COVID 19 - The Coronavirus: Virtual School Update

Virtual School has taught me a lot. 

First and foremost, it's taught me what it's like to teach virtually 

To interact with someone online only feels like interacting with their shadow. It's them, but it's not the real them. The shadow can wildly fluctuate based on the angle and the light and in the darkest moments it vanishes.

I've thought about being a virtual educator/professor before. This period of forced online education has given me a free sample of what it might be like. 

Would I still do it? Maybe. It'd have to be part time rather than full time, the right subject, the right students, and the right pay!

So I guess that means, "Highly unlikely."

I've been working hard and earning my money. In some ways it's a lot less work (content creation, commute, hours spent in school, grading), but it also drains me more because I don't get to experience the parts of my job that reward and energize me as much (the relationships, working through problems, dawning comprehension, free food when someone puts cookies in the breakroom, etc).

A lot of the other things I've been learning have been about the how's. How do I run a lesson online? How do I run a PLC meeting online? How do I try to connect to students who don't respond? How am I supposed to use this tool to do this thing?

The line really blurs with everything being at home. I played a game with Matt and Patrick last night. As the game ended, I got an email from a student who I hadn't heard from in weeks. I stopped everything and made sure my reply was buzzing in his hands before he could put down his cellphone. 

I spent the next half an hour going back and forth. The kid was working and putting up barb wire fencing, so he wanted to talk at 5 PM the next day. 

After that, I crawled into bed. 

It's May 12th as I write this. That's how far behind I am!

Shane only managed to interrupt me twice while I was writing. He came running out of his room loud while Carrie is sleeping on the couch. He wanted me to stop everything and look up something on MegaMan X2 (I didn't). He came out again 5 minutes later after I told him "I'm trying to finish this and it's going well!" He spent the next two minutes two chairs down from me, chased the cat into the chair next to me, and just tapped me on my arm to say, "Where'd you get that cow?"

I answered a few work emails mid-composition, too.......and thus, that's why I'm behind. Emails are shorter and I can fire one off in between Shane-terruptions.