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"How do you do it all?"

Someone asked me, "How do you do all of this and have a young family?" I am used to hearing people say, "Do you ever sleep?" Yes, I sleep. In fact, I need at least 8 hours of sleep each night. Rest is important for me to function at full speed as well as for my recovering brain. It's a fair question. When I was a beginning teacher, I would arrive at school early in the morning and stay there until past dinner. Then, most nights I was doing work at home before bed. It would've been really difficult for me to be an excellent teacher if I were just now starting with littles at home (not to say that others who are just starting and have littles at home can't be excellent teachers, just that it would've been hard for ME). But due to that hard (and likely unhealthy) work back then, I have a lot of strategies in my teacher tool kit and many resources to pull from. I also spend an hour each day in the summer working on resources that will help me durin...
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How I'm Handling the Closure with Covid-19


Whoa.  What. A. Ride.  Right?

This has been crazy.  Teachers everywhere are scrambling to figure out how to best reach our students.  How will we teach the remaining content for this year? How will we grade student work?  How will next year look?   How will we stay connected to our students?  How will we help them handle this unprecedented time calmly? How can we help them to feel safe and remind them that they are loved?

All over the country as schools are closing, teachers are working.  They are creating, trying new things, and figuring it out.  Why?  Because that's what teachers do to help kids.  Teachers are rock stars.

 Using Facebook to Connect with Students
For over a year now, I've been running a Facebook group called Franklin (my school) Bedtime Stories.  Once a week, a staff member goes live and reads a bedtime story to our students.  In the summer, I have student readers in addition to our staff readers.  Since the school closure on March 13, I've had 25 bedtime readers.  We've gone live every weeknight.  It's been a way for students and staff to stay connected.  In the beginning, there wasn't a solid plan and parents were scrambling.  Students were worried and scared. 

Because of this, Midday Math was born.  Every weekday, students could join at 1pm to watch one of their teachers solving math problems presented by www.bedtimemath.org  Teachers showed up with crazy outfits, makeshift whiteboards, and their smiles to interact with students and feel a sense of normalcy. 

This is me teaching a Midday Math lesson on St. Patrick's Day.

Zoom and Screencastify
Everyone loves Zoom.  Teachers all over are meeting with their students in some capacity.  My class meets weekly and there is absolutely ZERO academic instruction that takes place.  I look at these Zoom meetings as a way to allow my students to see each other.  We laugh, do a brief check in, have show and tell (4th graders think this is the best thing ever) and we end our call with a dance party. 

I'm happy that so many educational companies have offered the use of their services for free during this pandemic. 

In the last few weeks, I've discovered Screencastify.  It's a Chrome extension that allows me to record lessons, save them to Drive or Youtube so I can share them back out to my students.  It's also been a tool that allows me to create "how to" videos to share with other teachers. 

These are the videos I've recorded so far.

But, How are you DOING?
I'm mostly good, but every once in a while sadness hits me.  I'm at home with my two amazing little people, Mario who is 5 and Mila who is 3.  We are having so much fun together with what they view as Mommy's early start to summer. 
Mario and Mila learn how to forage for wild onions.

Thank goodness we still have nap/quiet time so I can get some work done.  My days are busier than ever because I'm wearing all of my hats at once.  During normal times, I can take off my mom hat when I get to school and take off my teacher hat when I get home.  Managing my time has been a bit of an adjustment.  And for an extrovert like myself, not seeing people and going places is hard.  Sure, I'm thankful for how good we have it.  So many have it so much worse.   But that doesn't mean my sadness and grief isn't valid.  It's okay to feel how we feel.  I miss my students every single day.  I worry about them. 

I'll pull through. 

We are resilient.   We are strong.  We are teachers.  Until we can be together again, stay well.

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