Days 4 and 5

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....