The Clark Family: Distance Learning

Tuesday, March 17 was the first day of distance learning in our house. The governor of MN made the announcement on a Sunday. My mind was whirling with what we would do and how this would happen. On Monday we had a staff meeting to discuss, and parents came into the building in the afternoon to pick up the students' things they would need. The next day, we were up and rolling with having our first day of on-line teaching and learning. I'm still amazed that we made the turn-around so fast. The rest of the state had two weeks for planning time to put things in place.

I got a letter from our priest indicating me as an "essential employee". Because a stay-at-home order was in place, we weren't supposed to leave the house unless absolutely essential for groceries, medicine, or work. These were long days in the classroom. Teaching on-line proved to be more work than an actual school day. The learning curve with technology was great, and my teaching partner needed a lot of help too. The kids were home with Pat. Olivia was super independent with getting her work done, but I needed to work with Henry when I got home to get his done.

Eventually we got into enough of a routine with teaching that I moved my teaching to home. I set up a card table in the basement and quickly switched to an exercise ball for a chair when I realized my butt was hurting from so much sitting. I also picked up some glasses for filtering blue light. The increased screen time was possibly causing me more headaches. The glasses seemed to help with that.

Working from home had its perks. I was able to sleep in about 30 minutes later. I had a more relaxed(ish) morning too. I'd sip coffee and watch the news with Pat. Most days though, I'd grab the laptop to start doing schoolwork as early as 6:30. I'd always have my laptop near me in the morning hours, checking for messages from the kids or parents, especially when assignments went "live" at 8:00. Initially there were always a lot, but as we got in a groove and all learned the technology piece, there were less and less.

At 10:00 each day, I would Zoom with my class. Normally this would include a lesson or two from the day. Usually it would be math, but sometimes religion, language, science, or a specialist. This was the highlight of my day, especially at the beginning. I loved seeing their faces and hearing from them. A few times we would have game days. We'd do blind drawing, trivia, and our favorite, alibi. Game days were optional, so I didn't have 100% attendance, but they were some of my favorite sessions.

The rest of the day was a mix of continuing to address any problems that came up with the students, correcting their work to give them fast feedback, and working on getting things ready for the next day. I used a variety of programs like: Spelling City, Khan Academy, Newsela, Brain Pop, and Pebble Go Next. I became an expert in all things Google including running Google Classroom, and making Docs, Slides, and Forms.

While all of this is going on, Henry also needed quite a bit of assistance with his homework. Olivia was 95% independent, thankfully! If we would have sat down to do all his work straight through, it would take about 3 hours on the average day. His attention span isn't so great though, so there were lots to times of working on it one assignment at a time with breaks between. Lots of lego building happened in the meantime. A little bit of driving me crazy too, while I was trying to get my work done, but in general he did well. Overall, we all did well. It was a lot to juggle, but somehow we all did it!