet or their internet made the screen glitchy so they couldn't read it. After class, I emptied the folders with their homework in it. There are quite a few who didn't turn in spelling or other late work. One of the 6th graders didn't finish the back page of her lab, so I'll have to return that to her to fix. Grr... frustrating.

Full Day

Whew, today was a packed one. There's no school tomorrow, so today was our Friday. Kids said memory, did spelling tests, worked on their nanos... the usual. With Thanksgiving next week, I wanted to do extra planning this week to be prepared. We're having parent pickup days on Sundays, and since I'll be out of town, I needed to get my packets ready today. 

First, I had to plan my lessons, then figure out what I wanted to print and send home. The 7-8th graders were pretty easy, so I did them first. I couldn't remember which worksheets I'd already sent home, and none of the students responded to my messages about it, so I just printed and sent all of them. Hopefully there aren't doubles. I knew I should've written down which ones I sent. I did a better job keeping track this time. 

The 5-6th graders have another lab they need to do; this one involves red cabbage juice (actually a purple color). I made the juice yesterday. Today I bottled it up for each kid in a plastic water bottle. Some students don't have ammonia at home, so I had to bottle that up too. I used empty bottles from the recycling bin (I washed them first). Thankfully I had just enough! They're on a tray at the drop zone labeled with each student's name. I forgot to leave plastic bags down there in case parents need a way to carry all the stuff.

I had planned to go walking with Mrs. B, but my packet-making took too long. I did get most of my lessons planned and looked over up to the week after Thanksgiving. After that, I went over to church for bible study and helped Pastor get his chapel message video uploaded to YouTube. I'm not very familiar with making videos on YouTube, but I think we got it set up so he just has to click a few buttons to film next time. Hopefully that will make it easier to do!

Lab

 Oh man our read aloud book is putting my kids through the wringer! It’s all about yellow fever, so you know someone close to the main character is going to get sick. Well, today the mom got sick. She had so many close calls with death, my kids kept typing their dismay in the chat. Things like: Nooooooo! Crying sad faces, She can’t die! Wait, what?!?!, etc. 

Then, to top things off, the grandpa gets sick! And that happens while they’re trying to leave town. My kids wanted to keep reading because they had to find out if the grandpa makes it. So we read one more chapter and he lived through that one, so we stopped there. Little do they know, the main character is going to collapse from the fever in the next chapter. Good thing I didn’t read another chapter! 

The 5-6th graders did their first at home lab today. It was all about finding the pH of liquids, or if something is an acid or a base. The lab actually went really well. It took a while for everyone to get everything ready, but once we were ready, the lab went fast. We used vinegar as our control acid, and we used bleach for our control base. That was not a great idea; the bleach bleached the litmus paper and turned it white. So the one girl who used ammonia instead had better results. Our next lab involves ammonia again, so I might have to send that liquid home in the drop packets. I already have to send cabbage juice along (it’s an acid-base indicator). 

Fake Powerpoint

 Waaay fewer tech issues today, thankfully. It was a pretty typical virtual learning day. A bunch of my kids wanted to know if we're coming back to school in person; I still don't have an answer for them. The 5-6th graders learned about the civil war and towards the end we had a discussion about the confederate flag... that was interesting. I have students on completely opposite sides of the issue. Thankfully, we were able to keep it neutral and explain both sides' points of view kindly. 

Read aloud was extra fun today! (When is it not?) There are a bunch of unfamiliar objects mentioned in the story since it's historical fiction, so I just pick a student (or one volunteers) to search for pictures of the things mentioned. We learned that savory is a kind of herb. Hoe cakes are basically smallish pancakes or johnnycakes. There were banks back in 1793, but there was a run on the bank that year (maybe cause by the fever??? we're still debating that) and people didn't always trust them. Pepperpot is a kind of soup, hot corn is a dish of seasoned corn you can eat, and a mangle is a thing to wring water out of clothes. There were so many pictures in the chat, my students said it was just like doing a powerpoint! I love it.

Tech Troubles

 Boy, I needed a lot of patience today... Lots of tech issues. One family has struggled with super slow internet this week. Their videos have been grainy and the kids say the reverse is true too. The 7th grader said the top half of a slide will load (when I'm screen sharing), but the bottom half will be pixelated for about 30 seconds or so before loading clearly. No one else had those troubles. 

The 5-6th graders are prepping for a lab they can do at home. It involves dunking litmus paper in various liquids. We read over the lab today as a class so they know what to do when we try it on Wednesday. One girl couldn't find her lab. We were doing Lab 4; she could only find Lab 5. 

"I don't have it Miss H!"
"Well, that's very strange because I sent it home in the same packet as the other one."
"But it's not here! I looked everywhere!"
"Hmm, I'm not sure what to tell you."
"Maybe you could send me a digital version of the lab?"
"Sure. I'll do that after class."

After class, she messaged me, "I found it; it was in my hands the whole time." 🤦 At least she used a semicolon properly! (That was our English minilesson for the day).

This week is parent teacher conferences. We're doing them virtually this year, so I opened up my schedule all week. I had two tonight, one tomorrow, one Wednesday, and two parents that haven't signed up yet. Since their kids know how to use Teams, Mr. E and I are doing conferences through Teams. That worked really slick. The kids can help their parents get set up, I can message them when I'm ready, they can message back, we can video chat securely, no problems. Both of them tonight were super short, less than five minutes a piece. It was great.

In between video conferences, I had a Habitat meeting (also virtual). Last month, I was selected to receive a Habitat for Humanity House! Each month we have a meeting about home ownership and the hour we spend is credited to our 'sweat equity' on the house. There were a bunch of safety videos we had to watch in preparation for working on a dig site. I finished two of them and have four more to go. 

While watching the videos, I saw I had an email from Pastor/the worship planning committee about some of the songs in the Christmas program. I'm not sure if we can even do the Christmas program the way we have it planned if we switch to virtual learning after Thanksgiving break. Both Mankato and Nicollet are going virtual from November 30th through mid-January. There have been a lot of covid cases in our area (which seems to be true all over the place). New Ulm however, has made no announcement about shutting down. That makes it a harder decision for our school since we'll only have half busing if we keep going in person. I thought it was a done deal that we'd be going virtual after break, but apparently no official decision has been made. The New Ulm superintendent hasn't contacted Mr. E back to let him know their thoughts, which makes it harder for us to decide what to do. Sigh. What a mess.

And then, a parent texted me that her daughter's computer (a new laptop she just picked up from school tonight to replace one with a very badly cracked screen she'd previously been using) showed an error screen when turned on. 

Okay. Let's call the IT guys.
No answer.
Okay, let's text the IT guys and come up with a backup plan.
Ten minutes later...
Praise the Lord, he actually texted back! And better yet he got it working again! 

Hopefully that's all the tech troubles we'll have for a while...