Who all is still at your school if anyone?

Our admin, secretary, and custodian, are there with 1 aide.
It sounds like some teachers are still going to school in places.
I am not sure.
Our governor has been talking about teachers being "essential workers" along w/ nurses.

Then in his next sentence he says do not gather w/ more than 10 people.

 

Custodians and those few that are giving out packets for the few parents that do show up.

 

Administrators, counselors, an aide or two, and custodians are at our buildings. I went one day to pick up some stuff and get the next round of work ready.

 

We still have school in some parts of Australia. Social distancing is required everywhere else but schools are still open in some states. Teachers are classed as essential staff. Many parents have already taken their kids out of school voluntarily. But there are students who still attend.

 

No one.

 

No one- all admin are working from home also. Teachers were given a 2 hour window last week to pick up materials for online teaching. Admin are delivering chromebooks to students who missed our last day and didn't take them home. Breakfast/lunch pick up is being provided, but our school isn't one of the pick up locations.

 

No one.

 

Principal, primarily for food pick-up, and a secretary one day a week to do payroll.
We are not allowed in to get any materials.

 

No one, but we can go in if needed. I haven’t. Everything I need is online.

 

All of us, practically. My school rolled out distance learning via Zoom Meetings and it is essentially business as usual.

We are expected to work regular contract hours and to attend business meetings via Zoom, as well.

 

Adding to my previous, brief, comment:

We were originally to be off until April 6th. The caretakers were to be going in this coming week to do a complete deep clean. Now that our closure has been extended, I'm not sure if that's been revised. No one, admin included, is allowed in the buildings. All we have at home is whatever we thought to grab during the one day we had at school after the upcoming closure was announced.

 

I'm glad life is continuing to progress mostly normally for you. I'm sure it makes life much easier. Since other schools around the country may wish to do the same thing, do you have any advice about how your school is handling testing to make sure staff that comes in daily haven't been exposed or how disinfecting may be taking place nightly after everyone leaves?

 

Our buildings are basically shuttered. No one is allowed in, even custodians.

The exceptions to that are:
1) the sites across the city that are being used for meal distribution;
2) buildings unlocked on specific dates at specific times for retrieval of items necessary for learning.

Teachers are all teaching from home. I've spent 14-15 hours each day in front of my computer doing school-related tasks.

Administrators and secretaries are working from home.

 

I actually gave some great advice in the Zoom thread.

With regards to tests, I have been administering tests via Google Forms. I give a variety of questions (multiple-choice and free response). For free response questions, I require that students attach their work by uploading a screen shot — like two or three questions — and I intentionally make the multiple choice questions more difficult so my students can’t just Google it to the find the answers.

And for some questions, I will follow up with a question that asks how they solved it? For example: “What steps were necessary for computing the following derivative? Select all that apply. (This is so that they can just use their solver function on their TI-89 Titanium graphing calculators.)

NOTE: I even put a note saying that if they cannot describe how they arrived at the correct answers in follow-up question for each question that ZERO credit will be given for that previous problem.

Consider the following: f(x) = 5sin^2(7x) + 5cos^(7x)

This is for my AP Calc BC students: The answer is that students would need to use the Pythagorean Identity, which states that sin^2(ax) + cos^2(ax) = 1 and to rewrite the function y=f(x) as f(x) = 5*(sin^2(7x) + cos^2(7x)) = 5*(1) = 5. Then, they need to recall that the derivative of a constant function is zero, as the derivative [denoted as f’(x)] is defined as the slope of the tangent line and the slope of a constant function of the form y=b (the graph of a horizontal line), where b is a real number, is zero as it has no vertical rise. Hence, f’(x) = 0.

I give a big list of options to choose from and students can’t just select A-E. They must select from like 15 options and put them in order.

(My students say that my tests are quite difficult, even with access to the internet. Whahahahaha!)

 

Disinfecting takes place nightly by cleaning crews (I’m talking heavy-duty cleaning), janitorial staff are wiping down surfaces regularly with Clorox wipes, and all employees are required to practice social distancing. No group meetings are permitted and teachers are to work by themselves in their classrooms. All meetings are conducted and held via Zoom Meetings. We are all provided N95 masks and have electronic hand sanitizing stations throughout the school. Air purifiers were also recently installed to remove respiratory droplets and other contaminants that linger in the air.

This was installed in every classroom and in the offices: https://www.google.com/shopping/pro...PGPYKzkI8UvM-R6Hg2FkeM2XHJk,cdl:1,prmr:1,cs:1

 

I certainly hope that problem was one already completed since they can now google it and it will show up.

 

Yes, it was already completed. I have a massive test bank and never use the same test more than once. Here is how it works:

Think what a discipline matrix looks like, but picture every problem has its own matrix for potential problems that they can be tested on. Question 1 usually involves a conceptual understanding problem and I have like 50 questions to choose from that I continually adapt. My tests are usually 20-30 questions long, for an average of 25 questions per test. I have, at present, 50 problems to choose for each question and so the total number of possibilities is 50^25 or 2.980232239x10^42 combinations.

I add new questions every year and so this number will exponentially increase.

I laugh at my students when I would hear them (in the past, not now, obviously) talking about my questions in the halls in between class. *Every* version is different and I give different versions per class and every period. The fools, lol!

 

Does your school have procedures in place to work from home if a staff member is infected?

 

Yeah, that staff member is not allowed to return to work. We are also required to be tested for Covid-19 once per week at random — some families saw to it that testing kits were donated to the school. It is tedious, but necessary.

 

You mean swabs, right? The tests have to be processed in lab which receive either swabs or blood to test for the virus.

 

You are probably correct. I am not too familiar with the exact terminology.

 

Oh goodness! What are you possibly doing? We are expected to work from home, as well. We are to have loose office hours from 9-11 and again from 1:30-3:30 each day. So maximum we are expected to work 4 hours a day.

Our kids are expected to work between an hour and 45 minutes to 3 1/2 hours a day total, depending on their course load.

 

Oh, man! I am so sorry! We are (in our state) considered essential too which means they could make us come back. We have a fairly strong union though, so I don't think they will.)

 

I think that is the way to do it. Our main secretary is usually super calm, sweet, and pretty much a miracle worker, but last time I saw her, she seemed like the stress was getting to her.
Some people are on hourly pay like 1 of the aides. Maybe they are gone by now. IDK...

 

My building is closed three days a week, but my P still goes in. My school is a food pick up site so someone is actually there every day.

I’ve gone up twice to get things from my room.

 

They told us our schools were going to be closed and locked on March 23rd, so now is going in. Our custodians were cleaning everything, that might have taken place before that, but I'd think they might be going in.

 

Our local school district (the only school district in this town) was first giving out lunches and breakfast Monday through Friday. Then they reduced it to Monday - Wednesday - Friday. I was thinking, ok it's probably dry cereal and milk for breakfast, but 2 days old lunch?
Now they're giving them out only on Mondays. So you pick up 5 lunches and breakfasts. I'm sure breakfast is cereal, milk, maybe an oatmeal bar, and lots of fruit, or yoghurt and graham crackers (these were the only uncooked items), but what about lunch? The only thing they had that was uncooked was a sandwich but a 5 day old sandwich is not good. Especially if the parents don't put it in the fridge and there is always meat in it.

 

No one.

 

The list is endless. I have to walk away.
Webinars on new learning platforms the district is requiring.

Working to contact all of my students.

Helping get families connected to technology or trying to troubleshoot them getting logged in on various devices.

Helping other teachers get connected to various types of technology.

Zoom and webex meetings with staff (whole school and team)

Learning and setting up the technology

Researching various approaches to distance learning

Doing 3rd quarter progress reports

Planning lessons

Familiarizing myself with the online lessons available in our now-required platform.

Assigning differentiated lessons to students

Creating digital lessons

Answering parent messages

I'm one of the go-to tech people at my school so I've been supporting other teachers and some of their families with tech stuff in addition to communicating with my own families.

Our district is asking for 6 hours of work a day. As usual, I can't get it done in that time. I do need to start limiting my hours, though. My personal children won't sustain this lack of attention for much longer.

I'm also trying to learn Spanish!

Oh, and everything is taking longer than it should because my internet is intermittently disconnecting. It's so frustrating!

 

We're only expected to be available by phone and email during school hours. Kids with internet access are expected to get on various online learning platforms or complete learning packets.

 

I am in the same boat as you. Only I am not the IT.
Still I have helped many others with their platforms and Zoom. M-F I worked about 11-12 hours a day. I started getting knocked off the internet and having problems with various sites probably because they were updating or in use too much.
Also, I was not even teaching this year, but got roped into teaching different subjects. ( For the 1st time in 30 yrs, I HAD a cushy job! I deserved it too!...lol)
Anyways, I learned after last week that something had to give because I am usually very mellow and patient. I have a pattern of just getting really mad and snapping at someone maybe once every 7-9 yrs.
On Friday of last week, I broke that record and snapped at 2 people I love very much on the same day.
I knew I had to take the weekend off and let up. I have been on here just chilling most of the weekend. I really have to monitor myself not to feeling overly responsible for everyone else.
I wanted everything to run smoothly, but like we are told when kids misbehave, " It is what it is!"
I really wish we were just doing what Whizkid's school is doing now. It'd be a lot less stressful!
Please remember to try and take breaks. I had not eaten practically anything M-F. Yesterday was so nice to have a delicious meal. Take care of yourself and your family. I am going to try so hard to do that next week.
Sorry! I do not know how to delete above.

 

Yes, there has to be balance or this won't be sustainable. I've had a bowl of cereal and a piece of cheese today.

Starting tomorrow I will maintain a more reasonable schedule. The thing is, I want to be available whenever people need me. Parents who are working essential jobs need me on their own schedule.

And, for the record, I'm not an IT person. I teach K. But I love technology and have conducted technology PD for our staff frequently so I have unofficially assumed that role.

Take care of yourself. We're in this for the long haul.

 

In my head, I know you are right. In my heart, I am afraid tomorrow will be like last week. Maybe not though because I did catch myself. ( But, not until I snapped 2x) Cereal would have taken me too long to eat...lol! I got really bad!
I did grab a piece of cheese a couple of times last week too. Then I had a few handfuls of almonds and remember grabbing just a plain old piece of Dave's Killer bread and eating it dry. I was living mostly off of coffee.
I am the same way about wanting to help people. I feel so much for the nurses and grocery workers. Then really sweet teachers need help and are kind of panicking too. We have had a lot dumped into our laps quickly.
Most of the parents do not work here, but they do not want their TV shows or whatever interrupted. My worst fear: They might block me...lol
That is cool of you to help people w/ tech issues. I keep telling myself tomorrow to take a lunch break. I have power bars that I forgot about too. Then I am going to do my best to get unplugged from everything after 4pm. Hopefully, I'll be back on here Saturday w/ a new attitude! Take care too! <3

 

We have a Zoom meeting tomorrow.

 

We have a Skype 1 early in the morning! GRRRRR

 

No one is our buildings except custodians. They are cleaning the building. Everyone else is home. My district supplied work packets that can be picked up by parents when they pick up district provided lunches. Teachers were asked to assign students work for ELA and Math on Iready. Middle and high school teachers have assignments in google classroom. District level coaches have recorded lessons that are streamed on local tv stations and can be live streamed on the district's website. Non of the work complete can be graded, it's all for enrichment.

Teachers in my building wanted to go in and create packets more aligned to needs of our students, but were told to stay in. We're still being paid but have not told to do any work, just to take of ourselves and family.

 

Wow! Those are some sweet words to hear. I wish we had heard that!

 

I was thinking our district is pretty laid back. Contacting our students twice a week. That doesn't mean making sure we have contact twice a week, but attempting contact twice.
Of course I keep texting or calling back or calling other phone numbers, so their call log shows 3-5 attempts, unless I was able to reach the student on the first try.

Today I called half of my students and talked to more than half, left messages for others. It took me a little over an hour. It's really not that much work.

 

Just found out that staff will have access to the school for 15 minutes thus week to grab anything essential from our classrooms. We'll have a strict schedule and safety protocol to follow.