4:30 am- My alarm goes off. I grab my phone, scroll through Facebook to see what I missed overnight. I read a few blogs and crawl out of bed.
4:45 Am- I sneak in to the bathroom using the light of from my phone screen, change into my workout clothes, brush my teeth, and head downstairs.
5:00 AM- Take the dog out to pee, make sure the coffee started, and hit the basement. If it is a spin morning, log into my zoom for spin and if it is weights, get my YouTube video going. Sweat for an hour. Sanitize hands.
6:30 Am- Sanitize hands. My first coffee of the day while I read the news and scroll facebook.
6:45 am The mad rush to get out the door starts. Take the dog out again, wash hands, make the lunches, pack the snacks, make sure the kids are up and ready for school, get dressed, wash hands and put on mascara.
7:20 am Start the car, load my purse, computer bag, lunch bag, make sure I have my mask.
7:30 am- Pull into the parking lot of the school, finish my shake, sanitize my hands, find my mask and my key card, grab my purse, lunch bag and work bag and start my day. Sanitize hands upon entry to the building and complete the covid checklist, boot up the computer, check my email, review the ‘to do’ list from yesterday, start a new to do list for today. Greet staff, review the staff absences and the sub list. Brainstorm how to cover classes, duties and brain breaks while we are short two people. Sanitize hands. Start calling everyone we can think of who can possibly provide coverage for classrooms. Call HR to let them know we are short staffed. Contact other buildings to see if they have anyone we can borrow. They do not. Nobody wants to sub in a school during a pandemic. Sanitize hands.
8:20 AM- Sanitize Hands. Open the front doors and welcome the students to school. Monitor mask wearing and hand sanitizing as each student is greeted. Remind parents that they can’t enter the building. Accept donations of Lysol wipes, hand sanitizers and water bottles from parents. Sanitize hands.
8:40 AM- Make the rounds of classrooms. Check in with kids who have had difficulty transitioning back to school, check in with paras covering classrooms, substitutes and paras covering other paras duty schedules. Check in with social worker. Sanitize Hands.
9:10 AM Sanitize hands. Make coffee, try to check emails and return phone calls.
9:25 Am- Start classroom guidance lessons on intermediate grade level classroom a with social worker. Spend three hours reviewing strategies for conflict resolution, the difference between not nice, mean and bullying, the bully triangle, and why reporting is so important in 6 different classrooms. Sanitize hands between each room.
12:25 pm Cover a playground duty for a para who is covering a classroom. Have amazing conversations with little kids about how they named their kitten, how many teeth they have lost, and why chicken nuggets lunchables are better than cafeteria nuggets. Coach two students through a conflict resolution conversation, and remind kids to ‘make it a 4’ as they line up to go to the cafeteria. Sanitize hands.
12:45 pm Cover a cafeteria duty. Remind students to social distance in line and sanitize their hands. Avoid the peanut table, open wrappers, and eavesdrop on kid conversations about Donkey Kong vs. Godzilla why parents don’t like kinetic sand, and who is going to opening day at the Cascades Ice Cream Parlor. Sanitize hands.
1:15 pm Sanitize hands. Take food out of the office refrigerator for lunch and leave on desk. Reheat coffee from earlier. Return calls and check emails received from the morning.
1:20 pm Realize you are a bad dog owner, and run home to let the dog out of the kennel and feed her, do some quick PT and a quick walk to make sure she does her business. Sanitize hands.
1:35 pm Sanitize hands. Troubleshoot tech issue with student computer, respond to student request for lexia placement change, update contact logs after parent phone calls.
1:40 pm Verify brain breaks are covered, and check Red Rover to see if we will need to scramble to provide coverage again tomorrow. Roll eyes when an unreliable sub has accepted a job. A side note on unreliable subs: NOTHING is worse than having a position covered and then having that sub remove themselves from the position less than an hour before the start of the assignment. This sub has done this, and if we weren’t desperate…..
2:00 pm Sanitize hands and Reheat coffee…. again. Sanitize hands and eat sandwich. Stop eating sandwich to mask up when a teacher stops by during brain break to discuss curriculum question.
2:15 pm Sanitize hands. Eat sandwich. Stop eating sandwich and mask up when a para comes in to discuss a student concern and discipline issue.
2:20 pm Sanitize hands. Start looking into student discipline issue: interview witnesses, cross reference stories, follow up with victim and aggressor, clarify events, assign consequences, contact parents. Log in powerschool. Sanitize hands.
3:00 pm. Sanitize hands, finish sandwich. Sanitize hands. Check in with administrative assistant. Side note on administrative assistants: they do much more than assist. I always say I am the lady in charge and she is the lady that knows what is going on. Discuss upcoming events, people we need to contact, plans for kindergarten roundup, picture day, assist meetings, new enrollments for next year, the substitute situation, the covid spreadsheet…..revise to do list. Sanitize hands.
3:25 pm Phones in the office start ringing with dismissal changes. Locate students who have a dismissal change, check playground and hallway. Check on busses
3:35 pm Sanitize hands. Assist with dismissal from any one of the four dismissal locations that are needed to prevent complete and utter pandemonium in the parking lot. As it is on an ordinarily day it is just plain old pandemonium because we have only 13 parking places available to accommodate 150 cars.
3:50 pm. Send teachers home and supervise the stragglers. Sanitize hands. Chit chat with the older kids who are awaiting parent pick up, call parents to remind them of pick up, reassure the littles that they haven’t been forgotten.
4:10 pm Sanitize hands. review ‘to do’ list:
- Work on data inventory—>CIP
- Prep Mstep- schedule, proctoring PD, security agreements printed/signed, teacher boxes prepped, directions out to teachers, check with tech re: chromebooks in testing mode, sign ups for cohort C
- Work on Kindergarten round up video
- Follow up with kindergarten transition kits
- Update Handshake job fair into calendar
- SIOP materials- ordering, PD etc
- Library schedule
- Review ELA curriculum materials
- Vanderbilt website- scoring
- Assist schedule, print data logs, update files
5:00-pm rewrite ‘to do’ list for the next day. Toss out cold coffee, lock up and go home….
5:10 pm Wash hands. Answer the question “what is for dinner” at least two times per person living in the house. Answer ‘what time is dinner’ while cooking, starting a load of laundry, taking the dog out to pee, and reviewing the work emails that came in between the time I left my office and the time I arrived at home. Check in with hubby, ask how his day was, what interesting things happened, what is new at the office…Listen to story of crazy quack house he did furnace install in, crazy traffic in Lansing, driving all the way out to Weberville to do a repeat call which turned out to be a battery problem in the thermostat….
5:40 pm Wash hands. Dinner is served. So and so doesn’t want any green beans, and so and so only wants a little bit of meat but will eat any mashed potatoes that are left over. So and so isn’t hungry and might eat later and will I put the plate in the mocrowave.
6:10 pm -Clean up the dinner mess, load the dishwasher, wash hands, and quietly sneak into the dark chocolate secret stash to discover that it clearly isn’t a secret, and there is no stash. Remind So and so that wasn’t hungry that they are NOT eating cereal, their dinner plate is in the microwave and if they decide not to eat it, to put it in a container to eat for breakfast.
6:20 pm Take the dog outside, walk around the yard until she decides to take care of business while minding her business and not interact with the nuisance dog next door. Clean up the business from earlier in the day.
7:00 pm question (interrogate) the kids about their classes, homework, what happened at school (or in zoom), how their covid antigen testing was at wrestling, how was practice, did anything interesting happen, are they all caught up on all their assignments, do I need to check powerschool, did you eat your snack….Check in with injured kid: how does your arm feel, how is the range of motion, are you flexing it out the way you are supposed to, how does it feel when you sleep?
7:45 pm- Go upstairs, change into the oldest, ugliest and most comfortable pair of sweats I own, wash hands, grab a handful of jelly belly jelly beans from the night stand and my fiction kindle and find a dark, cozy quiet place to unwind.
9:30 pm Calgon, take me away. Start the ritual otherwise known as ‘I hope I get some sleep tonight’: Hot bath, essential oils, deep breathing and mind clearing. Who am I kidding. I am actually mentally revising my ‘to do’ list for the next day!
