Got to sleep in until 6.30. Love this working from home thing.

Get up.

Shower.

Quickly get dressed and plan out zoom meetings.

Feed year 9 son and set his work for the day because his school hasn’t. Trying to teach year 9 maths, japanese and english is pretty hard. Meaningful lessons? Maintain consistency is the key. Must keep learning.

8am Zoom meeting for personalised planning. Don’t have to drive to school. Love this working from home thing.

8.30 Year 12 Zoom meeting.

10.30 meeting with faculty to look at how we’re going to adjust a practical subject to online. Glare at husband when told that I couldn’t sit on lounge because he was Zooming with his job and I might hear “secret business”.

Keep headphones on and pretend my video isn’t quite working so I can secretly boil the kettle while on Zoom meeting.

Yell up to son to make sure he’s out of bed and started working on the useless school work I’ve set him because his school wasn’t setting anything.

Shove a couple of biscuits in my mouth while walking back with coffee to the next Zoom meeting. Get told I look like I just woke up. Remind myself to take the hoody off next time.

3 hour zoom meeting about personal plans. This working from home thing is tiring. Haven’t had lunch yet because back to back Zoom meetings. Starting to hate the sound of Zoom. This working from home thing kind of sucks.

Zoom meeting to talk about Zoom meetings for next week.

4pm Can fit in another Zoom meeting with a parent to talk about the fact their child is not working.

Working on scaffolding 80 page folio for a student. Haven’t had lunch yet but don’t have any Zoom meetings!

Marking portfolios and providing video feedback to students. Different than a Zoom meeting.  Why is my throat so sore? Is it COVID? No, Zoom. Havent’ talked this much in a day in a long time.

Write some more PP’s for students who are working from home.

Record videos for parents on how to access canvas calendar and answer emails about students who couldn’t get on Zoom, or did the wrong thing on Zoom.

Realise I have a 7pm zoom meeting with Church about mass via Zoom. It’s 7pm and I haven’t had lunch or dinner yet. Having trouble with my camera again so I can drink coffee while Zooming.

Final email for the day before I go off and make some dinner. “teachers are just on an extended holiday”

Final check of facebook while I drag myself off to bed, not having a break all day. Talk about Zoom fatigue.

Flick through son’s school facebook. Turns out I’d set a months worth of work thinking that his school hadn’t set any. They had. Why? “Yours is more interesting Mum”.  hmmmm…..

Yep, extended holiday. I love working from home.

 

This year I had a “milestone” birthday to celebrate. It was a weird mix this year. A lovely celebration from people at work, who spent time that they didn’t have to prepare morning tea and embarrassingly put me in front of the whole staff to sing happy birthday to. It was also a terribly sad day, because we sent all our students home.

We’ve learnt so much during this time.

About teachers: how fast and hard they can work, how dedicated,  caring, responsive and resilient they are when we change things every five minutes.  How much that they care for each individual as they Zoom for set periods, set and check work and call home when worried about students, and bring to the forefront quickly kids that need extra help.

Students: how resilient and hard working they are. How independently they can work when there is a need to and how much every student needs the connection to their school. Our attendance rates post-COVID are a lot higher than prior. Are the advantages of school now more appreciated?

Parents: How much they (mostly) value school and teachers seems to have risen in this time but also the awareness of their children. COVID bought the classroom into people’s homes. And on the most part parents were extremely grateful of the work that teachers did to facilitate student learning.