mrsmteaches

[mrsmteaches]

Fingerspell Friday! I'm a beginner. I started seriously learning not quite 5 months ago, at night while I nursed my newborn. And unlearning an incorrect letter F from my youth which I now mix up with letter D.

Salvador Dali 

Keith Haring

Kehinde Wiley

Vincent Van Gogh

Leonardo da vinci

Marcel Duchamp 

James Whistler

Nesrin During

Bansky

Pose2

[mrsmteaches]

Department Drama Part 1

With our one teacher retiring, it's set off a chain reaction. I'm moving, another teacher is moving to my position (she wanted part time), which leaves that K-3 job open. Apparently, there's a SpEd teacher who is interested because she wants to get out of SpEd. Which raises a lot of questions from me.

Is she art certified?

Is she willing to get her permanent certificate if not?

Why does she want to leave her department?

Why art? A lot of teachers, in my experience, think art is easy. As someone who has done LTS for Earth Science, Business, Computer Science (coding), English, and Art, art is the hardest. There's a lot more prep and pre-planning since they're project based.

Why does other people who have worked with her immediately cringe and state that we don't want her? Is it a blunt personality? 'cause I actually like blunt people. Does she lack common sense? Work ethic? Frustrates easily? Burnt out?

[mrsmteaches]

As I stated before, I'm not...excited...about my new job.

I would LOVE to stay in my current position. I love the kids, I love the few teacher friends I have, I love, LOVE getting home before lunch, I love having the control over the curriculum. I'm still developing and updating the curriculum to make it AWESOME and...I'm leaving. I'm leaving it half done. The projects are still not perfect, but I have to leave it.

But, I'm an adult with 2 kids now. I don't even want to know how much I've spent on diapers already. I'm tired of strategically planning my finances. I'm tired of not being able to blow $200 randomly on something, I want to be able to do major projects on the house, I want to send K to gymnastics or some other program.

So, despite that I'll be working with kids who are younger than I usually like and that I'll be home a lot later, I took the job. I'm going to probably cry over not being able to spend more time with my kids and loosing something I love, but then I'll put my big girl pants back on and find the joy of it so I'm not a sorry sack of goo when the time comes and resent my job. I KNOW it's going to be great, I KNOW I'll probably love it once I get in there. I just need to have my feelings first.

[mrsmteaches]

I'm unofficially, officially full time elementary Art! 3-5th grades

I put an exclamation in, but that's not how I'm currently feeling. I'll process it later...

[mrsmteaches]

Done!!!

✅ Every student grades are entered

✅ Professional Artifact site compiled, complete with photos

✅ Last day of Instruction was last Friday

There’s still a few last minute procrastinators that are submitting things (still!!!) but I can finalize them tomorrow and proof read my site with fresh eyes. WHOOT!!!!

[mrsmteaches]

Final Instruction Week over!

it’s DONE!!!

Well, the actual instruction. Cue panic-turning in assignments and frantic emails asking why I haven’t updated the official online gradebook yet.

Why? Because I have a LOT to grade. I have 133 students, three assignments were due on Friday, PLUS late work, you can do the math. Suffice it to say it’s a lot. Today I went through 1 of 6 sections and finalized their grades. Tomorrow I will shoot for 2 sections. 

To increase the fun of computer work, I also have 4 files I have to update for admin. One is accounting for every student who was either panic-turning in, or didn’t turn anything in. I was running about 60% attendance rate. That’s a lot of kids. 

I’m feeling a little swarmed, but I know it will be ok. Eventually 🤪

[mrsmteaches]

He submitted the missing assignment this morning. It's now 19 days late.

No, I do not have any rush to grade it.

Yes, I realize that his parents are probably hounding him. To me, that's a natural consequence for not keeping up on his work, especially when it's a 5 minute sketch.

[mrsmteaches]

Not quite going to plan

I knew assigning a group project so early would have issues. I just didn't guess them.

Well, I kind of did. I expected there to be a handful of groups telling me that one student hadn't replied back or did anything. What I didn't expect was that despite being super tech savvy, having them get together in some way was difficult for many of them. Like, really hard.

Luckily, in anticipation of some hiccups, this week's task is pretty darn easy. They can get "caught up" and it should be good to go.

I know I bit off something large to add to transition. In hindsight, I might have given them their groups and had them touch base with a totally random assignment first instead of piling it all on. I will make a point to apologize to those who are feeling very frustrated, but also stress that the side goal was to have them communicate and socialize when we can't do a lot of that in the current climate. Oh well. Can I claim first year teacher? I'm going with "Failing Forward" as admit calls it. 😁

[mrsmteaches]

Schools are officially closed the rest of the school year.

Not a surprise. The previous "closed indefinitely" order had the intent behind that we would return to school, even if it was for a week.

Not anymore. My Senior is devastated.

I'm not shocked. All signs, curves, and predictions pushed it right at or just past the end of the year.

[mrsmteaches]

A day of Teacher firsts!

I was actually really nervous about today's Zoom session. I had a Co-host, so there was professional pressure to do well, and then because this was a totally new way of showing a project that I had NEVER done before, I was nervous that I was going to miss something important.

I did miss something important, but a student caught it before I sent them on their way and it didn't have to do with actual instruction or the project. I didn't think about how they were going to get in contact with each other in the first place if they didn't originally have their contact info. Whoops!

So that was my first first. My second first was that I recorded my first screencast in QuickTime! Easy, and I was pleasantly surprised that my low voice came across pretty feminine 😍 (always been an insecurity).

The third first was uploading to YouTube! I had to enlist the teenager to help me get it up and set 🤣. Honestly, I probably could have figured it out, but she was able to set me up 10x faster.

Every thing went well, most questions were to clarify locations of stuff - really, if they just look in Canvas, everything is organized.

Phew, one more week down!

[mrsmteaches]

🤣

Here we go again https://www.instagram.com/p/B-ot-jtHikW/?igshid=13xe1jwnjwafr

[mrsmteaches]

First zoom session(s) went well!

I saw my students for the first time and it was more emotional for me than I anticipated. I really do miss seeing them and being with them in class

It was a boring class this week - I talked about expectations and what their to-do list is this week. Explained their weekly sketch assignment, and had them text me questions.

So far no one has emailed me with issues, so I guess everything is going well!

[mrsmteaches]

School is "closed indefinitely" up here.

I'm glad to have a timeline.

I'm glad I can plan now.

I'm not glad because it's going to be hard and I miss my kids.

[mrsmteaches]

Day 1 of Cyber!

I don’t have anything today except “office hours”.

One student asked about last semester grades - she was shooting for all A’s and she ended with a B on the second marking period from me. I’m now talking with Mom about it. 

Another asked if they could do a value study at home for credit (of course!) and asked for a copy of the worksheet. 

More emails about Zoom suggestions and taking everything in strides. I’m glad Home office is being so flexible in all this. They keep stressing that there will be issues and to not sweat it - they’re not looking for perfection. 

I checked that my assignments were open

Student emailed me in Canvas asking where my Zoom links were (hint, I didn’t post them yet because it was SUNDAY)

Checked my next week lesson and started plotting in my brain how I want to show it. 

Started outlining lesson for this.

And of course i have the toddler because hubs is sleeping.

[mrsmteaches]

Tomorrow starts Cyber.

I don't "have" anything until Wednesday, but I should really take a look and make sure everything is scheduled correctly in Canvas. Man, I miss Schoology. Canvas is the DOS version of Schoology. It works, but you have to tell it exactly what to do and control every thing. It is NOT intuitive at all and is a pain creating Modules - which are folders.

For instance, to make an assignment I have to "Add" which brings up a window and choose "New Assignment" and title it. After you confirm, it brings you back into the main window with the newly titled assignment with no information. You then have to click on it to open it (new page), hit the Edit button, and then you can start to type up the assignment. Adding pictures is a pain, you can't click and drop, the formatting is atrocious, it's so no user friendly. I miss how easy Schoology was, you could add an assignment and create it all on one page, it was so intuitive and easy to create and I can see the logical progression instead of a master list of everything. Ugh.

In short, because of how it's laid out I want to double check it's set up right.

My backdrop came in yesterday for cyber meetings though! I bought a big sheet of van Gogh's cherry blossoms to cover the window and not back-light me. Hubs has a desk for me to use while this is going on (an old dry sink) that he is going to have to sand and put a last coat of stain on today.

H's school is using this week as a transition week for resource learning. Her district is a week behind us.

[mrsmteaches]

Another day of crazy prequel days. T-minus 4 days to Distance Learning

Less emails today. More constructive fine tuning going on. Someone took the initiative to put our modified schedule from a daily list into a table, which cleared up SO much confusion for me. It also helped Admins to see and modify what they had originally sent out.

Our Digital Coaches are taking all the links and info that were pushed out on Monday and Tuesday and putting it all in one place. Today they had an optional meeting on Zoom to talk to us fine arts people a little more, and that mostly resolved any questions I had. There's still one, but I'm smart enough to guess the answer to it.

I was trying to talk through what I need to do if we ever get the go-ahead for Distance Learning for the rest of the school year. Being art, I asked if he could build me something that could hold my iPad above a workspace to sketch or demonstrate. My husband is a genius and asked if our off-brand action camera could be used as a web cam. It can!!! I'm so excited! 3 days and $11 later, and I'll have an armature that I can position anywhere I need for meetings, demos, class, etc. I'm ex-cited!

Once it gets here, I'm going to be starting to record the long-term project demostrations. I can use it for my school mandated extra training.

[mrsmteaches]

It's time to start this up again! 3/25/2020

Next week is our first week of Distance Learning, and although the Governor has us "ending" cyber April 8th, we already are guessing that it will be extended until the end.

Today I finished some Rapid Distance Learning training, and it was pretty helpful. I loved Flipped classrooms to begin with - most higher level classes use that model, but most schools are set up for traditional Blooms model.

Monday we begin our first week, I don't "have" class until Wednesday and later today have a meeting on Zoom.

Crazy times.