During this week, things were moving pretty quickly as COVID-19 and preparations for school closing got into full swing. Our week began with general ideas for what we would do should school close on Monday. By Wednesday, we were full on preparing for a shut down that was to come. I spent a large portion of my hours helping to create a spreadsheet that our school would use to inventory student Chromebooks. My administration granted my request to assist other teachers with breaking down their Chromebook carts, removing the charging cords and bagging them up for student to take with them. I spent the better part of the day helping teachers with this prior to our schools closing. I originally planned to deliver my face to face staff development during our in-service day on March 13th, but our day was committed to preparing our grade levels and subjects for the shutdown that was announced. I am uncertain if I will ever encounter a week like that one, and the subsequent to that week again in my teaching career.
4/6-4/10
With schools being closed, I had to get creative to complete my hours. Luckily, I am married to the person who runs the technology integration team for Dalton Public Schools. This allowed me to easily get in some hours from the comfort of my home. I was able to take a break from my work for my job, to work with them. Most of the day was spent building online courses via Canvas for teachers. Kellie (from the instructional technology team) held conferences with district math and language coaches via Zoom to share content and discuss what the coaches wanted in the district courses. Dalton chose to build the courses for teachers to ease with the transition from in-person to online learning. Kellie also took part in Zoom meetings with district leaders including the Director of School Support, Director of Student Services, and many other stakeholders at the district level. Many topics were covered during the meeting including when to end the current school year, reacquiring devices from students, how digital learning was going, and contingency plans for next year should school start as digital learning.
The rest of my week was spent supporting my students through digital learning. I collaborated with teachers who I teach with to answer student questions via Google Classroom and sometimes through a Google Meet. Google Meets were held with our grade level teams to discuss planning for the coming digital learning weeks. We also collaborated to identify students who were not completing online assignments and divided out the responsibility of contacting those parents. We also held Google Meets with administration to discuss school wide expectations for digital learning and updates from the district. Google Meets were also held with our district special education department to cover how to address students with IEP services through digital learnign.
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