Day 43 of rollback - California Covid-19 spike - Governor shuts us down

What I say to myself during virtual education when I’m having a nervous breakdown…

Monday. 8/24/20

8:30 - 9:00 - The dog was barking earlier but, this month, I stopped responding immediately, as an experiment, and discovered that nothing changed. Depending on her mood, she will either s—t in the house or she won’t, BUT, she doesn’t urinate in the house. She holds it until we go outside. I take her out to the yard, she goes potty, and I take her inside. Cheese. I grab my coffee and go upstairs.

9:00-10:00 - Shower. Covid-19 uniform. Light makeup.

10:30 - 11:45 - I leave for BMC Doors. Although I left messages and sent pictures of my lock on Thursday and Friday to “Claudia” and “Danny”, nobody returned my call or emails to schedule a repair so I have to go in person and start the process all over again. I arrive and explain everything to “Claudia”, who remembers me but offers no explanation regarding their poor customer service. I’m masked and indoors - she is NOT masked. I find this odd.

I sit in the waiting area and watch “Danny” walk back and forth in front of me, WITHOUT acknowledging that I’m sitting there - he’s masked - while he rails to Claudia about a door that was just delivered, yet again, with the wrong specifications. This appears to be the extent of his work day - it is unclear why Claudia said he was ‘swamped’ on Thursday or how he could ever possibly be ‘swamped.’

After 20 minutes, Danny calls me into his office and asks the same questions he asked 8 days ago. Then, he tells me that BMC won’t - for whatever reason - repair the lock; however, “Mike” from Blue Sky Window and Door Services, probably can and he gives me Mike’s number. It appears that today will be my last encounter with Danny from BMC. I’ve wasted a lot of hours with this company - going there in person, calling, emailing pictures - when, apparently, all I needed was for Danny or Claudia to email, text, or phone a 10-digit number to me.

11:45 - 12:30 - I get in my car and call Mike immediately. It goes to voice mail (of course) so I leave a message explaining the problem and I’m back to square one.

Mike calls while I’m driving and I again explain the problem. He says he thinks he can fix it and might even have the parts, but I need to text him pictures of my lock and door and he’ll let me know for sure. Mike also tells me I need to call “Lisa” so she “can put him on the schedule.” You might think I’d be excited over this piece of news, but I’m actually numb and barely care. Mike gives me Lisa’s number but I can’t find a pen and I’m driving, so I do my best to memorize it until I get home. L. texts the pictures to Mike and I never hear from him again. When I try to call Lisa, I find that I’ve memorized the number incorrectly and can’t reach her.

12:30-2:00 - I have a salad and get ready for class [2:30], which includes fielding countless emails from students who want to crash two of my classes. The College No. 1 Class Schedule shows to anyone who looks up the classes that they are completely full so I’m hard-pressed to understand why the students are continuously emailing me - it takes a significant amount of time to respond.

I try opening up Canvas so I can “publish” the Discussion Board for the students to sign in for attendance, but the server crashed…again. I make repeated attempts to get on Canvas - if I can’t, class won’t run - to no avail and I’m getting increasingly anxious. I’m finally able to find a “back door” via another search engine, and I “publish” both the Discussion Board and the Audio Lecture Chapter 2. This is the second week of school, but the FIRST day that students will be forced to take a Chapter Review Quiz, in real time, while they listen to the lecture and review the PP slides. The Chapter Review Quiz is on a timer and will automatically open at 2:45.

2:30-5:35 - Class goes well for the most part. There are a few hiccups with the quiz, when students start “live chatting” with me and saying the quiz isn’t there. I’ve been telling the students the same thing going on two weeks and even have the following sentence saved so I can cut-and-paste as a response (that’s how common this question is): “You’re right!! That’s because this class is synchronous and I post course content in “real time”. Stay tuned for the [insert whatever here] in 10 minutes!!!” I’ve explained over and over again that this is NOT a class that you complete at your own pace - it’s synchronous, which means it’s occurring in real time.

I gave the students the answers to the quiz throughout my pre-recorded lecture and my PP slides so I know exactly when they should finish the quiz - if they finish too early it means they weren’t listening to my lecture. I’m following along in real time and can see their scores post to my online gradebook as they finish the quiz. Six students finish early and I immediately email them that they finished the quiz way too early and demand that they go back and listen to the 10-minute video clip I assigned because I know they skipped the clip and part of lecture.

They’re so embarrassed that nobody responds, EXCEPT one student who says he sped up the Audio lecture by playing it on 1.5 speed and that’s why he finished early. Pretty smart and I told him so.

A few students got 5s and 7s on the quiz, which means they reported to class, guessed on the 10-question quiz, and skipped the lecture altogether. I know this because, had they listened to the lecture in it’s entirety, they would have got a 10 on the quiz. So, essentially, they didn’t come to class, if you know what I mean. I know exactly who it is and I’ll deal with them later.

5:30 - 10:00 - I spend the rest of this time preparing for the first day of school on Wednesday at College No. 2.

In a strange twist of fate, Administration sent me ADD Codes for extra students because, even though I have 40 high schoolers, my class on the College No. 2 Class Schedule shows that I have 30 open spots. Students from College No. 2 have been emailing me off-the- hook to add, so I disbursed all the codes and enrolled 23 college students, too.

The catch is that the college students have access to Canvas, so the course content is placed on that platform. My high school students still don’t have access to Canvas and their course content has to be emailed to them separately, which means I had to manually input 40 email addresses into my College No. 2 email. So, it is kind of like having two separate classes.

After all this, I learn from Administration, who is really nice btw, that those ADD Codes were supposed to be for my highschoolers. The ADD Codes would have allowed them to finally have access to Canvas. So now I have 63 students enrolled at College No. 2, with 23 of them on Canvas where the content is easily accessible and 40 little highschoolers, whom I love, who have no access to ANYTHING and are at the mercy of content delivered via email.

In the midst of all of this, College No. 2 asks me to teach an 8-week course, beginning in October. I’ve never taught an 8-week course before - my classes run a full semester (16 weeks) - but how hard can it be to compress the course content? Because I’m new at this school, I say yes to everything and I email, “Sure - sign me up!” They love that. So, I will have yet another class in October and my contract is re-written. It’s a nice pay increase for an additional 8 weeks of work. We’ll see how it goes.

I get everything ready for deployment because I will be out of town on Wednesday. The class is synchronous and course content has to be emailed to my highschoolers between 8:30 and 10:00, but it doesn’t matter because as long as I have access to Wifi, I can teach/email from any location. What could possibly go wrong? Spoiler Alert - stay tuned because the s—t hits the fan on Wednesday.

10:00-11:30 - I do food prep for this trip and pack my lunch bag. I also organize the fridge and clean out what I can because the refrigerator repair man is coming on Thursday.

11:30-12:15 - I water my plants and spray down the astroturf.

12:15-1:15 - L. and I listen to Radio Rental - she still wants the stairwell light to remain on.

1:15-2:15 - Night time routine and bed.