A Teacher's Life during Quarantine

There are many stories out there about people and what they have done since the closure of schools and businesses. I wanted to share mine. I'm not only a high school teacher, but I'm a wife, mom, and daughter.  This entry does not cover everything but I hope it paints a picture.

March 2020
School just ended for the week and the division made the decision upon leaving school to have a teacher work day to put "Learning in Place" packets together in preparation for school closure.  Needless to say that never occurred. The Governor of Virginia instructed the closure of schools.

https://twitter.com/GovernorVA/status/1238534082029551616

When the order hit the news and social media, I had students contacting me left and right asking if school was out for the year.  At that moment, I informed the students to just wait.  As I received information about the mad scramble to move to "distance learning," I sent messages through email and texted students through the REMIND app.  Cannot say enough how I love the REMIND app.

I have two daughters, 7 years old and 4 years old.  My youngest did not understand what was going on and became upset when my husband and I told her there is no more school for the near future.  She attended a preschool at our church. My oldest was ok with it but said she would miss her friends and her 1st grade teacher.  We only thought at the time it would be a short duration.

It took about two weeks for my classes to transition to online.  Thank goodness I was already actively using Google Classroom in my courses. Some students did not have access from home and the division expected that and distributed "Learning in Place" packets at the same sites for meal distribution.

To top off the month, my mother was scheduled for hip replacement surgery the Wednesday after schools were ordered to close.  I was semi-happy about the schools being closed because I did not have to put in a leave form to be with mom for her surgery.   Originally I planned to stay with her at the hospital until she went home, but the hospital was making a number of changes as they received more information about the virus. She came home the following day and had a Physical Therapist come out for a couple of weeks.

March went out like a Lion. 

April 2020
My husband, Mike, works for Amazon and stayed home for a couple of weeks until we all established a new routine.  The kids were upset because they could not go anywhere.  Usually we would take them to the park or the library to interact with kids their age.  My 4 yr old, Katie, could not understand that everything was closed.  Beth, my oldest, would try to explain to her that a lot of people are sick and the government wants to keep from other people getting sick. Katie would ask when Mike or I left the house, "Is the Dammedic still out there?" We eventually got a daily schedule in place.

During "school time" Beth would do her school work while my husband or I would be assist her.  I would be online during the "instructional day" and that left Katie with no school work to do.  I took the offer provided by Beth's school and signed up for ABC Mouse.  Not only did Beth use the program to reinforce what she learned but Katie would use it to do her "school work" while everyone else was online.

During my "instructional day", I logged on to answer emails, post video lessons for World History I and AP US Government, attend the multitude of meetings on Zoom and check students' work.  It became a little mundane.  If it was a sunny day, I would go outside to record my lesson to post on Google Classroom.  I miss the face to face interaction with students and teachers. It was nice to observe Spring Break. I forced myself to disconnect from work. During that week, I only answered one email from a parent because they seemed worried.

After break, the school asked teachers to volunteer time during the week to come up and assist in the issuing of iPads to students.  I donned up in my mask and gloves and went to the school to volunteer.  It was a blessing to see the high school students with their parents/guardians come and retrieve those devices. The week after the distribution my students started posting assignments that were due.  So happy for that!  The school division changed the grading policy for the 4th quarter, and I wanted to make sure my students would pass.

Also this month I started working on a new venture to bring in some extra money. When the schools closed I lost some of the extra pay I received from doing bus duty and tutoring.  I became an Independent Sales Representative for Avon.  This led to additional computer time with the training modules and interacting with customers.  My kids would help out approving posts and product for customers.

May 2020
In the beginning of May the local news paper published an article with the headline "Norfolk students won't be graded for work done from home during pandemic." All of a sudden I did not have as many students check in online or submit work.  A student sent me a message asking if the news article she saw on Instagram was true.  I told her the school division just changed how the 4th quarter would count work.

For Teachers' Appreciation Week, the administrators from the school drove over 230 miles to surprise teachers.  They came to my house to deliver a good bag and a yard sign.  This was a pleasant surprise.

Tired of always sending emails, I took the time to write notes to over 1/2 my students who I haven't heard from or haven't heard from recently.   The mailman must have loved me filling the outgoing mailbox with those notes. In these notes I would update them on everything going on with the school.  I told them I missed talking and interacting with them.  Finally I would ask if they would drop me a line and tell me how they are doing.  Since sending these out, I have heard from so of my students.

The past nine weeks or so seems like a blur upon reflection.  The beginning was a little rough.  I felt like a deer in headlights not knowing how long we would be out of school and how to keep up with everything.  My family has been wonderful! We found a routine and stuck with it.

There are still three weeks left of school for myself and Beth and then we will be on Summer Break.  Truthfully, I'm already looking forward to the fall.

Many Emotions!

Wow.  I know postings have been sporadic. I created this blog to post about my thoughts about being a teacher, originally thinking I will be posting regularly.  Life gets in the way sometimes and it gets placed on the back burner. I'm a mom to two lovely girls, one is 7 and the other is 3.  I am married to a wonderful husband who listens to my rants, worries and joys on my career. This past school year a lot has occurred, the major one is my father passing right after Christmas. With these events and unscheduled changes, I believe it diminished my ability to be an effective teacher.  Now this is REAL TALK! In my head a voice is telling me not to post this, only post the good stuff and what you do well.  I am human.  I'm not going to be perfect.  This leads to the title of my post Many Emotions!

I am excited to be going back to work for the 2019-2020 school year! I'm also feeling nervous and a bit worried. This will be my 12th year at Lake Taylor High School in the History/Social Science Department. No I do not know what I'm teaching yet but that doesn't stop me from planning.  I'm hoping to find out by the end of the week.  This year my goal will be to improve student engagement in the classroom which will be reflective on assessment scores.

In my pursuit of planning I first reflected upon the past year on the good, the bad, and the eh.  My scores from state testing was not spectacular and not where I wanted it to be.  I did however help several seniors out to review for their test and graduate.  One girl in particular came to me crying and thanking me for assisting her.  I never taught her directly but I was happy to see her achieve and graduate.  I seem to second guess myself on decisions, which of course is not great if I want to some day move up in position.  Relationships with students, staff and parents were good this year.  I know I want to stay in better contact with parents (many teachers I believe would like that).

Planning for this year will be a bit different from last year.  I'm not going to wait until the night or two nights before a lesson to plan.  Only reason I did that last year was due to the fact the administration gave us permission to upload our lessons right before teaching the lesson.  NOT A GOOD IDEA for a teacher. In a discussion with my administrator, I told her that I wanted to plan my lessons from scratch.  This will be good for me and my students because I would not just be pulling from old files.  I would take the content which I know and make it engaging and empower my students.  Many a lesson was not directed that way they were of the direct instruction/lecture approach.  Content doesn't seem to be a problem for me, but how I deliver the content can be improved upon.

I love using technology in my class and my students really liked it.  We used Google Classroom, Quizizz, Kahoot, and Remind. I also used YouTube to show snippets of movies and discussions.  Its ok for a beginning.  During the spring semester, the instructional technology specialist at school gave us the opportunity to do a self-paced professional development with Kasey Bell's book Shake Up Learning. I wished I read it sooner rather than later.  If you have not read her book and you are using technology in your classroom, you need to read it. I will probably do a post later once I start using the ideas she shared in her book. Through teacher recommendations I am going to try and implement Flipgrid in my classroom to increase engagement and give my students a voice in their learning.  To help with organization of everything I'm using, I am creating a webpage with Google Sites to give to my students and parents.  Not only will this site be used as a central assess to the different apps students would use in class, it will also keep parents up to do date with what is going on.

I also want to continue building on my relationships with students.  Better relationships the better the students will succeed.  I had some difficult classes last year.  My students deserve a teacher who is all in and wants to teach them not only want is prescribed in the curriculum but also someone who is interested in them.  I read during exam week a book by Baruti K. Kafele, Closing the Attitude Gap: How to Fire Up Your Students to Strive for Success. Attitude is everything! I want to continue building those relationships with my students.  I am currently reading Christopher Emdin's For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood...and the Rest of Y'all Too. I'm about half way done and can feel myself becoming excited to try new strategies to connect with my students.

I want to grow as an educator.  To move out of my comfort zone and try new things.  I want to empower students and watch them succeed.  What I laid out is not a step by step plan, but ideas I have learned.  Life will get in the way, but here is hoping that I will not be deterred from my goals for this school year.

Ending of a Semester

It is the end of January and for most secondary teachers that means a new semester is approaching. Today, I attended professional development to implement changes based on PBA data.

I’m kinda in a panic mode because I have not accomplished my goals with the classes I’m teaching.

(Me on the inside)

Of course with me, I either plan too much or shoot to high. For example, my district has introduced Performance Based Assessments (PBAs). My goal for the semester was to have my students write a response to a PBA with every other unit of study and to have them all graded and feedback provided with a list of interventions in place. That did not occur. I mean I did grade and provide feedback and started to institute interventions in my lessons, but I did not do a PBA with every other unit of study.  It was a lot to take on especially for not having done these before. In October, my district agreed and made changes saying only 1 PBA needed to be completed. I was happy about that BUT I wanted to be an overachiever and do more.

Now it is the end of the semester.

Time for reflection and setting new goals for the Spring.

Why couldn’t I have a PBA completed for every other unit?  It was due to my pacing, my students needed additional practice on particular skills and I fell behind. I was assessing students too much and not working with them.

I forgot to mention that I’m not by myself in the planning. I do work in a team. The World I team is "newish" this year, meaning that I am the only teacher with previous experience. We do not always see “eye to eye” but we do have a common goal to help our students.

My students shown improvement in their writing compared to the beginning of the year and I hope to see a continuation even when they are not given the claim. For second semester the documents students will need to analyze/synthesize from 4 documents to approximately 8 documents AND to create their own claims.

So, my goal for the second semester in regards to PBAs will be to have them practice with 1-2 docs for claim and synthesis at least 2 times a week. Not going to make a long list of goals and feel bogged down. This is a nice attainable goal. Feedback will be given back by the end of each week (depending on the day the classes fall). By practicing with these documents, I hope to continue seeing growth in their PBA results.

Will keep you posted on my progress!

After a Loss...

On December 16, 2018, my father had a heart attack.

It is amazing how people would come together to help me out so that I could be with my folks during this time. It was a different story and a different Administration when I had to be in the hospital for a month of bed rest prior to the birth of my daughter. At that time, I was still expected to complete lesson plans. Well, I took the few days prior to Winter Break and stayed with my family at the hospital. I did not have to worry about getting a lesson plan together or making sure students grades were submitted on time. My department kept checking up on me and so were my AP students (contact through the REMIND APP).

During this time, I was trading with my mom and sis-in-law the night shift, because Mom did not want to leave Dad alone. The break came and I was still with my family at the hospital. Dad did not regain consciousness. Christmas came and we spent it together just like Dad would have wanted.

On December 29, 2018, I was on the night shift spending time with Dad when he passed away. I was playing for him one of his favorite shows “Dr. Who.”

School did not go back into session until January 2, 2019, so I thought I will be alright to return. I was excited in fact to go back because I would see my kiddos again, especially my AP students who have been checking up on me. First this that morning the security guard for the floor came to me and asked “what in the world I was doing back at work?” I wanted some NORMALCY! I needed a routine, I am 👌. Then I saw my students and the water works came. They came to me and gave me hugs, and of course I cried a bit more. 

In my mind I’m now thinking maybe this wasn’t a great idea! But no, I needed to do this. I can’t feel sorry Dad is gone because I believe he isn’t really gone. Anyways, the following day was actually more difficult. My principal and assistant principal came to check up on me. As long as nobody asked if there was anything they could do it will be ok.

My question is how long until I can be in front of my classes and not be so sad. I love teaching and thought this will help me. Next week is a new week. It will take time. I am happy that I told my students what occurred because it showed them I may not been on the mark with grades and feedback  on assignments for a while but I’m still here for you.

I love you Dad!

Dennis D. Dodds 

January 24, 1952-December 29, 2018

Time to change the way I am teaching

It has been almost three months of school...and they have been busy.

This year in my department we are looking at data differently.  We are not only looking at data from results of unit assessment and benchmarks, we are also looking at results of formative assessments given at the end of lessons.  In the past, I did not pay too much attention to this but I'm glad to be looking more in-depth. 

My district has decided to implement a new Performance Based Assessment (PBA) for the history courses and this has made me change my focus of the course from teacher-centered to student-centered lessons.  I am all for the change to student-centered and reducing the amount of lecturing in my lessons.  I am planning more opportunities for students to work with each other reading and analyzing primary and secondary sources, facilitating discussions and writing.  Because of this change, I am using the data from my formative assessments to measure whether my students "get it." Instead of waiting till the end of the unit, as I have done in the past, I am able to plan mini-lessons to "reteach" content or a skill, if necessary.  I am starting to see a change in assessment results and so has the administration.  They rewarded the department this week for the improvements in the content area.  Looking at the formative assessments does add time to my planning of my individual lessons but I am able to have continuous review instead of waiting till the end of an unit or the end of a semester.

Making the lessons less teacher-directed and more student-centered, my students are "surprised" the class moves so quickly.  Now there are some days that my lessons are teacher-centered. Eventually, I want to have 95% of my lessons student-centered.  I am not sitting back and relaxing in the classroom.  I am actually more active, working in small groups, facilitating discussions with individual students about history, and watching students "doing history." (Term used in our department and district.) My World History I students just completed their first PBA for the year and I can't wait to sit down and check the progress as compared to their pre-assessments. In their first PBA, students had to use several documents to support a claim about Mesopotamia.

I am looking back on my research from my Master's program (6 years ago) as I was cleaning out the files on my computer and I ran over an article from Educational Leadership ,"How Classroom Assessment Improve Learning" published in 2003.  According to the article, " To use classroom assessments to make improvements, however, teachers must change both their view of assessments and their interpretation of results. Specifically, they need to see their assessments as an integral part of the instruction process and as crucial for helping students learn." Because I did not think I had enough time to do this in the past I did not use assessments like this.  Thanks to my administrators (at the time I thought they were just adding more to my work load), I am viewing data in a different light.

I think I literally looked like this one day while discussing my data with my administrator and department chair.

When the administration of your school wants to change they way you have done something in the past,  do not think about it as a condemnation, but as a way to help improve your craft.  I appreciate this and can't wait to see how my students fair when we take our first district benchmark next month.

Investing in our students!

Oh my how time flies!

The past couple of weeks have been busy with meetings, appointments, homework and work work. By the way if I haven’t said in a previous post, I’m a graduate student working on my specialist degree in Educational Leadership. I will be finished in August and can’t wait.

These last couple of weeks have been taxing to say the least.

I was listening to a video for one of my graduate courses and it was to say the least empowering. The video is from speaker Dr. Jeff Duncan Andrade. In the class we just finished discussing how our students are human capital.

As I watched the video of Dr. Andrade’s presentation, I could not help but think of the student who died a couple of weeks ago. He was murdered. His funeral was this past Friday and many of my students did attend. This was not the first time I had a student die during my tenure at Lake Taylor High. I could not help but to think what our students face outside of school. They are under lots of stress. Some mornings while on bus duty, I overhear conversations about neighborhood fights and shootings and and that their father, brother, sister, mother, or someone close to them have been affected. Students need a caring adult to help “navigate through this toxic stress.”

This video has reminded me of why I became a teacher in the first place. I wanted to make a difference and let students know they can decide their future. I want to provide students Hope! They can be whoever they want to be.

Even after they leave high school, I have students contacting me and coming up to the school to thank me for being there for them. Frankly, I was shocked that a couple of the students thanked me because if you saw them in high school and asked them about me, they probably would have responded “Mrs. Porter is mean, she is hard on me.” (Maybe they would have used some other adjectives but you get the point).

I think this video should be viewed to those teachers who are about to give up. It may have them recall why they started in this profession.

Back to normal?

Back to Normal?

So, when Winterstorm Grayson came through, my school district closed for 5 days. At my house we received 12 inches of snow with drifts that were higher. 

 

Due to the days off from the snow, I had to go back through and redo my pacing for the rest of the semester to make sure the content is covered. I have to admit I expected to be out of school for three days but not for five. We returned to school on Thursday and now have a three day weekend in remembrance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Tomorrow we return to school and the weather is predicting another snowfall for Wednesday or Thursday with possible accumulation of three inches.

Is the schedule going back to normal? The teacher side of me hopes so because I want to get through the rest of the semester without rescheduling my lessons. The snow loving side of me is saying “let it snow.”

Teachers have to be flexible. Not only with their students and those that work with, but also with circumstances which changes the teaching schedule.

By the way, this morning at 5am I received the call for no school. So far this month the attendance has been 5 days present, 1 holiday, and 6 snow days.