COVID Positive

It was bound to happen. It's actually pretty amazing it hadn't already happened. Yesterday, my husband texted me while I was proctoring a standardized test for my students, who are in their first full week of the school year this week. My husband had tested positive for COVID. He'd been dealing with a scratchy throat since the weekend, but we had literal ash falling out of the sky on Saturday due to wildfires in our area, so we chalked it up to "attributable to another cause" until he also started feeling achy and fatigued.

As soon as I read his message, I called for another adult in the building to come hang out in my classroom, proctoring the test, so I could take a rapid test. A friend and coworker found a KN5 mask for me to wear. The antigen test result was negative, and I felt fine. So I went back to class, attempting to keep my distance from others and keeping the mask on for the rest of the day.

In the afternoon I began to feel a tickle in the back of my throat. I hoped it was psychosomatic given that I knew my husband had tested positive. Thankfully, the students had already been dismissed to "exploratory" classes, and I was alone in my room. After carpool, I felt a headache coming on, and the tickle had become a genuine discomfort that had me clearing my throat and dry coughing. I tested again upon arriving home. Still negative, but my symptoms were steadily getting worse.

Arranging for a sub in the second week of school, during standardized testing, without knowing for sure which class periods were going to come through my room took up all the energy I had left last evening. Thankfully I was able to get the teacher I replaced this year, who retired at the end of last year, to come in for me.

Sleeping last night was challenging. Congestion, achiness, and a severe pain in my left arm all made it nearly impossible to find a position that let me relax. Interestingly, my husband reported a similar pain in his hand the night before his COVID positive test. Ibuprofen helped ease the issues and I did get some good rest. 

I took a COVID test upon waking up this morning, and it was positive. I genuinely feel like I've been hit by a truck. Achy, fatigued, feverish (with chills when I attempt to cool down), constant congestion... A coworker called to ask for a password to get into the standardized testing site so my sub could proctor a test today, and she said she didn't even recognize my voice because I'm so congested. I slept most of the day, and although I tasted the yogurt I ate for breakfast, my lunch was completely tasteless. It was a very strange sensation. I am hopeful my case will be "mild" and I'll be able to return to normal life (though masked) on Tuesday... which is also my curriculum night.

With an overnight retreat the first week of school and standardized tests the second, my students really haven't seen how our classroom will actually operate this year. What a strange start to the school year.

Camp Colman

 For the past nine years the eighth graders at my current school have spent Thursday and Friday of their first week on an overnight retreat. I have watched the eighth-grade teachers and principal plan for this first week extended field trip with a slight sense of awe at how well it gets pulled together even though many details need to be arranged in advance of school starting, or even homeroom class lists being finalized. This year it was my turn to help plan and lead the retreat. I was glad I had a decade of experience taking fifth graders on a weeklong field trip under my belt. Waking up to the news that the other female chaperone slated to sleep in a cabin with half of the girls was sick and couldn't come and being handed medication by parents as we were walking out the door to load the bus was par for the course rather than reasons for major freak outs. 

Camp Colman is situated in Whitman Cove off of the Case Inlet and features high elevation activities to build leadership and teamwork. Students were offered the chance to participate in three high elevation activities. Sadly, there was not enough time for me to participate in more than one of them, but I was proud of myself for not only climbing up the catwalk (35 feet in the air) but also walking across to the other side 25 feet away before my students lowered me back to the ground.

In the evening our principal led the students in the songs they will lead at the all school Mass of the Holy Spirit on Monday morning. This was followed by an activity to identify one word that will help orient them toward a goal they set for themselves this school year, as a leader of the entire student body. Since it was my first year on this retreat, I participated in the activity and created my own keychain to carry with me throughout the school year.

Then it was time for a campfire and a little down time on the beach at sunset.

After a not so restful night's sleep in an exciting place, surrounded by friends they desperately wanted to chat with, the students woke up to complete the high elevation activities their group had not attempted the day before, attend Mass with our school's parish priest, eat a hasty lunch, and board the bus for home.

As a fan of outdoor environmental education and its strong community building impact on classes who attend in the fall, I can honestly say this was the perfect way to begin the school year. It's a shared experience we will be able to reflect on and build upon throughout the coming months as these students work to reach their academic, spiritual, and community goals. I can't wait to go again next year!

Back to School, Back to Middle School

 Today was the first full day of school. I am once again an eighth-grade homeroom teacher, teaching social studies to seventh and eighth grade students. It's been an exhausting couple of weeks, but tonight I am bone-weary tired. And tomorrow I am going with my partner teacher, principal, and the retired teacher whose classroom I took over on an overnight retreat with the eighth graders. I might need to sleep all weekend after I get home.

Yesterday was the Meet and Greet day, where parents and students come into the building to drop off supplies and see their new homeroom. I left my house, expecting to have time before families started to arrive to hang up a set of President cards I created over Labor Day Weekend. (The set I found in the classroom ended at Ronald Reagan and I decided I wanted to be able to update my set without buying a whole new one after elections.) However, the traffic gods did not approve of my plan. Normally when my commute is "bad" it takes me 45 minutes to get to school. "Terrible" traffic has taken me an hour in the past, but on the rare occasions when that happens, it's on my way home.

Yesterday it took me an hour and a half to get to school. I rolled in minutes before eighth grade students were slated to arrive to help families find their students' new classrooms. I ran into the second-grade teachers in the hallway and asked them to help me carry my new plants into my room so they wouldn't die in my car before I had the chance to get back out to it after the Meet and Greet.

The Meet and Greet itself was very fun. I spent most of the time hanging out in the hallway bantering with colleagues. I kept track of who turned in forms for our second and third day of school overnight field trip and chatted with my new students and their parents (and/or grandparents). Several students from my two fourth grade classes, now in fifth and sixth grades stopped by to say, "hi." At least one jumped up and down as she did so. Many parents were excited that I was teaching their child this year (I have taught an older sibling of at least a quarter of the eighth graders) or that their child will have the opportunity to be in my classroom again in the future. Only a couple of my former students totally ignored me as they walked past my new classroom. 😂

After families had departed and several of my co-workers left, at least to grab lunch, I sat in my principal's office for over an hour with my partner teacher planning the two day retreat. It was fun and necessary. But as I scarfed down my lunch after 1:00pm I decided to tackle tasks necessary for the first day of school rather than hang my President set as I waited for my 3:00pm meeting with the Learning Resource Director. 

My 3:00pm meeting started about 4:00pm and lasted until 5:00pm. Even though I hadn't written the first day schedule on the board or finished my slide presentation for the first day, I left when the meeting concluded. Thankfully, the evening traffic was lighter than expected, especially for leaving at peak commute time.

This morning traffic was light and I arrived with time to collect my thoughts before the day started. The day was fun. Middle schoolers are interesting people. Even when I realized I was scheduled to have two classes in my room at the same time (my own homeroom for Spanish and a seventh grade homeroom for study hall), I was able to find a place for everyone to be. I taught one of my first day of school lessons based on Ted Kooser's poem "Abandoned Farmhouse" to every seventh grader and gave them the class period to tell me something about their likes and dislikes using the structure of the poem.

I tracked down all the necessary paperwork to take my students away overnight, and put everything in order before I left for the day, again at 5:00pm. Maybe I'll get those Presidents hung next week...

The highlight of my day was when one student said, "I already have mad respect for you, but I don't know why."

Don't Buy Cheap Tape

 My college job was working in the theatre. I hung and focused lights, lay cable, moved chairs on and off the orchestra pit, taped down cable and Marley floor for modern dance, and other duties as assigned. One of those other duties was opening up the theatre for an 8:00am Monday-Friday music class, but I digress. 

I got to know theatrical tape very well during the years I worked in theatre. Spike tape, paper tape, duct tape, and gaff tape. Spike tape is glow in the dark, used for marking the spot (spiking) where set pieces or actors need to be in order to be in the aforementioned focused light. Paper tape is basically thick, black masking tape, and theatres likewise use black duct and gaff tape. We primarily used gaff tape to tape down cables that had to run along the floor. It is super adhesive, like duct tape, but even after weeks of holding something firmly in place, peels off without leaving a residue like painter's tape. Super useful stuff.

Fast forward to about five years ago, moving into my fifth classroom in my fourth school, when I was lamenting the fact that painter's tape was too lightweight to hold up my laminated items double mounted on colorful cardstock. One of my new coworkers said to use gaff tape and asked if I had ever heard of it. It was a literal face palm moment for me. 🤦 Of course! Gaff tape! Why hadn't I been using it for all my classroom poster hanging needs??

This year I had a tiny bit of my previous roll of (purple) gaff tape left. So I ordered a new roll from Amazon. I saw that my previous order of one roll was only slightly less expensive than an order of two rolls of a different brand. Like a dummy, I ordered the cheap brand.

I used the new tape to hang up a huge set of adjectives above the window in my new classroom as well as several posters and a "Read Like a Historian" sign that had three iterations before actually being laminated and ready to hang. (I spilled lunch on the first one I created before it was laminated, I sent the second one through the laminator crooked enough that the last third of it was totally destroyed, though thankfully it did not jam up the laminator. I had middle school helpers make a third one that was laminated without incident.)

It's been hot. As seems to be common in older school buildings without AC, the building compounds the heat, insulating it. Everything I hung with the new tape started to drip off the wall or out and out fell to the floor overnight. I had to jump up on the counters and vent to pull down the adjectives so they wouldn't fall behind the vent, becoming ridiculously challenging to retrieve. Items that were light enough to hang with painter's tape stayed up without issue. Seriously, when paper tape holds better than gaff tape can you even call it gaff tape?

I ordered new tape - the professional grade, more expensive brand of gaff tape. It will arrive this weekend which means I get to spend the evenings of my in-service days re-hanging all the stuff I originally hung-up last week. And I have a roll and a half of moderately expensive tape that I will never use again.

Don't buy cheap tape, my friends. Stick with the professional grade.

Late Summer Musings

I have attended several Zoom professional development workshops and sessions this week and last week. The majority of participants in attendance were most proud of taking a real break from their work over the summer. There were also many people who had spent time working on advanced degrees and even one who spent the summer "batch planning" so that she already has loose lesson plans through June. Color me jealous of all the above categories. Actually, maybe I'm not jealous of those who have totally unplugged from school over the summer. I am proud of the work I've accomplished this summer.

My classroom is still in enough disarray that I have yet to take any pictures. But I am feeling more and more excited about moving back to middle school. I have recalled several activities I created for the last eighth grade history class I taught as I've been drifting off to sleep at night. I've also asked my former eighth grade partner teacher for digital copies of back to school activities she shared with me when we were in the same building. 

I ran into two former eighth grade students at Safeway today. I didn't remember both of their names until after I was home (even though I knew they both started with the letter J), but we had a pleasant thirty second interaction as they picked out fruit because they got hungry watching their friend play in a tennis tournament at a nearby high school. They appeared happy enough to see me, and all of the reasons I really enjoyed working with middle schoolers hit me hard in the few moments we were talking.

The coming school year is going to be great. I keep saying that to others and thinking it to myself. One of the assistant superintendents of the Archdiocese reminded us to find our marigolds and avoid walnut trees this year. As I reread this article, now almost a decade old, I was saddened to recognize many of my former and current colleagues in the description of the walnut trees... and even myself at times. But after several days of reflection, I see that my current school building houses so many marigolds. So many that they are unavoidable! Now my goal is to NOT be a walnut tree for the coming year. I might be able to accomplish that if I remember to seek out my marigolds when I need a boost.

August Already!?

I'm not sure how I feel about reaching the last month of summer. My first meeting, as part of the admin team, will be on August 25, with full staff in-service beginning August 31. Of course, I spent the end of June and beginning of July reading professional development books: Learning by Doing and Grading for Equity. At the end of July, I attended an International Baccalaureate conference in Austin, Texas with four of my co-workers. When I came home, I met with other co-workers to create agendas for our staff's book study of Grading for Equity since I've been tasked with submitting a proposal for clock hours to the state so we can earn continuing education credits for our discussion and study of researched-based grading practices. Through it all I've been participating in a book study with my friend and author, Bronwyn Harris, on her first book, Literally Unbelievable. All of this is to say that I have been working off and on all summer, as most teachers do.

Learning by Doing was gifted to me, and all the GRACE teacher leaders last fall, but I had only looked at the sections that were relevant to our discussions during the school year. I'm glad I decided to sit down and read it all the way through. I learned a lot about authors' definition of what makes a Professional Learning Community (PLC). I have worked at schools that have said things like, "Today you will meet with your PLC to discuss..." but they always meant we were meeting with our grade band teams. Just before the pandemic shut schools down in March of 2019, I was working in a building where the administration was actively trying to work within our grade band teams to turn the school into a bonafide PLC, but the plans hit a brick wall when we had to learn how to teach remotely. Learning by Doing presents specific steps schools can take to turn teacher focus toward what students learn rather than what teachers teach. The primary focus of the PLC model presented is to share assessment data with fellow teachers in order to reflect and learn from one another how to become better teachers. Unfortunately, I have never worked in a school that functioned as a PLC as described in this book.

My current staff was given Grading for Equity in June and it was recommended that we read it over the summer in preparation for a book study in the fall. I mentioned to my principal that I had submitted a proposal for clock hours to offer continuing education credit for GRACE teacher leaders in my region when I ran a meeting while the assistant superintendent was out of town. I offered to submit a proposal for the staff book study without realizing the amount of paperwork needed was significantly more than my previous experience. It makes sense, since I offered two clock hours for the one two-hour meeting, but will be offering 20 clock hours for ten two-hour meetings this time around. Grading for Equity challenges educators to stop grading EVERYTHING students do (including participation, writing their names on papers, and timeliness) in order to focus on grading students on what they actually learn. It aligns well with the first professional book I read this summer and with the International Baccalaureate philosophy.

The IB conference in Austin was fun, educational, and exhausting. I went with a fun group of coworkers who had no trouble ordering an Uber or Lyft to take us out in the evenings. The workshops during the day were akin to "drinking from a fire hose" with the amount of information presented. This was my third IB workshop, and though the most recent one was six years ago, I was less overwhelmed this time around. All but one of my coworkers in attendance had already spent half a year to a year teaching in an IB school, and the one who hasn't yet taught in an IB school did a little pre-reading regarding IB philosophy. Perhaps that's why we were all able to spend some time in the evenings enjoying Austin. While walking to a bar where we played cornhole and ping pong, I was telling one of my coworkers a bit about my teaching history. When she heard the name of one school where I had taught in the past, she asked if I knew a family name. I did, and rattled off the girls' names I had taught. It turned out she had gone to high school with the family, and was friends with the sister who had relocated to Austin. We sent her a message on Facebook and met up with her for happy hour. Worlds collided in a very fun way!

Re-reading Literally Unbelievable was more challenging than I expected. It's a challenging topic: the stark realities of underfunded schools within underserved communities. I've read the book multiple times, even helping to edit drafts prior to publication. But I couldn't read more than a small section at a time this time around before I had to stop in order to process. Even so, I consider it a must read for any concerned citizen wanting to understand race relations and take meaningful action toward a better future.

Today my husband and I went into my classroom for the second visit this summer. The first time we went was during the first week of July. That time I asked my husband to put together some new furniture I ordered to augment the flexible seating in the classroom while I ferried stuff from my old room down the hall to my new one. Brand new student desks arrived the day after we were there last, so today he helped me decide on a room arrangement, move out furniture I did not want, move furniture up from the discarded stash of stuff in the auditorium, and put butcher paper on the bulletin boards across the back of the room. The moving of unwanted furniture out and selecting/moving replacement tables was an unexpected bonus project today. But it was great to get all of the things I needed help with checked off my to-do list early in the month.

Now my head is spinning with lists of things I need to accomplish before September rolls around. I've started working on bulletin board decor and am thinking about ways to incorporate the school's theme, Growing Together in Faith, into the designs. I know I have a month, but somehow when the calendar flips to August, it feels like the clock is ticking!

On the Eve of Something New

The end of the school year felt more than a little surreal this year. The gloomy, wet weather had a hand in making it feel like it was still March, even in mid-June. Before the end of the first week of the month, we had surpassed the average rainfall for the entire month. But there were other factors too. I am once again moving to a new grade level, but for once I'm staying in the same building. I am moving down the hall to take over for the middle school social studies (Individuals and Society in IB lingo) teacher who is retiring after decades. Also, I usually I like to plan some kind of break in my routine for the first week after school's out. But this year that was taken off the table by my husband leaving his job. We are both working toward the next steps in our careers.

My new role is one I've had before. Well, actually before it was eighth grade history and eighth grade language. Now it will be seventh and eighth grade history. I have incredibly mixed feelings about this move. On the one hand, I'm very excited to be working with middle schoolers again. This age group is ready for life lessons as well as academic ones. They want to know what the world outside their pre-K through eighth grade experience will be like and are hungry for tips on how to navigate it. I am looking forward to sharing the Mrs. Conrowisms I developed in my previous middle school gig with a new group of kids. I will also be teaching content that I love while staying focused on one subject area. I won't be the primary person responsible for teaching them how to be better writers, which means less hours spent grading than the previous time I taught middle school. Finally, I will be on a team with people who appear to be genuinely delighted that I am joining them. We are already collaborating on ideas for next year's musical and how to navigate the end of the school year crazy. I am looking forward to pretty much every aspect of my new position. 

However, two things give me pause. First, I will miss fourth grade. The intermediate years are where I started and spent the bulk of my teaching career thus far. The kids are old enough and know enough to do a lot. But there's also still a lot of innocence and most of the students have not yet decided they need to appear to be "too cool for school." Thankfully I know from experience that I will feel fulfilled by teaching middle schoolers, making this a minor issue. The other concern I have is that I'm following someone who is a recognized expert at this grade level and content area. I believe I'm moving into the room she has occupied for 35 years. She has a wealth of knowledge and experience that I can't possibly match. I am intimidated by the idea of trying to live up to her in the kids' eyes. Thankfully I am aware that this issue is primarily in my own head. I know no one expects me to be like her - they expect me to be like me. I'm hoping that a week or so into the new role, once I've started to develop relationships with the kids, the sense of intimidation will dissipate.

I have jumped up and down (and now back up) the grade levels from 3-8 during my career, and worked at four different schools. This change keeps me in the same building and puts me in a role I have had before. Therefore, it is the least drastic change I have ever made. But as I enter the summer months, there's a certain level of background anxiety that won't go away. My husband just left his job of over a decade, without another one lined up. He's working to set up his own consultancy while continuing to look for interesting opportunities on multiple job posting sites. This is an incredibly drastic change for us. His income has traditionally paid the bills and allowed us to save money for our kids to go to college, family trips, and retirement. My income has allowed us to have "fun money" to spend on things like our plum crazy Challenger and pinball machines. Financially we are clearly fine - even though we do now have one kid in college and another who will be a senior in high school next year. But this leap of faith could very well represent the beginning of a major shift in how we live our lives.

The end of the 2021-2022 school year has been very different from others, full of new quirks. I have no idea what to expect with my husband's career by the time fall rolls around. At least I have a sense of what it will bring for mine!