School Night Sleepover

Shane and I went to Grandma and Grandpa's to start the week! If virtual school can be done anywhere, why not travel?

Plus, they have great wifi.

We got a chance to see Bucket when we arrived. I think she spent the rest of our visit sleeping!

We arrived late Sunday and spent the night. One of the biggest differences at Grandma and Grandpa's is they like to leave the TV on for background noise. Fox news was discussing the weather.

Flashing lights? Noise? Storms? 

Hypnotized.

I turned the TV off after a little bit and Shane came to.

Shane let slip he hadn't finished some multiplication flash cards, so I helped get him started.

Grandma saw that he finished while I went upstairs to do my own work. 

Shane attended his classes from the floor of the kitchen. 

I disappeared upstairs in his bedroom. The LEGO rocket Grandpa and Shane made was way bigger than I'd thought! I showed it to all of my classes!

Grandpa and Grandma also did their work. "We had four offices running at once!" Grandma said.

My classes went well (save for one kid saying a bad word). I told the kids we'd driven to the in-laws to try and get some better internet! And I used it, too. I uploaded the first two weeks of class recordings to the server. That was gigs of data we couldn't spare at our house! 

Shane's class went well enough from what I saw....which was admittedly not much (5-10 minutes). His new teacher, Mrs. Taylor, was shadowing Mr. Bahn. She's supposed to take take the reigns Tuesday and fly solo from Wednesday on. 

Grandma was happy with Shane, but vocal about "We need to send everybody back!" I know our school district is getting ready to vote on sending back kids in PK-3rd grade for the next quarter (Nov-Jan). If they do (and it goes well), they could vote to have kids back in high schools part time by the end of January. 

Meanwhile, Grandpa pulled a frozen pizza from the fridge and they sent us on our way full. Shane and I left around 6:40 PM and got back home well after dark. 

It'd be an easier trip if not for barn care. If the whole family went I'd be willing to stay for days, but who will take care of the horses? Carrie stayed behind, so we only stayed for the day. She tends to get stressed more easily when I'm not home (and she likes to snuggle up with Shane for TV time too when he's not bouncing, hyper wild and making the dog bark like mad!). 

Anyway, it was a successful experiment. We'll try it again with Grandma and Grandpa and I plan to ship Shane off to SC at some point, too!

COVID 19 - The Coronavirus: Virtual School

Virtual School (VS) has begun!

Two+ weeks before VS: Everyone was expected to use Zoom.

Right before Spring Break: We weren't allowed to use Zoom. Schoology Conference only.

Monday at 12:56 PM before my 3rd class: An email came out. You can use Zoom if you want.

VS is new for everyone, so it's a little bit like the wild, wild west. I used Schoology for 'class' on Monday and Tuesday. Then I switched to Zoom for office hours on Wednesday and Thursday to see how they compared to each other. 

It was a busy week. I sent out a reminder email to all my classes the day of with links (including a phone number for kids without internet), held three classes a day, a PLC meeting, answered a ton of emails, figured out grading, and it was my turn to make the assignment for all the classes.

Attendance was better than I expected. My honors classes were nearly full. There were a couple of kids who stayed on after other kids because they just wanted to talk. 

It was tiring, but it felt good to be teaching (even virtually).

Shane had his own virtual school. He logged into a platform called Seesaw. His teachers had a spot for him to post a journal, a reading assignment, and a math assignment every day. There was also a once a week PE challenge (Shane did it daily). 

It normally took Shane an hour and  a half to do everything. I liked the variety of the assignment. He spent a long time on Monday's journal and I was really happy with the effort he put in. Then there was the Hula-Hoopin' Queen read by Oprah he had to listen to and find things he could relate to. And the math work! He was supposed to learn about polygons and the names of shapes.....which is what I teach! Any student who was in 3rd grade in ACPS has no excuse to say "I've never seen this before!"

Bottom line: I would have liked more work to keep Shane busy, but I was really happy with the quality of the assignments posted. 

We relaxed a chunk of our 'home-school's assignments. Shane's teachers only required 20 minutes of reading, but I kept it at an hour. He still had to empty the cat pot and help around the house.

A couple of days I made him work outside for half an hour of weeding for PE.

It's looking better!

Shane was really good about starting his school early in the day. Normally, we both popped on the computers to work between 8 and 9 AM. I did my morning emails, set up, and looked through what he needed to do. 

Shane would work through my first class (9:30 - 10:00 AM) and then have a no-electronics break. 

At 11 AM, Shane would get a break to play with electronics until lunch at noon. 

Shane's next electronics break would hit for my 1 PM class. I normally let him play on Steam, watch Minecraft videos on Youtube, or play on Minecraft to keep him occupied while I worked (Carrie was usually at the barn or away - which is a different post).

I can't say I'm a fan of the YouTube videos. They were mostly of the same guy walking around blowing up his own world while trying to act super cool and silly at the same time. He kept saying "What the flip?" and commenting on "flipping withers," so the language was kid friendlyish.

I just thought it was dumb.

Tuesday and Thursday, Shane got to have a Zoom call with his teachers and classmates.

He was ecstatic and/or desperate. He kept trying to talk over everyone and wanted to run with his computer up to the top of his loft bed. 

It was really funny when I turned on a virtual background for him. His shirt became a green screen. Shane saw me do it once and then he knew what to do the next four times he did it himself! 

I hope no one noticed that he wore the same green t-shirt on Tuesday AND Thursday, though. We've been a little lax about things like changing clothes daily....

Shane spent a lot of time on electronics, but I tried to keep him in the really, real world some. I've been wanting to play a campaign style game with him, and he finally agreed to it.

I brought out Descent and Shane spent the next hour playing with the models.

It was fifteen minutes before a class when he finally looked up and said, "I'm ready to play now!"

He had to wait, but we got a game in. I played EZ mode and made sure he won.

It gave rise to Shane coming up with his own "Mega-dungeon!"

Shane stepped on cards, made a mess, and probably lost pieces, but it made him use his brain. We've played over the course of several days....though not much gets done when I do play his dungeon. Shane comes up with new ideas and new rules every other time a dice is rolled and sometimes I wait 5 to 10 minutes as patiently as I can while he's wrapped up in his new vision!

This guy was a bit of a problem.

He likes the taste of cardboard. He likes it too much.

We spent a lot of time inside over the week. We didn't practice lacrosse at all!

Descent isn't typical school, but new experiences are a huge part of learning. Since Shane can't play with kids his age, I'm the main source of his socialization....and it's wearing me out!

This still seems like a period of growth for Shane. That's been my goal for being at home along: Keep the family growing. Don't put life on hold.

Schoolwise, I'm looking forward to wrapping up and having closure. The students need it. I need it. 

Anyway, one week of VS down. Five more weeks to go.

COVID 19 - The Coronavirus: Family On Screen

Sunday, my family had a Zoom meeting. I thought it was going to be a game of Drawful or the kids all talking to each other. It turned out to be all the adults talking, B making faces, and Shane humming!

Shane eventually got upset when I kept muting him. "This is boring!" he said, and left.

B never stopped making faces! He was in his own world. He occasionally broke in to the conversation about how he was excited to see Nana and Pop next week!

Kathleen's kids were outside on the trampoline and could care less about the call. Aiden was in the same boat and was (hopefully) more focused on his potty training.

Funniest gross moment from the chat: Shane poked me in the nose. "Knock it o..." I started to correct him. Then my nose gave me new information. "Go wash your hands."

I made Shane clean out the kitty litter before the the call. Use your imagination.

He complained later. "That was so embarassing!"

"You're not the one who had a poop finger on your nose!" Ha ha!

Technology has been a great tool for social distancing. It's nowhere near as good as being able to meet people in person, but it prevents families from feeling totally isolated from each other.

I've been using the Zoom meetings for work and we will be using a different platform for virtual school starting April 13th. Bill set up a virtual hangout on Zoom for his birthday (Fun!) and I wanted to set up a rpg group online, but it never panned out (Sad).

Phones still work, too. Jama has called a couple of time (April fool's!) and Nana has called to lead Shane on scavenger hunts or to answer survey questions (Thanks, Nana!). I should call more people. I'm not as good about it as I used to be.

Texting is still a valid option, too. Carrie got a pony update from Sonya I figured I'd share! 

The blog is my main way of chronicling things. Hopefully, it's a tool to entertain, record memories and communicate. It's one way and not really me reaching out to anyone, though, so it has it's limitations. 

I'm updating my Schoology page for my students in a similar fashion. It's meant to be something consistent that can reach out to all 109 of my Geometry kids, but there's no telling how many have actually looked at it. I've only had a couple mention it in an email when they've asked me questions, but I like to think it's nice for at least some of them to know I'm reliably updating.

Good enough? + Work Life Balance

I came home to a gravel dust cloud Monday. Kyle was finally making good on leveling out the arena. 

Carrie declared it, "Good enough." It's not great, but she wants to move on (I will apparently be hand-raking to fix some issues).

Carrie's been after Kyle for weeks and frustrated because couldn't work her horses in the arena as it was (and that's not including her injuries). She didn't feel like she could advertise our property until boarders would have a place to ride, either.

Hopefully, this closes the construction chapter and will reduce some stress levels.

The newest stressor is our internet. It's suddenly been terrible. Carrie even had an atennae installed and we're connected to the service better, but the flow is down to a trickle. That's rough when you work from home.

Carrie sent me this as I was writing:

We used to get close to 20 Mbps. We started around 10 Mbps, bought some paddles to boost the reception and it worked great for a while. Now? There's no explanation. Carrie's spent hours on the phone with the providers.

There's always something.

Even with all that, it feels like my work-life balance is starting to even out more. I have plenty of stuff to do every day. I wake up to chores, get home around 6 PM with Shane for a dinner break, and then go back to work. After Shane gets on electronics and/or goes to bed I may rest for a bit and then do some grading before bed.

I started to work out a new system for recycling since the old one was a bust. Shane and Henry got to crush all of our cans as a chore/game.

But I'm starting to have some free time at the end of they day where I actually have energy. I was thinking about it the other week. "Hey! I have time to think about something that's not school or chore related.......what should I think about? Maybe about having time all of a sudden?" It was a doozy.

I used the spare energy and time to start catching up on other projects.....like the blog you're reading. I'm actually caught up for the first time in months!

Ironically, I feel like things are finally starting to balance and wrestling season is going to start in three weeks! I'm not sure what that's going to look like at the new school with the new job in a new barn.

All part of the adventure, I guess!