20-21 Virtual School for Me!

It began Tuesday! 

I sent out a welcome letter Monday night to all the families, set up reminders all over my computer, and was eager to get to it.

Virtual school went well. 

My chief fears were that the technology wouldn't work, most kids wouldn't show up, and/or that whoever did show up stayed silent.

The technology worked save for one big blip I worked around, there were lots of kids, and most of them communicated in some shape or form.

A lot of teachers spent the week on sappy "get-to-know-you" activities" that I hated as a kid. I spent the week on "how to virtual school." We practiced screenshots, alt-tabbing windows, and how to zoom. I had the kids doodling on my screen and then sharing each other's screen so they could doodle on those while in breakout rooms.

"Just don't use what I show you for evil," I said. 

Most listened. One kid had a lot of fun renaming himself as a demon and doing lots of LOL's in the chat for the first day, but he settled down the next!

The big tech blip was when Schoology deleted all of the students in my 4th block. Thankfully, everyone was already in the class. I did a workaround and Schoology "found" everybody a couple hours later or it would have been a disaster. 

"Better this happens on day 2 rather than day 20," I said. "You'd lose a lot of work then. Now, you can laugh about it."

A lot of the kids got a kick out of Aria. Either she likes me or she likes the feel of walking on my keyboard (possibly both).

She flashed her anus to the class multiple times walking across my shoulder and jumping back and forth to the cabinets behind me.

I tried not to touch her as much as I could (allergies!), but whenever I had to remove her she jumped back up a second later.

I felt good about the week, but it was exhausting. I spent hours each morning building my materials and then sat on Zoom for 4.5 more hours. It was easier in that it was less time I would have physically been at work, but it was harder in that I like to be at work moving around and social. That energizes me. Being trapped at a computer talking to a screen does not. It drains me.

Speaking of draining, our internet is going to be a problem. Virtual school is blowing through our metered internet quotas.

We get 100 GB a month. That averages to 3.33 GB a day most months. We normally use well below that, but we noticed a big spike day 1. We wrote down "32.4 GB"  Thursday morning and we were at 39 GB after school ended (6.6 GB). 

We only had 3.5 days of school and we're nearly halfway through our internet for the month. 

Zoom has to be the big culprit (4.5 hours minimum for me and 3 hours minimum for Shane), but all of my grades, materials, and communications come through the computer, as well.

Carrie's already started researching supplemental options. I asked my principal if the County offered any support, but there was nothing we qualified for.

It's nothing insurmountable. I've got options. The cost will be comfort and convenience. I may have to drive to Shane's school to use their wifi and teach a class from the car. It's a much further drive, but I could also drive to my real life school and use the internet there. I'd rather be at home if I have to be virtual, but you do what you have to do.

One week down. Eight more weeks until 1st quarter ends. The County *might* start to switch to a hybrid model then, but we won't know until October.

I'll need to keep converting materials and think about how to attack things next week over the weekend. I slipped in a little content already, but the pacing guide is really tight. We're building the plane as we fly it.