Zoom Conferences

We held spring conferences via Zoom again this spring. The end of the mask mandate made the admin team at my school skittish about inviting all the parents of all the kids into the building over a two-day period. After my recent seven-day illness, where I napped for five to six hours a day and slept for twelve or more hours per night EVERY day for a week, I am glad for the decision.

Last week I made it to Tuesday before missing five consecutive workdays. I returned for the last day before two days of conferencing over Zoom. I was concerned that my students would not be prepared for conferences because they had to start their conference prep with a sub, and I didn't have time to meet with any students individually while trying figure what had and hadn't happened in my classroom during the two partial weeks I missed.

However, I needn't have worried. My students are confident and articulate when presenting. Their self-ratings and goals were thoughtful and reflective. Some parents expressed surprise to learn that there had been no coaching from me on the presentations. Even the student who has been traveling this week with her mom and was not able to do any preparation before her conference, was able to talk about her successes and struggles with specificity and set goals to meet before she becomes a fifth grader (all while sitting on a beach with sunglasses on and palm trees and blue skies in the background).

I love conferencing with students and their families. In my first few years of teaching, they were intimidating and anxiety-provoking. But I've reached a point where I have to do almost no preparation outside of preparing my students to lead their conferences (and the slideshow templates I've created for Zoom conferences thanks to COVID make that part ridiculously easy), and no longer have anxiety about talking to families about their student's successes, challenges, and goals. In fact, I look forward to it. As I ended my longest run of conferences (eight in a row), I commented to my husband, "So much smiling!" It's a good problem to have.

Day two of conferences featured a strange strobe effect on my work computer where the laptop screen would literally flash repeatedly and then stop. It happened while I was browsing files, on Zooms, and while I was doing other things, ignoring the computer completely. Thankfully this did not transfer to the monitor I had all my windows open on, but even checking the display configuration made no difference.

The flashing laptop screen in my peripheral vision was a major distraction during the first four conferences of the day and became more difficult to ignore as it increased in frequency. But as my fifth conference of the day started, my audio settings went haywire. The external speaker stopped working, and the only audio I could get was very, very faint through the laptop speaker. I literally spent the conference with my laptop on my shoulder just so I could hear what the student and parent were saying. At least the screen strobe effect didn't bother me with the laptop screen angled over the top of my head.

In a brilliant trouble shooting maneuver, I shut my computer down and walked away for lunch. Magically, turning it off and back on resolved the quirky issues of the morning, and allowed my final conferences to run smoothly.

Well over half of my families paused at either the start of end of the conference to ask how I'm feeling and express how glad they are that I'm feeling better. Every family of a student who is new to the building this year, one new this calendar year, told me that the rigor at my school and my expectations are much higher than they had experienced in their previous school. But every family was grateful for the change. One set of parents said they didn't realize what their child should have been learning in third grade. Two told me they felt blessed that their child was in my class. But the highlight of my spring conferences was the moment where one of these families began by saying, "Thank you for being you," and then proceeded to credit me with reigniting their child's passion for and joy in learning.

Have I mentioned how much I love conferences?

Sick Days

 Tuesday was a fairly normal day at school. The principal gave us time to work on our report cards rather than attend a staff meeting. This was despite the fact that the principal, on the advice of the admin team, had already decided that due to the timing of report cards and spring conferences (spring conferences are Thursday and Friday of next week and report cards go home the following Monday) we don't need to write comments on our report cards for this term. 

I used the time to prepare to run my regional teacher meeting, which happened to be on the same afternoon. The regional meeting went well. The teachers in my region brought friends who may be interested in joining the program next year, and were full of great ideas for the requested "big idea" list. I even remembered to locate the code so that those who attended could claim a clock hour for their time. I was feeling pretty good. It's not every day I get to offer other teachers credit for spending their time listening to me talk.

I came home intending to score all the late work that had been submitted that day and the one additional assignment that had been turned in... after all, it is report card week. But when I got home I felt more tired than expected. I created my slides for the following day and decided it wouldn't hurt to put off the grading for one night.

I woke myself up in the middle of the night, coughing. I tossed and turned, looking for a comfortable position that wouldn't allow my nasal drip to end up on the pillow nor aggravate my sore throat or developing headache. Gradually I became aware that I should not attempt to go into work on Wednesday with that many symptoms keeping me awake.

I roused myself and made my way downstairs where I took an antigen test. Negative. I still put in for a sub and spent over an hour writing a document to go with my slideshow and locating digital versions of everything that would need to be copied. I sent an email to my principal and the school secretary after 2:00am telling them about my symptoms, negative antigen test, that I was planning to try to sleep it off the next day, and expressing hope of seeing them on Thursday. Working on sub plans while sick in the middle of the night is absolutely no fun. But I'd rather there be some possibility of my students' learning staying on track without me than none at all.

I woke up when my husband's first meeting of the morning started. He still works from home thanks to the pandemic. His first meeting started at 8:00. I got up and showered, thinking I'd tackle the papers I had neglected the night before. However, when I made my way into his office, across the hall from our bedroom, the twin bed in there suddenly looked like the most comfortable spot on the planet. I was on my way back to sleep when another meeting started and his boss' voice jarred me awake again. I found my way downstairs, and made myself some tea and toast. Then I fell asleep on the couch until my husband came downstairs to make lunch. After eating soup for lunch I slept some more. 

About 2:30 in the afternoon I called my school. When the secretary answered, I said, "Hi, this is Natalie." She said "Uh-oh! It doesn't sound like you slept it off!" Another day off. Although it was easier to create sub plans at two in the afternoon than at two in the morning, working on sub plans while exhausted and in desperate need of a nap (even though napping is all I had done all day) meant the task took about two hours, maybe longer. But it was for a good cause - I could sleep again all the next day.

Only on Wednesday I could not sleep at all. The neighbors had four trees removed beginning at 8:00am. There were loud mechanical noises - engines, chainsaws, I don't know what - until about 3:00pm. It was loud enough to rattle my windows. About 2:00pm the secretary called me to find out how I was doing. I was dizzy with lack of sleep. We decided that if not being able to nap made me dizzy, I shouldn't try to push through the crud to spend the day in my classroom on Friday. It took another two hours to create sub plans. How much was due to dizziness and how much due to the heavy machinery running on my cul-de-sac, who can say?

So here we are. Friday. I haven't been in my room since Tuesday. I napped less today than Wednesday and had enough energy to type this up. But I'm still coughing, still napped after waking up late, and still overly-tired. Maybe the first antigen test was wrong? 

It feels weird to have missed three days. I can't say that I haven't been sick since the pandemic started. I have taken at least a handful of COVID tests, not including at least two when I had to drive somewhere to have medical staff perform them. And since at-home antigen tests have been available, I've kept a stash in my house for any time I've felt a little tickle in my throat or had a headache. I'm a hypochondriac that way. Every one of them has come back negative. But since the start of the pandemic, this is the first time I had to opt myself out of my regularly scheduled life to just sleep.

My amazing teacher friends have made copies for me and one even brought me all the work students have turned in this week... even though I live 10 miles north of the school, in the heavy traffic direction. Since it's report card week and conference prep week, I feel like it's important to try to catch up on grading this weekend. Hopefully I'll be able to stay awake long enough to get the work done.

Wise One?

Twice this week I have been addressed as "Wise One" by a co-worker. Actually, the first time it happened it was my principal, turned partner teacher, who strode into my room and said, "Okay, Wise One.." and proceeded to ask me a procedure question. I don't even remember what he asked. But I had an answer that he liked, so in that moment I lived up to his vision of me as wise. The second time was in a text thread, that I didn't see until the question had been answered by a fellow "Wise One."

How wise am I though, really? These days I feel like I'm just barely keeping my head above water. Having my boss as a partner teacher is... interesting. It's great to have his energy and know he really knows what it's like to be "in the trenches," really sees the work that goes into doing what I do. But it's still less than ideal. As thin as I feel stretched, he is stretched even more. I mean, he's holding down two full time jobs that are both notoriously MORE than full time jobs. Before and after school there is literally a line of people waiting for his attention.

This means he has no time for lesson plans. So, when I put my slides together for tomorrow's lessons, I have been making a copy and tweaking them for my boss to use. I tweak the schedule slide so his specialist class of the day is on the list instead of mine. I remove my bitmoji - but really, I've just been building without my bitmoji more and more so that I can skip this step. I delete the math and reading slides after the one that introduces the topic and switch out the spelling slide for the one I used on the corresponding day last week. (When my partner teacher left, she was one week behind me in spelling, so the homeroom my principal is teaching is still one week behind.) Admittedly, now that I know what needs to be done, this all takes less than five minutes. But when I am teaching and run across a typo on my slides, I am embarrassed spend more time wondering if my boss noticed than is probably warranted.

Every morning I go into the classroom across the hall and bring up the copied slide show on the SmartBoard. I leave copies on the teacher's desk, and on Fridays, put together a tray of supplies for the art project. I feel responsible for the progress toward meeting academic standards for two homerooms. On some level I know my boss would disagree - he is the adult in the room across the hall. But he is using my lesson materials.

The past two weeks with my boss as my partner teacher definitely have me feeling less than wise. Instead, I am seeing many areas where I could grow and do better. 

For example - how can I really embed my math and religion lessons into our IB units of inquiry? I've spent this year tweaking writing and reading to fit within the units. But I have not spent any time at all working toward enveloping the math and religion standards into the transdisciplinary units. 

On a lower level of overall importance, but an extremely practical one for every day - how do you really get kids to understand that there is a correct way to use a piece of binder paper? By high school I think most kids know the holes go on the left and the margin lines have a purpose. But kids do not know this innately, they have to be taught. I have a couple of kids who, despite my best efforts this year, still don't seem to understand.

I know my principal knows I'm good at what I do, and I know he's not looking for mistakes or problems in what I produce. However, it does add a heightened level of attention to detail to know he is not only seeing, but actively using my slide presentation every day and relying on my expertise to answer questions about procedure, daily lesson plans, long term unit plans, student background... and anything else relevant to the day-to-day operation of a classroom.

The silver lining in all of this goes back to a thought I had on repeat in my brain during my first year of teaching: "If I ever feel like I know everything there is to know about this job, that's when it will be time to get out." I'm still a long way away from feeling like I know everything there is to know. That's fantastic because I'm not ready to get out of the teaching profession yet.