The Plague Diaries: School Time!

At my teaching job, the great debate was raging: how do we grade student work and assess their learning?  There are a lot of issues to consider:

--Not all students have equal or easy access to online learning. Although the district is loaning Chrome Book computers and wi-fi hotspots, some students live in areas with bad connection, or they're competing for computer time with other family members, or they're special education students who have difficulty with a computer, or . . . or . . . or . . .

--It's difficult to administer traditional tests

--Students and their households are under a great deal of stress.  Yes, for many students, their main problem is fighting off boredom in a well-appointed bedroom, but for a bunch of them, life is more difficult. I have students who are taking care of family members who have the virus, or who are sick with it themselves. I have students who live in health care families, and the adult or adults are gone twelve hours a day, every day, leaving the kids to run the household, and everyone is worried the virus will come home. I have students with family members who got the virus and now the family is trying to decide if the kids should be sent away.  Students in these situations aren't in a position to deal with schoolwork at home.

--The state initially said not to grade student work after March 13, the last day schools were open. Now the state has given the go-ahead to assign grades. What do we do with the work students completed between March 13 and now?

--Will the students be given credit for this year, or will they have to make up the lost time over the summer?

--Grading these days is generally divided into two categories: formative (often for homework or in-class practice) and summative (stuff like tests and projects that are a summary of student learning). Many schools also give benchmark assessments, or BAs, which are basically unit tests. In our district, formative grades are 20% of the card marking, summative grades are 50%, and BAs are 30%. Can we give summative and BA grades during the crisis?

--Under the original calendar, seniors only have five weeks of school left. Proportionately, they've lost a lot more time than the other students. Do we extend their school year?

--Speaking of seniors, what about prom? Senior activities (my school hosts a senior all-night party a week before senior finals, along with a senior breakfast on cap and gown day, a senior slideshow, and other activities)?

Last week, we teachers spent all day Thursday and all day Friday on Zoom.  Seriously--the whole freaking day.  We met as faculty in a large group, we met in departments, we met by grade level. It was all working on figuring this stuff out.  It was exhausting.

In the end, the district hashed out a grading system, but also said it was subject to change.

--No summative grades! No BA grades! Everything will be formative.

--The grades the students earned up to March 13 will be 50% of the semester grade. Everything earned afterward will be the other 50%. No final exams!

--Teachers are expected to teach one concept per week.  Each high school subject should require no more than 2.5 hours of student work per week, more or less.

--Work assigned between March 13 and April 19 is not to be graded.  (There's some controversy over that one!)

--Seniors will end school on the usual date.

--Graduation, prom, and other senior activities are all canceled. HOWEVER, the district is hoping we could hold a graduation ceremony in July.  Fingers crossed!

Truly, I've put in more time as a teacher now that the schools are closed than I have when I'm in the classroom.  I can't just upload a worksheet to Google Classroom and say, "Now do this one."  I have to create brand new material that's usable during online learning, or convert existing material.  Almost nothing works as-is. I have to record and edit videos, which is enormously time-consuming.  I have to answer a bazillion more emails in a given day than I ever have before.

And I miss being in the classroom, seeing my students every day, watching them learn, talking with them, watching the seniors get more and more antsy as we get to the end. I miss being able to discuss literature.  (Zoom is awful for large-group literary discussions.)

I hope this doesn't become a new normal.

The Plague Diaries: Migration

The governor's shelter-in-place order prohibits unnecessary travel and forbids people to leave town in order to go to a second home, such as a vacation cottage.  Darwin and I have been bending that rule.  I go to Albion sometimes and he comes here sometimes.  But I don't go anywhere in Albion--just to our house--and I don't interact with anyone in Albion.  The same is true for Darwin here.  So it's like we have one giant house with a door in one town and another door in another.

I was rather hoping that one silver lining in this cloud of plague was that Darwin and I could see more of each other.  After all, I can work easily enough in either house as long as I have Internet, and so can Darwin.  But Max is in Wherever, so I can't just move to Albion for the duration.  And Darwin has a bunch of physical materials (giant notebooks of regulations to consult, papers that require his physical signature) in Albion which makes it awkward for him to work in Wherever.  So we still shuttle back and forth for a few days at a time.

I just came off a couple days in Albion. Later, Darwin will come here.  I don't like being separated like this, but we're coping.

The Plague Diaries: More Kitchen Time

I'd spent the last several days at the computer, working either for the school or on a book.  (Where's all the binge-watching I'm supposed to be doing?)  Today, I said, "Enough!" and headed to the kitchen.

In the Instant Pot, I made bean soup for lunch for Max and me.  Then I made some piragi (Latvian rolls stuffed with ham and onions). And this time, I updated my technology.

For Christmas last year, Aran gave me a dumpling press, and today I tried it out.  It's a round, flat metal thingie with a cookie-cutter edge on one side, a hinge in the middle, and a zipper-like rim around the back.  You use one side to cut out a round section of dough, then lay the circle on the other side with the zipper rim.  Then you drop a dollop of filling into the center of the dough, fold the whole thing over, and press.  The zipper rim crimps a perfect half-circle, and it's way less labor-intensive than doing it by hand.

It also occurred to me that the pasta roller I bought for my stand mixer years ago would be excellent for rolling dough out evenly.  I decided to try that, too.

The pasta roller was awesome! I ran a ball of dough through it, and presto! Perfectly flattened. The dumpling press made short work of the cutting, and the crimping was easy and uniform. It made for some BIG piragi, though.  Usually piragi are a half-circle about three inches in diameter. These were five or so. But more to love!

They came out of the oven, hot and fresh and full of hammy goodness. 

The Plague Diaries: Masks and Dinosaurs, With a Basket

A couple weeks ago, I wanted masks for going out in public. The CDC, for whatever reason, wasn't encouraging people to wear them yet, and I couldn't imagine why. They would certainly catch saliva and mucus from people coughing, and thereby slow or even stop the spread of the virus. Even if it turned out they didn't help at all, they wouldn't HURT. It seemed stupid not to wear them.

But of course, you can't buy masks anywhere.

I set out to make some.  I'm a rotten tailor and hate sewing, but there are ways around that.  First, I tried ordering some big handkerchiefs online to make into masks. When they arrived, I washed them, and they shrank and were too small.  Hmm.  Next, I sacrificed two old t-shirts by cutting them off just under the arms and then cutting the seams apart so I had four large pieces of cloth.  I also cut the elastic top off some older socks.  I folded the cloths the long way twice and threaded the sock tops through them and, with a little folding, created a perfectly serviceable mask with comfy stretchy cloth that fit over my ears. The only problem with these masks is that they're heavy and they tend to slip.

Today on an online community bulletin board, I saw a notice from a local seamstress. She was willing to make masks for $5 each.  I texted her and ordered six.  A couple hours later, she texted back to say they were ready.  So that we wouldn't have to see each other face-to-face, she gave instructions about the hand-off.

I drove to the address. Her house was easy to find because on the front porch was a six-foot-tall Jurassic Park velociraptor. It was wearing a huge surgical mask, and over one of its arms was slung a basket.  Inside the basket was a plastic bag containing the masks and an envelope.  I put a check into the envelope, took the bag of masks, and left, feeling like I had just run a drug deal via ALICE IN WONDERLAND.

These masks are nicely-made and neatly pleated, with strong ties.  They're currently in the washer, just in case, and then they'll be ready to go!