So in the weeks leading up to school, we were required to attend these webinars teaching teachers how to use our new online platform called K12 for MSO (My School Online). I think every single teacher knew from the get-go when we were having trouble accessing the live webinars that this was going to be a shit show. We were “talked at” for hours each day about a platform we didn’t even have access to try out. One of the facilitators for my group’s name is/was Honey. I kid you not. Now, I’m sure that Honey is a very nice person, however, listening to her drone on day in and day out about all of the intricacies of a platform that I couldn’t even access was annoying, to say the least, and earned her the name Honey Boo Boo within my circle of friends. I would get up each morning turn on the webinar via my tablet and check-in for the day. I would then turn the volume off or down and proceed with my own lesson planning. I preemptively set-up Google Classrooms for all of my classes and invited students one by one to my classroom. I sent about 130+ emails. I patted myself on the back and by the end of the torturous week of K12 learning, most of my students had joined the various Google Classrooms. Late on Thursday night/early Friday AM of the same webinar week, I finally got access to my K12 online classroom. I am telling you that I can set up my own router at home, I have set-up our laser printer to print via WiFi - I am somewhat tech competent - YET NOTHING PREPARED ME FOR THE SHIT THAT AWAITED ME ONLINE IN MY VIRTUAL CLASSROOM. Nothing made sense - there were about 10 different ways to accomplish the same task. Teachers from my district basically crowd-sourced help via FB to teach each other how to set-up our K12 accounts and classrooms. I had friends who were literally crying because of this foolishness. Even people who had paid attention and taken notes were having trouble. Again - some of this could have been avoided if for example - our district had decided to ask real teachers the best kind of learning platforms to use, but, No - some people who haven’t been in the classroom in years made that decision for us. OR - had we been able to have access to our real online classrooms at the same time as the webinars we could shadow the actions of Honey Boo Boo. But, again - NOPE. The first day of school arrived and I logged on at 6 AM for an 8:15 AM class. By the time 7:45 AM rolled around FB was filled with messages of the system crashing, teachers not being able to log in, parents of students not being able to log in. I was able to meet with my students for a few minutes - I never got sound to actually come out of my mic on the K12 version of Zoom - called Newrow. It should be called Never - because it Never worked. I sent my students a message and we met on Zoom. I had also gotten most of my kids to sign-up for Google Hangouts, and I posted links to Zoom there for the rest of the day. K12 was the disaster that we all imagined and more. They even copied the Amazon Apology Dogs and guess what - it was a free stock image easily found on Adobe Spark. God Bless the 11th-grade hacker who brought our district to its knees. While I was being a rebel and had already decided to give K12 the finger, it was “Lil Bro” who turned into the hero we didn’t know that we needed. By Thursday 9/3 - we were finally permitted to abandon K12 and start using MS Teams and Zoom. Our school district made the national news nightly for a week and still pops up now and then as a blurb and it is now 9/10. Our school board met last night until 2 AM where it was finally decided that K12 is done. And all I have to say to K12 is “Girl Bye”.
Bitmoji & Digital Classrooms
I like technology and am all for integrating it into my classroom. I will be teaching virtually until at least October and I have been looking for ways to spice up my PowerPoints for online teaching. I want my students to feel more engaged. So, I was scrolling through FB one evening and I saw my friend’s Bitmoji classroom. It was really cute and I was like “I am going to make one”. I googled “How To Make A Bitmoji Classroom” of course, I chose the very first tutorial that popped up. I watched it and I was like no big deal, I can do this. 3 hours later, I was defeated and I declared, I’m having a glass of wine. I decided that I would not be creating a Bitmoji classroom. The next evening, my friend again posted something really cool. I PM’d her and asked her to share and she did, but she did me one better! She invited me to Bitmoji Craze For Educators on FB. It was the best thing that could have happened. I will say the majority of the teachers in this group which now has over 450K members are very supportive and they share their stuff. Some post pictures, but won’t share which I think is an asshole move. Back to my Bitmoji classroom, I had an epiphany, I had been watching a really crappy tutorial. In fact a lot of the tutorials that I watched after the first one didn’t help much. But the FB group was amazing. I took a classroom that had a background that I liked and started from scratch (using the background). Several hours later, I proudly share my very first slide with the group! Yes, at the beginning it takes a while to learn, but it is mostly because you are building up your image library. You find all the images you want to use, but they have to be transparent and then you have to remove the background and download and then add to the slide. After you build up your library, you are golden. I seriously think that I have developed a Bitmoji Addiction! Yesterday (Sunday) I created an Ice Breaker set of assignments that I did from top to bottom without using anyone else’s slide as a jumping off point. It was a very detailed set-up which includes over 30 links, but I know that my students will love it (they better). I had shared some of the stuff with my varsity debate class and their responses and feedback have made me optimistic. With all this being said, I really take issue with many parents who are bashing us on social media as being lazy and only wanting to collect a paycheck and sit at home and do nothing. This is where I feel like giving them the finger and saying “F YOU”! When do YOU sit at home on a Sunday and work for hours for free?
Professional Development
So, I have been thinking about creating a website/blog for a while. Thank to The Rona, I’ve had a ton of extra time on my hands. I decided to stop laying on the couch watching re-runs of Good Bones or pretty much anything else on HGTV or DIY and make this happen. I like to think that I’m funny sometimes. It may also come off as sarcasm. Nevertheless, I thought I was being funny by naming my blog Professional Development. After I post this, I will do a Google search and probably find out that this idea was not funny or witty. I was thinking about how I would sum up teaching in a picture and came up with this. It seems like we are glued to our computers or phones. This may not just be symptomatic of teachers, but I complete this routine every morning. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is check my phone and look at emails that may have trickled in since I went to bed. Opening the app is like playing Russian Roulette. What am I going to see - An email from a parent about their child who should deserve to turn in something late (even though they have had ample time)? An email about some dumb PD that teachers are being required to complete? Am I going to wake up to messages on from Remind from a student at 2:30 AM incensed that I haven’t responded to their previous messages that they started sending around midnight about an assignment due that day? I don’t know about you, but during the school year, I turn into a pumpkin at about 9 PM. We sometimes just want to sound off and let it all out because we have had a truly awful day. Was it the fact that we had one of many drills that continuously interrupts instruction time? You name it, I feel like we have them: fire drills, tornado drills, active shooter drills? Trying to get kids back on task is like herding cats. Was it the argument that I had with some random kid who I caught vaping in the hallway? I mean there are just so many scenarios. But guess what? Sometimes that gets balanced out by the really good things. It could be something so simple that makes my heart swell or crack a smile so wide you would think that I won a raffle for a spa day. There have been mornings when I have opened up my email to find something from a former student who just wanted to let me know that I had made a positive impact on their life all these years ago. Sometimes there are nice emails from parents. Seriously, little things can make a teacher happy. Finally, happy hour - a phrase that I feel a teacher must have coined. Yeap, people joke, but head out to your local Chili’s (Post-Rona) at about 4 PM on a Friday. Take stock of who you see, it’s most likely a bunch of educators there for the 2 for 1 drinks. Teachers are always all over the drink specials. And instead of talking about something other than teaching, you guessed it; we are talking, cursing, yelling, laughing about our week. If it’s payday we might be even more rambunctious. We need that camaraderie. Sometimes I would not make it without the support from my crew. If you think about it, we spend more time at work with these people, than we do at home with our families (sleeping doesn’t count). If you are lucky enough to have a crew, you will see that they do their best to lift you up and watch your back throughout the school day. Those pictures are teaching in a nutshell. Class Dismissed!
