What am I doing?

The coffee will help. The smell alone is inspiring. The sturdy grip of the handle on the mug, the weight of the liquid inside, its heat generating through the mug, settling in its base, faded by now, fifteen minutes after I poured it then followed some minute distraction on its natural tangent until I sat here, preparing to write, and looked across the kitchen to the counter where it stood. Perhaps from hope, or from laziness, I blocked out all the other sounds and sights in the room, extended my arm from shoulder through the tip of my middle finger towards the distant mug, and hoped that this would be the time the Force manifested itself in my body, finally giving me the power to summon my coffee from across the room. 

Not today.

At some point, I need to make progress towards my goal of preparing a sustainable structure and schedule for teaching remotely this fall. It's been on my radar, and I've given it some preliminary thought, but now is when the rubber needs to meet the road. The beginning of the school year is coming like a tsunami that can't be stopped, and if I'm prepared then maybe I can ride that wave (no idea where the surfing analogies are coming from - I don't surf and haven't seen Point Break in a few years). 

What have I done so far?

Microsoft OneNote allows me to create 
and share digital notebooks with students

I've cleaned my computer desktop, disposing of duplicate files, moving things to "the cloud", and arranging my file folders for clear and easy access to what I need when I need it. I've continued to explore the online spaces that we are committed to using - mainly Schoology and Microsoft Teams (as well as the greater Office suite). I'm weaning myself off of Google and doing my best in general to be consistent with what the district prefers and what my students' other teachers will be using. I'm also following what students largely expressed in surveys taken last spring - it was easier when teachers used the same general online learning tools, such as the aforementioned programs, and had materials accessible in a well-organized, central location.

My Resources on Schoology

My curriculum is another challenge I've been thinking a lot about. I teach ninth grade Language Arts, and in non-pandemic years I would teach five to six full length books, along with a variety of short fiction, short non-fiction, and poetry. While I have provided digital alternatives in the past, I've also relied heavily on paper copies of texts. In anticipating the additional precautions that will need to be taken in checking out physical books to students, I've been preparing to use more short-form texts in digital format. Truth be told, this may be a step in the right direction regardless of virus transmission, as it allows us to even further diversify the authors and experiences examined. Although we have already been teaching from a diverse set of texts and writers, using short fiction allows us to broaden that scope. This sets students up to get to know a greater number of writers and understand their perspectives. This allows room for Kurt Vonnegut, Edwidge Danticat, Caitlin Vance, Edgar Allen Poe, Shirley Jackson, etc. Much of my research so far has been reading through stories and trying to match them to the skills I want students to learn and practice, considering student engagement/interest level, and what will make for good discussion. Especially in the remote learning context, I want to make sure they can feel challenged and successful, and can confidently carry on discussions about texts in smaller breakout groups that I won't be able to monitor simultaneously as I could do in the classroom. 

So that's about where I am right now, and I need to figure out what I can do next. I haven't yet met with my fellow "LA9" teachers, but there is a lot that I can do regardless of what we decide in those meetings. There's a lot of talk about video lectures and "synchronous learning", but I want to consider the uncontrollable factors that kids will have to deal with in addition to learning from an online teacher who they have most likely never met before. Keeping that in mind, I want to see how many concepts I can demonstrate in short videos, most likely created using Adobe Spark, which I'm also still learning. Unfortunately, my district-issued laptop is not the best for that type of content creation, and I had spilled a glass of water on the 2011 MacBook Air I had been using for that type of thing, and decided that it was time to bring my technology into the 2020's, so I've ordered a new MacBook Air that I'm expecting will solve all of my problems.      

                                               

Jack Hartman, whose educational
videos have been the foundation
of remote learning K-2

In addition to the academic videos I want to create (think of a Jack Hartman for teens), I also need to develop a firm set of expectations for synchronous learning conduct, work completion and submission, and other groundwork that will need to be laid before we really get into curriculum. There's also the whole challenge of developing a classroom community without being in the classroom, which will need to be tackled sooner rather than later. 

So I've got my work cut out for me.