What a month
Dec. 19th, 2020 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oloriel(What a year.)
The Christmas holidays have begun. Not really: They begin on the 22nd (in my federal state). But as early as October, it has been announced that the 21st and 22nd would be self-quarantine days without lessons. Then, nine days ago, the government observed that COVID cases had gone up (utterly unexpectedly and surprisingly) and turned our soft lockdown into a semi-hard lockdown. For schools, that meant that grade 8 and up went into distance learning, while grades 1-7 (for whom the state is obliged to provide supervision) entered a hybrid model: Everybody who could stay at home learned at home, and the kids whose parents couldn't arrange home office or supervision or w/ever on such short notice (a whole weekend) came to school.
Don't get me wrong, this is absolutely necessary. In fact, it would have been necessary in November at the latest. And that's why I'm angry. This was predictable. They could've planned for this weeks ago and implemented it in steps, intead of actively denying it. And then they wouldn't have had to spring the decision on us on a Friday fucking afternoon, when none of the kids have taken their books home, none of the parents have anything arranged, and everybody has to come up with solutions on the spot. On-the-spot solutions are, for some reason, not always the best thought out.
At many schools, this meant that the kids at home got a learning schedule or set of exercises and were expected to work through them on their own. Not at my school. We were expected to teach the kids in the classroom AND the other half of the class back home simultaneously via TEAMs conference. It was hell. It probably would have been hell every other week, but it's especially hell-ish in the week before any holidays. Under normal circumstances, this would have been a nice and relaxed week (because clever me had her classes write the necessary third exam last week - other colleagues had their exams scheduled for this week, with the result that some of them had to be cancelled altogether while others had to let half the class take them, and the other half will have to take them next year (assuming that we will have normal, in-person lessons before the report cards are due). Not my problem - I could've done nice holiday stuff. Not with half the class away and getting into mischief via TEAMs. The extremely slow and overtaxed school network (and my also rather overtaxed laptop) didn't make it any easier. By Friday, I finally managed to access the conference settings to prevent my students muting each other (or unmuting themselves to blast rap music or funny messages into the group channel). Of course, on Friday I also decided to make my life easier by centering all three English lessons (one fifth grade and two eighth grades) around Merry Christmas, Mr Bean!, which is fortunately legally accessible via YouTube and comprehensible even to fifth-graders with only the most slippery grasp of the English language. All I had to do was come up with different tasks for the different skill levels. Thanks for your service, Rowan Atkinson.
In theory, as I said, I still have to work on Monday and Tuesday, but after first planning various video conferences, our principal appears to have received various angry messages about how stressful this week's hybrid teaching has been and how we all have sufficient home office stuff (like grading exams etc.) to do in these two days. At any rate, he relented, so I (hopefully) won't have to attend any further online conferences this year and might even manage to check the geography folders and grade the English exams before Christmas. Yay?
Of course, I might also just sleep. Or actually write for fun. And possibly try to get the house into a shape fit for Christmas, which requires a lot of the cleaning and tidying up that didn't get done in the past weeks. Went on a baking spree yesterday to make Stollenknollen (an unholy and extremely tasty cross between Christstollen and Kräppel) just to get into any kind of seasonal mood.
At least I didn't plan to go Christmas shopping, anyway...
The Christmas holidays have begun. Not really: They begin on the 22nd (in my federal state). But as early as October, it has been announced that the 21st and 22nd would be self-quarantine days without lessons. Then, nine days ago, the government observed that COVID cases had gone up (utterly unexpectedly and surprisingly) and turned our soft lockdown into a semi-hard lockdown. For schools, that meant that grade 8 and up went into distance learning, while grades 1-7 (for whom the state is obliged to provide supervision) entered a hybrid model: Everybody who could stay at home learned at home, and the kids whose parents couldn't arrange home office or supervision or w/ever on such short notice (a whole weekend) came to school.
Don't get me wrong, this is absolutely necessary. In fact, it would have been necessary in November at the latest. And that's why I'm angry. This was predictable. They could've planned for this weeks ago and implemented it in steps, intead of actively denying it. And then they wouldn't have had to spring the decision on us on a Friday fucking afternoon, when none of the kids have taken their books home, none of the parents have anything arranged, and everybody has to come up with solutions on the spot. On-the-spot solutions are, for some reason, not always the best thought out.
At many schools, this meant that the kids at home got a learning schedule or set of exercises and were expected to work through them on their own. Not at my school. We were expected to teach the kids in the classroom AND the other half of the class back home simultaneously via TEAMs conference. It was hell. It probably would have been hell every other week, but it's especially hell-ish in the week before any holidays. Under normal circumstances, this would have been a nice and relaxed week (because clever me had her classes write the necessary third exam last week - other colleagues had their exams scheduled for this week, with the result that some of them had to be cancelled altogether while others had to let half the class take them, and the other half will have to take them next year (assuming that we will have normal, in-person lessons before the report cards are due). Not my problem - I could've done nice holiday stuff. Not with half the class away and getting into mischief via TEAMs. The extremely slow and overtaxed school network (and my also rather overtaxed laptop) didn't make it any easier. By Friday, I finally managed to access the conference settings to prevent my students muting each other (or unmuting themselves to blast rap music or funny messages into the group channel). Of course, on Friday I also decided to make my life easier by centering all three English lessons (one fifth grade and two eighth grades) around Merry Christmas, Mr Bean!, which is fortunately legally accessible via YouTube and comprehensible even to fifth-graders with only the most slippery grasp of the English language. All I had to do was come up with different tasks for the different skill levels. Thanks for your service, Rowan Atkinson.
In theory, as I said, I still have to work on Monday and Tuesday, but after first planning various video conferences, our principal appears to have received various angry messages about how stressful this week's hybrid teaching has been and how we all have sufficient home office stuff (like grading exams etc.) to do in these two days. At any rate, he relented, so I (hopefully) won't have to attend any further online conferences this year and might even manage to check the geography folders and grade the English exams before Christmas. Yay?
Of course, I might also just sleep. Or actually write for fun. And possibly try to get the house into a shape fit for Christmas, which requires a lot of the cleaning and tidying up that didn't get done in the past weeks. Went on a baking spree yesterday to make Stollenknollen (an unholy and extremely tasty cross between Christstollen and Kräppel) just to get into any kind of seasonal mood.
At least I didn't plan to go Christmas shopping, anyway...
no subject
Date: 2020-12-19 11:27 am (UTC)I need to clean and tidy up too, the house is a state. What a week, what a month, what a year...
Stollenknollen sounds delicious (and is a lot of fun to say!).
no subject
Date: 2020-12-19 03:44 pm (UTC)They are! The recipe calls them Feines Stollenkonfekt, but why use such a boring name when you can say Stollenknollen?
no subject
Date: 2020-12-19 11:49 am (UTC)I'm sorry things were made so difficult for you! Trying to teach like that must have been really hard.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-19 03:40 pm (UTC)I genuinely hated it. It was OK the last day (probably because the kids, both in the classroom and at home, were busy watching Mr Bean 2/3s of the lesson), but before that? Absolutely frustrating. I really hope we won't have to work like that again. I'd rather teach in the classroom in the morning and via video in the afternoon than both at once. :/
no subject
Date: 2020-12-19 06:25 pm (UTC)I do see light at the end of the tunnel. But it is dim and far away! Oh, the baking sounds amazing. Trying to finish a bio today and when I get it done I want to bake. I have all the ingredients in house.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-19 09:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-20 03:52 pm (UTC)I'm sorry you had such a stressful week.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 08:27 am (UTC)Can't blame the politicians for the extra stress, of course - that's our principal's fault. (He admitted that he hadn't realised how difficult it would be, because it had worked so well during our teacher conferences. No shit, boss. Who would have thought that 40 mostly-cooperative adults are a bit easier to wrangle - both in person and online - than 25 prepubescent kids who'd rather just have holidays already. *rolls eyes*)