I did hear that Zoom hired their first educational advisor in July so I’m sure we will get a bunch of helpful and useful tools
Oh, and I also left at lunch and participated on my phone while I worked out and ran errands. I'm too pragmatic for the public sector and too lazy for the private.
my district is piloting a full-time virtual academy this year. they poached three of our teachers (that they won’t let us replace) and only accepted 27 students from my school
Same. Our full time virtual high school is now the largest high school in our system (1700 students). My school had 160 students choose it, so 12% of our students. Basically 12% of our teaching slots were moved to the virtual academy, some all day, some 1 or 2 sections during the day. Didn’t really affect our class sizes but they had to redo the master schedule in 3 days for the remaining sections that were still on campus.
i don’t know what they expect us to do. we’ve still got 1000 students. they took two of our six ELA teachers. i know of a handful more who won’t be returning to in-person instruction once we open for it too
I start tomorrow, teaching 5 sections of AP Biology, 1 Biology I course. Have some kids hybrid, A and B, and some straight virtual in each class. I’ve used google classroom for 10 years and was an expert at it, legit certified and everything. Last week when we started teacher training they dropped the bomb that we are no longer allowed to use google classroom and Canvas was to be used by all teachers, even though in a survey they took of teachers, 90% used classroom last year. I am beyond fucked gentleman. I don’t even know what I’m doing in class tomorrow but I also have to provide work for my B day kids and virtual kids that cannot be the same thing I do in class.
Just found out I’m teaching Math and science this year. I’ve never taught math and I’m not al that excited to start
Ours did the same. We were transitioning from blackboard to schoology this year, but a lot of teachers just had google classroom stuff linked on their BB. They shut off google classroom over the summer for our system. Didn’t affect me because my course was all actually run through Bb and it imported to schoology.
Brutal, feel really bad for you guys. Doesn't matter how simple something is if it's new-to-you, especially when it comes to LMSs.
Started our Nearpod training today. It takes forever to import a ppt but has some cool features for student participation once you do. It’s not bad.
Going on week 2 of school, and our system is still at 0 cases. We have about 15% virtual, and masks are required for the in school kids. We're being super strict about things, which is great. Sending kids home that refuse to wear masks (mostly high school) and any symptom or fever requires a doctor's clearance or a negative test result. The most surprising thing has been how good the elementary age kids have been with all of this, especially the real young ones. The pre-k through 1st graders have all been great with masks. You can tell which ones at home are hearing all kinds of anti mask or virus hoax bullshit, though. Also picked up a bus monitor position to make a little extra cash for not much work. It's just screening kids and temp checks on the morning bus routes. In the two weeks we've had so far, the bus has gotten stuck in the mud twice, we killed a wild hog, and about got a fox. Fun times in south ga
I think the Albany area is doing a good job with all of this. Makes sense, because this was that area of Georgia that was heavily hit in the early parts of the pandemic. Had those 2 funerals that helped spread it quick
My district is opening remote for middle and high school elementary is going hybrid. People are losing their collective shit about it. Neighboring district was set to do the Same but the board voted to scrap the county health dept criteria and only look at their own zip codes
We have a sign on our department office door that says door kept closed for safety of staff. Please call/email this person for this need. Somebody came and knocked
Town next to us that had board members commenting on our FB posts with negative comments about masks and downplaying the virus seems to be having problems. Maybe not requiring masks and going with a normal open house wasn't such a good idea after all. Their covid policy was basically pretend it doesn't exist, and shame your rival school for taking precautions https://www.walb.com/2020/08/20/ben-hill-co-teachers-students-test-positive-covid-/
Things went well week one. Masks required in building, one way halls, hybrid schedule. The students did well following the protocols. Really impressed with my B group students, who I did not see until Thursday, took care of business mon-wed. Planning and organization has been a bitch, but overall week one was a success.
2 kids missed class today...not sure whose reason/excuse ended up being funnier: -"I thought TR on my schedule meant Thursday." -"I don't even go here, I chose another school after orientation."
Just had to tell my Elem PE class that we should probably wait until after corona to have a spitting competition. Also, I think we're up to 3 or 4 cases for the system now. Better than the 40 our neighbors had last week, but still no bueno
Been one shit show of a week. Lots of confusion, lots of crying, school starts next week and we're still figuring out which students are in person vs remote, parents are not responding to emails, caseloads are messed up, computer 1-1 won't be available for our students for a while yet even though we were promised it would be available first week, meeting after meeting of contradiction information I have 1 IEP meeting scheduled for a caseload of 32 kiddos, these meetings are supposed to discuss if the student will be in person (and for how long a day) or virtual. No way am I teaching next week. Some of us started to record our lessons yesterday only to have the entire district's internet shut off early morning due to a sliced cable. Today should be our institute day with some famous speaker, nobody in my school can log in and watch the viewer in Zoom because the meeting has surpassed its 1000 participant limit
At least I won a 50 dollar gift card to Ikea during our monthly Guess that Tune contest It was Call Me Maybe
3.2k folks waiting around for a Zoom meeting that's 45 minutes late I am one of the individuals in and we're all currently listing our favorite rhyming words Artsy fartsy