Yesterday was the first day my school offered in-person learning for students. Out of the 15 students in my class, 11 of them came to school (they were split between the two onsite Grade 2 teachers) and 4 of them stayed online. My online class also has a handful of students from the other two Grade 2 classes who decided to stay online. Next week I’ll give a bigger analysis of the changes, but this week I wanted to share my two favorite stories from my day.
A Note
When the students in my class earn enough good behavior points, they can spend them on different prizes. One of the prizes is that I will send home a special note with their weekly paper pick-up for online school. For students who were coming back in person this week, I handed them their notes personally this morning. At the end of the day, one of the other G2 teachers told me that one of my students had held on to his note all day long. She thought it was from his mom and that he was nervous about the first day, but it turned out it was from me! I’m so glad I get to keep seeing this student at school even though I’m not teaching him.
Mutual Mistakes
My online school schedule had to change to accommodate teachers like P.E., music, and art who had to teach online students and in-person students. I keep making little mistakes in my planning; I normally don’t teach science on Mondays, but I do now, so I had to pull something together at the last second. It also meant that I dated the papers that I sent home incorrectly. All of Tuesday’s science papers were actually Monday’s science papers. I was feeling embarrassed about it, but it ended up being worthwhile. Our science time changed from starting at 2:15 to ending at 2:15, so one of my students got confused and joined science class right as it was ending. He was feeling a bit disappointed about his mistake, but I let him know that the new schedule was confusing to me, too. I helped him make up the work he missed, and we had a positive moment in the midst of the mistakes.
Today also included some lively games of Red Light Green Light and Simon Says during my recess supervisions. It was fun to get to play around with the students and see them interact. I also got lots of shouts of “MRS. CORA!” from students who had been in my online class, and even a couple big hugs (it’s ok, we were all COVID tested on Sunday). This season of teaching is hard, but the little moments with students make it worthwhile.
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