A Day in the Life

Ever wondered what it's like teaching elementary school virtually? 

It's a whole new can of worms.

My day usually starts around 5:45am, with an artificial sunrise alarm clock that makes waking up before actual sunrise marginally less unbearable. Coffee is the immediate priority, obviously. 

Then once my coffee cup and eyes are about half empty and half open, respectively, I get dressed. Since it's winter, usually this means a nice sweater or blouse and cardigan, with fleece-lined leggings, fuzzy socks, and slippers completing the ensemble. One of the very few perks of teaching from home: I only have to look professional from the waist up. (A student asked me in October, "Is this what you look like at real school?" I said yes. What they don't know won't hurt them.)

By 7:00am I'm usually logged on to my work computer. Class doesn't start until 9:00am but I need the time to prep my PowerPoints and assignments. Theoretically, there 95 minutes of daily planning time built into my duty day, but even when I get all 95 of those minutes (read: on the rare occasions that there are no meetings scheduled during that time), 95 minutes is still not enough to: 

• grade assignments, 
• sort through and respond to the approximately 8,000 emails from parents, principals, and colleagues who don't know the difference between "Reply" and "Reply All,"
• create a day's worth of lessons and online assignments essentially from scratch (because the majority of "digital lessons" provided by my school district are in reality Word documents with a few vague suggestions)
  
• do whatever else gets put on my to-do list by someone else. 
  

At about 8:45am, I microwave my half-cup of now-cold coffee that I forgot to finish drinking as soon as I opened my computer, and then I log on to Google Meet. It's not an exaggeration to say that within 0.002 seconds of my starting the online meeting, a happy little "bing!" announces the arrival of at least 2 students. I spend the next 10 to 15 minutes alternating between listening to what everyone had for breakfast, dodging rather personal questions ("Ms. L., how come you're not married?"), and repeating the same beginning-of-class instructions I read off the screen every day: "Finish eating your breakfast, use the bathroom, make sure you have your Math and Reading books and a pencil, make sure your computer is fully charged or plugged in, make sure you are in a quiet place where you can focus."

You would think that they know the drill by now, especially since all of these directions are also on the screen, with pictures, as they have been since day one. But you would be wrong, because every day, several children will turn on their microphones when I am mid-sentence halfway through a lesson to inform me that they're going to the bathroom, or going to get their notebook, or grabbing a charger, or they can't hear me, shouting over the TV blaring in their background to let me know. (These are the moments when I say, "Okay, class. Ms. L. needs to take some deep breaths now before she flips her lid. Take some deep breaths with me now, everybody.")

*IN....aaaannd OUT..........IN..........aaaaaannnnnddd OUT.*

I like to start off the day with a silly check-in of sorts. Sometimes it's things like, "If you were a donut, what kind would you be?" Last Friday it was:

Next up is the Pledge of Allegiance and attendance. (Lately, I've been having the kids say a tongue-twister when I call their names. I tell them it's good fluency practice, but really it's just because hearing twenty-two 8-year-olds trying to say "Unique New York" is freaking hilarious.)

Then we move into Math, during which I have to remind multiple students multiple times that it is not in fact nap time, so you need to please sit up and pick up your pencil. After about 35 minutes of this, I send a link in the meeting chat to a quick quiz so I can see what the kids understand and what I'll need to reteach. Only about 60% of my students will actually click the link and do the assignment, leaving me to guess at what the other 40% have (or haven't) learned and try to plan my next lesson accordingly.

After that, we move into small group time. I meet with a quarter of my class at a time to try to reinforce what we covered in whole-group...assuming the kids log on when they're supposed to. Which, considering I tell them at the end of Math exactly who needs to be back at what time, and send them a link to the timer in the chat, AND send their parents a copy of our schedule every week, you would think they would at least mostly do. But again, you would be incorrect. 

*Breathe IN....aaaannd OUT..........IN..........aaaaaannnnnddd OUT.* 

Rinse and repeat for each subject throughout the day, with an increasing number of students showing up late to class, if at all, as the day goes on. Throw in a few dozen technical difficulties of varying degrees for me to navigate (in case you're wondering, it's not exactly a cakewalk to troubleshoot remotely with an 8-year-old on the other end) and forgotten usernames and passwords (which haven't changed since the kids were in first grade)...small wonder I sometimes need a 10-minute nap at lunch to get through the rest of the day.

At 3:10pm, the very end of the day, I offer 20 minutes of "Optional Help Time" for the students to log back on and work on their assignments with me. Of course, the few students who choose to show up are almost always the students who have already completed their assignments. In that case, we usually do a read-aloud (we just finished Frindle before Winter Break), or we play some Simon Says, or I just let the kids talk to me and to each other about whatever they want. Even though by this point in the day, my brain is totally fried and my eyes hurt and I still have a million and one things on my to-do list, I'm secretly bummed to kick the kids off at 3:30. Those 20 minutes of just hanging out with my students are secretly my favorite part of the day.

Often I take a break after that and go outside or get a workout in, and sometimes I just power through, but either way, I usually work at least another hour and a half after school doing things I didn't have time to do during my actual work day...with still plenty left to do when I log back on at 7:00 tomorrow morning. *sigh*

Man, I miss actually being in school. The kids miss it, too. At least once a day, I get a question about what our real classroom is like and what we would be doing if we were there right now. We miss high-fives and hugs, birthday crowns and science experiments. We miss actual books and paper assignments. We miss the cafeteria, the classroom, recess. Most of all of course we miss just getting to go somewhere every day and be around other people...

But, as I tell the kiddos, we have to keep reminding ourselves that this is temporary. This is the safe thing to do right now. One day, we will go back to "real" school. ("When?" they ask me. 😭) Until then, we just gotta try to make the best of it and keep on keeping on.

 

On the bright side, I didn't have to remind any of my students to put on pants this week. #littlevictories

Anything else you wanna know about the teacher life? Hit me up. 🠋