Day 39 of Governor Newsom’s “Blueprint for a Safer Economy”

Romper Room…

Monday. 10/5/20.

7:30 - 8:35 - My substitute training starts at 8:30! I take a shower. Lotion. Professional top but I’m wearing yoga pants. I’m running behind but I come downstairs and access the Zoom link, still without make-up, although I bring my make-up bag downstairs with me. I take the dog out. Coffee for me. Cheese for her.

8:35 - 1:00 - I return to my office and the training is underway. Almost immediately, I’m overwhelmed by substitute expectations. It appears that I’m supposed to have a basic, working knowledge of five virtual platforms. The protocol is this: When a teacher is absent, we are to report to her classroom, log in using our district email - which most of us don’t have because we haven’t subbed yet and it’s unclear how we GET a district email - and actually teach the class virtually. There are 35 of us on this Zoom training and they’re all showing their faces except me - I’m in “black screen”, where all you see is my name in white letters. At least I don’t have to do make-up. One sub speaks up and says she recently went to a job, could NOT log into the virtual platform, then texted the teacher who texted her back with her personal user name and password information. How many teachers are going to do that?

I think my subbing days are over. Don’t get me wrong - this is an incredibly well-planned training with wonderful teachers assigned to various Zoom sections. One of the teachers is so animated, she gets completely winded using a hand puppet to illustrate a teaching concept and is short of breath - she jokes that she needs to go back to the gym. Maybe it’s Covid-19? But, her section is impressive - all of them are - because the teachers are so earnest and trying so hard for the kids. I feel a little ashamed as this is truly their calling and I’m just going through the motions when I’m teaching. When I see them in action, virtual education for our little ones doesn’t seem so bad.

This is an older reference and I’m dating myself, but all of this reminds me of that ancient show, Romper Room, which I really liked, even when I was an older child. Today’s Zoom training is for the younger grades and tomorrow’s training is for the older grades, but we get paid for attending each day. I mentally check out and continue grading my Socratic Seminar assignments because I’m getting paid for this training so I want to double dip with other work projects. The training ends around 1:00.

1:00-2:00 - I have some time for lunch so I heat up my leftovers from Spumonis and eat outside on the patio.

2:00-5:30 - I check email and continue grading papers. Class starts at 2:30, but the students are taking a Midterm so I don’t have to do anything. I finish the papers from Group 1, but still have papers from Group 2 that I haven’t touched yet. Nevertheless, I start scanning the assignments to the students from Group 1 so they can see my comments. If you’ve been keeping up with this blog, you know that my scanner is on the fritz, so it takes the entire class period and then some to finish scanning the assignments from Group I.

5:30 - 9:00 - Continue scanning assignments to the students and posting grades to the online gradebook. I finally finish and I am spent. I still have to grade and scan the Group 2 assignments.

9:00-10:30 - I check email at College No. 2 and do class prep for Wednesday’s class.

11:30-12:30- I have a second day of substitute training tomorrow at 8:30 so nighttime ritual and bed.