Conflicting Messages

I thought this was hilarious. It is a link to a video about how we are getting conflicting messages about how to deal with this virus. I hope this works.. Funny Video

Dogs keep me sane

During the quarantine, I have been hanging out with my dogs. They have been my work buddies. Sebastian, our boxer, is a sweetie. He just wants to hang out with me all the time. He loves to go out on the porch and lay on the couches out there while I work. And we have had such beautiful weather that it has been fun to do that. Plus, I have been really good about going on walks. Sebastian goes with us. Jazzy, our lab, has a hurt knee, so she can't go on long walks with us. She doesn't get to go out on the porch because she runs when she is out in the front yard. Anyway, here are my pictures of the dogs. I am getting lots of pictures lately. These are just a few of them...

How long has it been since you have been out?

One of the strangest things for me during this quarantine is being stuck inside. Usually, I am someone who goes almost continually, and I get bored at home. Honestly, it hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. I haven't had too many moments of feeling stir-crazy. I attribute this to several things: a. I really have lots to do to keep up with providing online learning activities for all of my students. I am continually checking email, Google Classroom, and I spent a couple of days calling all the kids in my English classes. I am reading through the book for the English classes, Bomb, and I am creating more activities as I go. b. I am teaching an online college speech class right now. Every Monday and Wednesday, we have zoom meetings and I hear their newest speeches. Then I take the time to grade them and enter those grades. I am creating more activities we can all participate online doing. Their last day of class (final) is May 4, so after that, I will have one less thing to do. c. I am participating in teacher PD opportunites, including a book called Boys Adrift, about how boys are falling behind girls in education and life, generally speaking. It is an interesting read, and we have our teacher zoom meetings on Thursdays at 3. I am also participating in other PD opportunities like GLAD R&Rs held every Thursday as well via zoom. On Fridays, I have zoom meetings with my English department and the Gather4Him teachers, and tomorrow, I have a teacher's meeting for all Gather4Him teachers at noon. Besides all this, I am participating in church activities. On Monday nights, we have our life group via zoom. On Tuesday nights, I participate in a leadership group that meets at 6:30 via zoom. We are reading a really good book called Christian Leadership. I have enjoyed the principles in it, and it challenges me to be a better leader overall. Besides all of this, I am doing a Bible study called Help My Unbelief by Barnabas Piper. Rachel chose the study, and my gilrs and I are going through it together. I have been meaning to complete my Google 2 Certification since I already have Google 1, but I haven't had time believe it or not. I plan to still do it, but it won't be in KSD's time frame, so I won't be able to get the free clock hours and certification, unfortunately! Isn't it funny that one can be stuck and home and yet be busier than ever?

Funny Memes

So, I don't know about all of you, but I have seen some pretty funny memes during this time of the quarantine and the coronavirus. I wanted to post some here, and I may keep adding to it. I saw one person react negatively to people posting these memes on social media, but I really think they are like comic relief. Sometimes we just have to be able to laugh to get our minds off of the serious things we are going through.

Tribute to Seniors

One way this virus and subsequent quarantine is affecting everyone is that seniors are missing out. As a teacher, my heart goes out to them most of all as indirect victims of this quarantine. Their senior prom has been cancelled. Their senior activities their last couple of months have been cancelled. They probably won't have a senior party, and their graduation may be cancelled. Some graduations across the country have already been cancelled. One thing that makes me sad is I don't get to say goodbye to my seniors I had in yearbook. Luckily, other than that, I didn't teach seniors. As a tribute, on facebook, many are posting copies of their senior pictures, so I thought I would post mine here. And seniors, please comment on this so we can always have a record: Tell how this situation is affecting you personally. Besides school activities, what else has been affected in your life? I'd like to hear. I also can't imagine how parents of seniors are feeling. Last year, my daughter Rachel graduated. I loved going through the senior activities with her. I feel for the parents who don't get to experience that this year. It is an emotional time, and I am sure they are going through even more emotions than normal with the way this pandemic is affecting them and their children. If they want to comment here, too, I would love to hear how they feel about things.

A Once in a Lifetime Experience

Hi, Since I am asking my students to blog about this experience, I am going to do a little bit of it, too. So let me paint a picture of what has happened. Back in November, a city, Wuhan, in China, began to have citizens complaining of flu-like symptoms, but it wasn't the flu. In fact, the origin of this strange virus was traced to a food market in the city. Soon, the new virus, called the coronavirus, which caused a respiratory illness called COVID 19, began spreading like wildfire. Not only that, but people began dying from it in large numbers. The doctor who was persecuted for trying to warn the outside world about it later died from the virus. Next, the virus began spreading to South Korea, Japan, and Italy. By March, the first case was reported in the U.S., close to home, in Seattle area. People began to die here. On March 13, our state governor ordered that our schools would close until at least April 24. On March 16, we had our last day of regular school. Now, it is April 13. We have been experiencing online learning for almost a month. It's been crazy, too, because we kept hearing different things. First, we were told as teachers that students would only need to do the online work provided by the district. Then we were told to provide 30 minutes of classwork per class per day for students starting the week of March 30. We still could not provide grades though. Meanwhile, my yearbook kids and I had to figure out how to finish the yearbook and meet our last deadline. We worked frantically to obtain last interviews, quotes from kids who were now "checked out" because they were not at school, and trying to figure out how to fill yearbook spring sports pages and other pages that required pictures and more interviews! That was not an easy task. I was proud of my yearbook editors who pretty much carried the rest of the yearbook burden themselves. We submitted the yearbook to the plant on Monday, April 13. The week of April 6-10 was "spring break". We were told on April 1 that school would remain closed through the end of the school year because the virus kept spreading in Washington state. In fact, in Tri-Cities, as of right now, there have been around 500 cases, and last I heard, 27 deaths. State-wide, we have over 10,000 cases and over 500 deaths. Now school continues to be online. We will see how that goes. I have been teaching my college students at Gather4Him via zoom since this quarantine began. That has been interesting! And speaking of zoom, it has been a God-send. Thank goodness, we have this technology at our fingertips. I have had about 10 zoom meetings per week between school, Gather4Him, church groups and so on. We have even had birthday zoom calls with family. Today is my daughter Rachel's 19th birthday. Some things we will never take for granted again: going out to eat, going to the mall, finding what we need at the grocery store (like toilet paper, paper towels, and flour). Some things I have enjoyed: sleeping in, cuddling with my dogs in the morning, drinking coffee, reading the news, spending time with God, spending time with my kids and family. Some things I miss: my students at school (most of them)!, being outside more, going out to meet people face to face, going shopping, going out to eat.