Back to School Season

 

School starts this week for my students. Tomorrow is the supply pick up, termed Meet and Greet by my principal, where families will drive through the carpool lanes to turn in forms, pick up supplies teachers have prepared in individual bags labeled with students' names, and drop off food for a local food bank. On Wednesday students will log on and Zoom with their new teachers for the first time.

My to-do list is shrinking, but the items that are left are a bit daunting. My classroom still looked like a construction zone late last week, and I haven't been in since the floors were cleaned enough that I could finalize arranging furniture and scrub the grit of the past six months and cabinet removal process off of every surface. The previous teacher had not yet removed her posters because her new room was in even more disarray than mine, and furniture was stacked to the point she couldn't even access her walls. 

I need to get in and actually set up my room to be a fourth grade classroom, ready to receive students, because the plan is to return to the schoolhouse as soon as the county's numbers decline to the target number. But since my classroom space is not yet set up, I have created a space in my home from which to teach. My Zoom teaching day will end before noon each day, but I am scheduling 1-1 family meetings this week and 1-1 student check in meetings and holding "office hours" in the afternoons starting next week. I honestly don't know when I'm going to be able to make time to get into the school to make my new room student ready. I guess it'll be on a weekend.

I have created slide shows and posted drafts of assignments for the first "week" (three days) of online instruction to Google Classroom. I'm ready for the community and relationship building activities of the first days of school. I created a series of questions I want to ask families during the 1-1 meetings. But plans for the second week of school are far from finished and I got stuck on the curriculum night slide show. Of course, there is a curriculum map of the expected units by subject already in place, with only a few minor tweaks needed. I looked at it today, and should be able to use it to create my presentation but this year is just so different that I need to spend time in reflection before actually putting the slides together.

My brain feels very full this fall. I'm thinking about bullet points I want to include in an email to families, a list of items to be sure to bring to school tomorrow, or another set of tasks to add to my to-do list when I'm supposed to be drifting off to sleep. I'm tired. At least the back to school tired is consistent from year to year!