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The kids had back-to-back-to-back zoom meetings before and during my office hours. I was not very productive until it was all over running between the two of them, trouble-shooting THEIR meetings, etc. Thankfully, I only had 1 student reach out during my office hours. I've had tons of them emailing me over the weekend) The principal just announced to our parents, however, that there will not be grades... so we'll see how / if engagement continues!
(There's certainly an equity issue of not all students having access to computers.) The school system where our kids go (Marietta) is providing hot spots and technology to 700 families in order to help solve the equity issue. The school system where I teach (Cobb Co.) just announced over the weekend that they're raising money to buy chromebooks for students without technology (they had $70,000 of the $170,000 needed as of Sunday)... again... trying to make the situation more "fair" across the board.
But.... whew. You still can't force the kids to get online. I had 2 people over the weekend JUST NOW ASKING about assignments and work that I've been posting about / emailing out about for 2 weeks! This is such a crazy time in the world of education. Heck... in the world of ANY industry!!
There's something positive that folks in our city are doing. They started a go-fund-me page to raise money to pay the restaurants in Marietta that are struggling to stay afloat to make meals for the workers at Kennestone hospital -- the hospital a mile from our house. What a great way to solve a problem AND help people in need at the same time!!
Residents who live near the hospital have put up heart-shaped lighted displays (Christmas lights) to show support.
In many countries (including the US and even in Atlanta), people in high-rises are cheering the hospital workers at shift changes.
They are also singing from balconies... doing group exercise classes with an instructor on a nearby roof or ground below. It is really interesting to see the humanity and solidarity in this situation.
I mentioned the hospital set-up in NYC at the conference center... well, another really interesting thing is happening to help: one of two US Naval "hospital" ships is going to be docked in a New York harbor. On board -- 1000 beds... operating rooms, pharmacy, oxygen-producing machines, etc. (Not to mention the US Naval medical staff - which would offer a relief to the medical professionals that are already over-burdened and over-run with exhaustion.)
Unfortunately, the numbers keep climbing. Here is the latest information according to John Hopkins University portal:
New York's death rate has more than doubled in 3 days. According to NY Times, they're at close to 60,000 cases and just under 1000 deaths. They also had an infant pass this weekend due to corona. :( It was reported too that as a nation, the cases have doubled in 48 hours.
We are all mandated to shelter-in-place. Our parks are closed. It's been 2 weeks, but the governor announced that schools will be closed for a month more. Mercer and I just watched an announcement from the principal of the high school and the superintendent (for some reason it was shared with the middle schoolers) about "IF" we go back to school at the end of the newest mandate.... the school will have to figure out how to host a prom at a venue that can hold a substantial amount of people on the fly.
They will figure out how to hold the honor court. They will work on commencement. There was a *but* at the end of his announcement... talking about "IF" we don't go back on April 27th...
Looking at the way things are going across the county, I'm thinking the 2nd "IF" is the one that would happen... that we may not be going back to school...
Meanwhile, this is how we are dealing with things:
Here are a couple of images from our 3rd week of "church" on the couch.
And I just hosted "brunch" on the porch (over Zoom) with some ladies that I would occasionally go out with on Sunday mornings. I ducked inside to attend church, but they were still hanging on. They just enjoyed the conversation... and they asked to do this every week instead of once a month.
It was another beautiful day, however, we did not go on a hike in the mountains... these north Georgia destinations state that they are enforcing the shelter-in-place mandates and they don't want folks to travel to their locales.
I hosted another play-date with Mercer's friend online.
We had a Boy Scout meeting over Zoom. They're trying to figure out advancement too.
This is such a strange and unusual time.
On a positive note, I updated the post below with the photos and activities that happened before things started changing here.
March 16th blog post: "It's a new day...."
We are about to start Week 3 of closure then we have Spring Break....
Here are some nice springy photos. I have been walking some mornings with a couple of ladies from my neighborhood. We walked up to the square and all of us were snapping up photos of their beautiful flowers.
Holy cow. I have not logged into the Covid-19 dashboard in 2 days. The US has now surpassed China for the number of cases reported! In 2 days, the number of total cases has increased by over 100,000 people!
I mentioned two days ago that New York is in a really bad place right now. Out of the 85,000 cases in the US, they have over 30,000 cases currently. They have also had 365 deaths. Since there are no events planned, they are turning the Javitz Convention Center into a field hospital with 1,000 beds. Here are images posted from the construction. Looks like it's about ready to roll.
One thing that is AWESOME is that private companies are stepping up and changing their business models... trying to help fill the void of medical equipment for which there is a shortage: ventilators. Elon Musk (Tesla cars and SpaceX billionaire) is changing over one of their factories to start producing ventilators. Dyson (the fan and hand-dryer company) is developing a ventilator. Distilleries across the country that normally produce alcohol are now making alcohol-based hand sanitizer. It's just amazing!!
Yesterday, I held my first Zoom class for my students. I think it went pretty well. I prepared a small lesson that I did with the students... and asked them if they had any questions about the online platform we're using. I had an hour scheduled and we finished with about 7 minutes left. I was going to wrap it up because Isabella had a thing with her class. But my students BEGGED me not to cut the video conference off. Of the 38 students that joined.... about 20 of them held on for those extra 7 minutes. They just need to connect!
We're noticing this as well in on-line forums for my own kids. Isabella has had several more small group Zoom calls.
Mercer logged into one for his math teacher earlier this week, but the kids just sat there and made awkward noises and random comments. He has 2 more Zoom sessions on Friday. Hopefully these are more "productive." :)
Mercer's schoolwork is going pretty well. He's keeping up with what he needs to. He doesn't have a lot in math, but he has a ton of science work. He has band practice every day - but this week he also had a research project on a classical compose. In ELA he had a posterboard due. I guess he takes a picture and emails to the teacher?? He's pretty good at self-managing and getting done... there's not a lot I have to help him with during the day except for science and also figuring out sometimes where his schoolwork is / IF he has assignments / etc.
Isabella's schoolwork is much harder to manage. She refuses to do certain things (writing based on the choice board her teacher provides each week) and it's like World War III over here. Some things are too easy (phonics). Other things that she has to do (based on her MAP testing earlier in the year) are too hard (multiplying double numbers) and she gets frustrated. It's been a really hard balance as Todd has even experienced the melt-downs when he gets home from work.... sometimes I'm still doing school with her (and me) when he comes back and I have to turn it over to him b/c I can't take it anymore! She has some fun things mixed in as well... little projects.
Here, she has a paper airplane challenge and measuring. That... we could manage! Whew.
Finally - an update on the caterpillars.... the started out at about 1/2" long. Now, thy are plump - getting fuzzy and several are about 1" long! This has been fun!
The governor of Georgia has ordered schools to be closed through at least April 24th.
Not too much to report. School....still moving along. It takes a really long time (at least 'til 5 +/- between trying to keep the kids on track while doing my own work. And - many nights, I'm up late still working). It is REALLY HARD for us. My science team colleagues don't have kids at home, so they're doing much better with things than I am. (But - also I have the advanced content classes with mostly motivated students (or motivated parents). I have close to 300 things to grade right now sitting in the submitted "box" on my online portal whereas they have 15 - 30 assignments. (argh! of course the one with the 2 children at home has a zillion things to grade!)
Here is the dashboard again. It just absolutely shocks me how much it climbs EVERY-SINGLE-DAY! New York City is in a really bad place right now too... their governor says that their cases DOUBLE every 2-3 days. it's frightening.
Sadly, they just closed down a major trail system here in our area... close to 3,000 acre park with 23 different trails. I give up! It's a spot where we can get fresh air... exercise....and stay socially distanced from others. (It's not like they have playgrounds. They don't.) sigh.
OK - some good news: it was a big day for Isabella. She got to have TWO zoom sessions with different classmates... and she was soooo excited / waving / talking and even figured out how to send a specific kid a chat message.
And, she lost a tooth tonight. (Less than an hour ago... she stayed up late working on it!)
On the news tonight, our neighborhood was featured for the Rainbows in the Windows (a good-news story). This is one of Mercer's friends - another 12 year old boy. (His mom texted me and said to watch the news. We let Mercer stay up to see it.)
Kind of cool!
Forgot to mention - we've been going to church on our couch the last 2 Sundays. We have had a little bit of technical difficulties but we can stream it to our TV. It's nice to see familiar faces delivering messages of hope.
Another thing that I've been trying to tune in for: Jimmy Fallon's intro to his nightly show. He's broadcasting from home and his kids are there. It's actually pretty funny. It's sort of comforting to see that even famous people have this insane juggle with working and kids at home! (Since I'm photographing the TV tonight... here's a shot from his segment.)
We certainly need a few laughs!
This is shocking. The number of cases that have been confirmed are more than double from a week ago. Granted, test kits were not readily available 'til a few days ago, but... wow. New York City numbers are growing at a really scary rate. They have so much density... I have no idea where people can go??!! Here in Georgia, the number of cases reached 800 and 26th deaths. The small down of Albany is really high proportionally to the population. Cobb County - where we live - is the 2nd highest county in the metro area with cases.
We had 1 day of nice weather, so we took advantage of it / went for a hike in the mountains. (But - a lot of people had the same idea.)
Since baseball was cancelled -- we did something that we used to do before baseball took over our lives: we jumped in the car and headed to a new destination. This time, we checked out Dukes Creek Falls. The falls is that tiny little white line across the valley -- behind the kids.
The hike was pretty easy. relatively flat, winding trails. There were parts of the trail that were more congested (at the trailhead @ the overlook, for example) and at the bottom observation deck area. Other than that, we were able to "socially distance" while getting fresh air and exercise.
There was one moment where a woman took our family picture with my phone... and then we both realized... oops -- you can't do that anymore! I had sanitizer and we wiped down hands /phones. The woman and her family were from metro Atlanta area too and we just had a discussion about how this changes a lot of things!
One thing we noticed is that not a lot has changed up north. Little stores and restaurants were open for business like normal. We looked up their county on an interactive Georgia map and they didn't have any reported cases of the virus yet.... YET. It's crazy how this is spreading... there was a lot of pressure earlier today for the Georgia governor to issue a shelter in place order and require that people NOT go out. But he did not.
Even though it was more crowded than we expected, it was a gorgeous day and we LOVED getting outside. Next time, however, we may need to stick to places that we're familiar with and make sure there are no bottlenecks no spaces that are too crowded.
Sunday was rainy. We stayed indoors. One thing we did, however, was set up a "playdate" with Mercer and a friend over Zoom to practice the tool. It was funny....I had it on in the other room / Mercer pulled it up on his phone. The two boys played a video game online together but got to talk, joke around, see each other. They acted so goofy and weird. The mom and I were texting back and forth the whole time. They were so goofy, but it was cute... and the smiles they had -- at the beginning of the "hour long zoom meeting" were awesome! (Isabella piped in and you can see her reflection in the computer screen as she's waving to KJ. "I miss you" is what she kept saying over and over again. He was embarrassed, but he finally said he misses her too.
We'll have to set up another playdate.
Using Zoom is the new thing. Isabella's teacher set up some meeting times for one-on-one face time sessions. This is GREAT because when Isabella has been watching her teacher's morning messages.... she gets upset that the teacher can't see her wave or respond to her when she tries to talk to her. (She doesn't understand that it's a pre-recorded video link.) She was so excited to talk to her teacher and here she's showing her the lizard and crickets in her room!
One final thing that I recently became aware of is courtesy of an infographic that I have seen a couple of different ways: history of plagues and pandemics. I don't remember the swine flu (H1N1) being as bad as reported here (and in other areas that I've seen H1N1 data not so colorfully presented). Mercer was a baby - in daycare. That's our "major" medical issue in our lifetimes. We did start to get flu shots when once we had children. Maybe that was the push that we got from this pandemic about 10-12 years ago?
I had a busy day of grading and attending to 2 of my teacher-training classes last night. I didn't get to blog on "Day 4."
First - starting with the numbers.... The numbers for the virus has shot up quickly. When I started looking at this dashboard - hosted on John Hopkins's website - the number of cases was around 180,000. Now - 4 days later - it is up an additional 95,000 cases and is over 275,000 cases! Georgia went from 1 death (Tuesday) to 4 on Wednesday to 13 last night (Thursday)! Italy has now surpassed Hubei China with over 4000 deaths.
Those affected with the virus here in America is still a small number when you look at the overall percentage, but watching the trend, you can see where it could shoot up rapidly if measures weren't in place to try to control the spread.
Restaurants are closing. Small businesses are just hanging on. Libraries are closed and they said to hold onto your books... no late fines. There's already lots of different kinds of government bail-outs... and this has been the 1st week of closure. It's just shocking to see how quickly all of this is happening.
Here are some photos from day 4. One of our neighbors sent an email encouraging kids to draw / paint / color a rainbow picture and hang in their windows so that - when going for walks around the neighborhood - it's like a scavenger hunt and adds something interesting to look for. My kids were game. Both created a unique "masterpiece" to hang up... it was OK to start the day with that yesterday before starting school.
We didn't go out and hunt for them 'til AFTER day 5 of "school" -- we hung 2.... and found 21 just on our street. We havne't been to the other street in our 'hood, but that will give us something else to do another day.
The ENTIRE educational system has been flipped. Most of the school systems in the country have shut down and turned to home-schooling models with parents who are at home working and juggling lessons.
On my end -- at least for the work that I'm doing -- I'd say that it's going fairly well from an engagement standpoint. I have "advanced content" kids in an economically depressed (Title 1) part of the county for the majority of my classes. By the level of responsiveness, It seems that most of them have computers or some sort of technology access. I calculated an average of 60% submittal of online assignments / connectivity of that group of kids. Unfortunately, my on-level kids either aren't as connected or have some sort of barrier. Around 10% of that class has submitted. (The advanced-content kids seemed to be more motivated throughout the school year as a trend.)
I have an online blog and site where work is posted. Some of the students have connected socially on there, except that I tried to lay down some ground rules so my school-related messages don't get buried. A couple of my students have admitted to being scared. I was able to talk to them through the platform. I'm glad to see them interacting and connecting. This group is tighter than most of the groups in middle schools... they're a cohort (STEM) and they stick together throughout most of the days / will travel together in the coming years in the STEM academy.
I don't think that any of Mercer's teachers are connecting -- at least from what I can tell. He has a LOT of school work and is doing mostly OK keeping up. He loses motivation quite a bit and wants to take a lot of breaks / argues sometimes about doing work, but I'm impressed mostly with him just plowing through.
Isabella on the other hand...
She does not comply with much (sigh). She will sometimes get focused and work, but sometimes, she gets side-tracked (like the measurement unit where she got to sorting paperclips by color instead of measuring with them).... and it's hard to get her back. She gets bored with the online work and worksheets that we print out. She's also refusing to write stories. Thankfully, it's easier to get her to do math.
Every morning, we cozy up on the couch and watch the morning message from her teacher. The first day -- she watched the message and was waving at her teacher. There was a cat that jumped up on the screen and she kept trying to tell her teacher about the cat. When the message was over, Isabella was upset that her teacher didn't reply back to her and she cried. :( It's hard for the little kids to understand!
Today, we logged into her teacher's live Instagram "shout out" and - again - Isabella was upset that the teacher couldn't hear her. Thankfully - she's doing one-on-one calls / meetings next week! She's also hosting small groups for socialization.
I know that she is looking forward to actually talking to her teacher face-to-face!
I've been having my "office hours" outside a bunch. For some reason, however, today I was at one end of the dining table.... Isabella at the other end... and Mercer was working at the coffee table. (Normally, Isabella is at the far end of the coffee table and Mercer is at the desk around the corner.) But - I snapped a shot of all of us working.
I guess we'll continue to move around until we find the right fit... or maybe we'll just keep switching it up throughout this process??
We will be trying more outdoor work, for sure, however, the carpenter bees are going crazy outside right now and Isabella keeps running inside. We'll be doing more nature-inspired things however...
This is something that I just ordered this week for wrapping up one of Mercer's Boy Scout projects... raising a bug and caring for it through metamorphosis!
Mercer is NOT excited, but Isabella and I are!
We're going to raise caterpillars through the metamorphosis stage and release at the end as butterflies! This will give us something to track and - hopefully bring some beauty into the world~
This is our new norm.
Week 1 of closure done.
Some bumps in the road.
Some "wins."
Staying safely isolated at home....
