Since we’ve been doing this for more than a few weeks, I’ve started to get into a routine. Now with the Governor of Indiana closing schools for the remainder of the year, I thought it would be nice to go through my typical day.
Typical Quarantined Morning:
- 5:00- 5:30 ish- Hemi wakes me up to feed him
- Go back to sleep Hemi on my chest, Issi plopped next to me
- 7:00 ish (give or take an hour) go through email and the news on my phone. Reply to messages from family or are/seem urgent. Note: cats have not moved. Issi flopped on my hip & Hemi purring on my chest. Post something profound while trapped.
- Shower, brush teeth, get dressed
- Turn the kettle on for tea, toast some bread, sometimes I’ll fix bacon & eggs.
- Eat breakfast
- Go over any tasks for the day that are time sensitive – Monday’s record weekly drawing lesson & LCL meeting, Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s Zoom meetings with kids. Thursday’s staff meetings.
- Look at daily to do list- check email, Seesaw & Canvas. These are learning management systems- Seesaw for grades 1-4, Canvas for grades 5 & 6. This is where I post activities and lessons. I am currently looking at adding Flipgrid to the mix.
- Throughout the day
- Share appropriate tweets for school (building challenges, new things that have become available online) post similar items to Facebook
- Read currently reading Lifelong Kindergarten. Finished The Queens of Animation, rereading Ready Player One, Understanding Comics, and Making Comics.
- LEGO- could be sorting and cleaning up or building
- Work on something for school- I have brought a number of things home to learn more about including WeDo 2.0, Spike Prime, micro:bit, beginning Arduino, Makey Makey, Chibitronics… and every time I have a chance to get into the building, I bring more stuff out. I still need to bring home: a Sphero RVR, a Qdee, so many Kickstarter things I felt would be cool in my classroom and haven’t had the time to figure out.
- Lunch happens sometime along with lap time for Hemi.
- Draw
- Clean my studio
- Look at the long list of projects that I said “when I have time I really should…” shrug shoulders and move on.
- Check Social Media, Seesaw, Canvas, & email.
- Think about heading out to: Comic Carnival, the LEGO Store, school… remember- I can’t do that.
- Shake my head at something silly someone seriously posted in Social Media.
- Dinner- either look around the kitchen or (once a week) order out and pick up.
- Play with cat (Issi)
- Sit with cat (Hemi) on my lap wondering what happened to the TV remote- use my phone instead.
- Have cat (Issi) meow incessantly about playing, even though we just played for ten minutes.
- Watch something silly on TV so far: The Tiger King, Ugly Delicious, Making It Season 2, Frozen 2, Tangled, The Princess and the Frog, Jack Ryan (we saw an episode at ComicCon Paris), one episode of Kingdom, a Korean historical zombie series… basically a wide variety of junk, that will grow bigger and bigger as the weeks go by. We subscribe to Disney +, CBS All Access, Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime- so there is a large library of dumb things we can watch.
- Complain about how I need a new phone because mine doesn’t hold a charge that long. Especially since the iPhone SE was just announced and a re-engineered iPhone 8 > an ancient iPhone 7 but still a manageable size.
- Look at the time- go to bed, with Hemi on my chest and Issi attacking my feet through the covers or flopped on my hip.
- Rinse & Repeat
The differences between this and a typical school day not during robotics season.?
- Cats wake me up at 5:30 for breakfast. Return to bed.
- Wake up rush through a shower, etc. no time for breakfast.
- Arrive at school between 6:30 – 7:00.
- Get things ready. Start answering email- have alarm go off for bus duty before I get anything finished. Grab a breakfast/protein bar or whatever is around for breakfast at my desk get a large cup of tea (Earl Grey- Hot)
- 7:30 Bus Duty
- Continue prep/office work until alarm goes off to pick up breakfast trays for first grade classes at 8:00
- 8:10 today’s 6th grade class starts, followed by 5th, and 4th grade classes. 5 minutes between classes if everything is going perfectly- humans are involved, so it doesn’t ever run perfectly.
- 10:30ish Prep time- clean up from morning classes get ready for the afternoon classes, have kids come in to work on projects during their free time.
- Work on LEGO project at the window if a build has been started (one bag a day)
- Check email
- Grab lunch
- 11:55ish 1st grade class starts followed by 2nd, and 3rd grade classes.
- 2:35ish Bus Duty
- Clean up room- let late bus kids check out books from my graphic novel library. If robotics kids are staying late, help them as needed.
- Review projects from the day, adjust plans accordingly- fix any glaring errors or add new discoveries.
- Check email
- Work through project ideas & grant opportunities
- Look up at clock and realize it’s after 5:00
- Get whatever I’m working on to a stopping point.
- Go home between 5:30- 6:00
My “contract day” is from 7:30 to 3:45 with a 45 minute prep period and 30 minutes for lunch. I think the most difficult thing I’m having to adjust to during the quarantine, besides not interacting with the kids (I never realized how the kids give me energy throughout the day), is being able to use the bathroom whenever I need. This will be one of the most difficult transitions when we return.
As for time and projects- I’m finding the time I spend directly working with kids has flip-flopped with the time I prep and research. Instead of teaching 6th graders about building and programming Sumobots using NXT blocks I’m building and programming a Sumobot using Spike Prime to see how that transition might work. I’m finally working through some of the items we have in the maker space, or I’ve had for years. I’m learning how and when to integrate Makey Makey into lessons. I’m reading books like – Mitch Resnick’s Lifelong Kindergarten, and Michael Cohen’s Educated by Design. I’ve always done various webinars, but I was able to go to Wonder Workshop’s Virtual Summit, and I’m part of the Learning Creative Learning group through M.I.T. So I’m learning Scratch all over again. Many of these activities I would not be able to actively take part in during the school year.
Another thing that is missing- the sometimes panicked rush of the school day. What I mean is, I’m having time, actual time, to really get into a project and spend an entire day on it. School days I’m bouncing between classes. During my Lunch & Prep time is when I get to read and respond to emails during the school day. On a normal day I will have just started to work on a reply to some urgent request when my alarm will go off saying I have 5 minutes until my class shows up. by the time I get back to my computer 3 hours have passed, and hundreds of micro-events so I basically need to start over.