Are we really just two weeks into the semester? My days are long and my nights are short. My eyes are strained from the monitors, the smart television and the document camera use. I plan for my totally remote kids, for my partially remote Group 1 students, plan the same thing for my partially remote group 2 kids – who need a little more time and effort as we all know that different times and different kids together makes for completely different dynamics in the room. I plan for my partially remote AP Chem kids and struggle to wrap my head around teaching this class in any way but the way I have always taught this class. But teach it, I wll.
I planned ahead and bought materials and sent home baggies with materials to complete activities at home that somewhat goes with my curriculum. Can’t exactly send home hydrochloric acid. Sending home isopropyl alcohol in test tubes with good filter paper for AP to do a chromotography lab with spinach, though because it has become as allusive as toilet paper. Had to search for 2 weeks and hit three Dollar Generals in one day when Facebook said they had some available. And getting ready to order from SteveSpanglerScience so my students can do a safe reaction rate experiment at home. Frankly, I need their attention at school and they need less screen time at home.
I am creating new virtual material to keep their interest (really liking Wizerme) and creating paper packets for those with limited or no internet access. I ZOOM each class and record my lessons. I upload my notes and videos as quickly as possible for those who have a ride to the library so they can download the lessons and videos to play at home. I go over yet again how to correctly attach a picture of their activity or work for me to grade in Google Classroom so I do not have to spend a couple of hours searching for their work, only to find out …”ooops, I guess I forgot”. I try to give as much “Grace” in this new world of teaching as possible, yet teach accountability and responsibility in addition to atoms and electrons and equations. I answer emails from frustrated parents who cannot seem to motivate their students to do the required lessons. I talk, conjole and counsel students to the perils of quitting too soon, to leaving a class that is paramount to their trajectory after high school. This is what I do in my day. I am exhausted.
BUT, I finished my new PBL for Unit 1 and want to share it with those around me. i differentiated and made a paper copy for those without a phone or poor internet, or both. I wait eagerly to see if this new path I am taking will pull the kids in and have them take ownership of their learning or will it bore them, or frustrate them with lessons they think to be tedious instead of engaging. Will they rise to the occasion, or will they fizzle out and stay in their now seven month slump with academics? I want them to explore my lesson with the same zeal with which I wrote and planned and changed and morphed this new infant lesson. My theme of SUSTAINABILITY moves through my PBL and through my in-class lessons as well. I charge these young minds with the task of fixing what is broken. I push them to think about how they live their lives and how un-sustainable it truly is. My hopes are that their minds grow a little and open wide to take in new ideas and cultures and newly learned stewardship. Our classroom project pet is an injured turtle I picked off the road I have been rehabilitating for almost 2 months. They get lessons on driving, helping those who can’t help themselves and the existence of isotopes, all in one day. Only time will tell if these lessons stick, if they open their minds and learn to fight for others, if they remember how to calculate the weighted average found on the periodic table. Here’s to a semester that brings us together and shows that this old dog can learn new tricks.