This time last year, who could not have imagined what we have endured since mid-March, 2020. Friday March 13th started as a typical Friday morning. It soon spiraled into a nightmarish scenario. It was the most surreal day I have ever experienced. We were abruptly moved out of our schools into a whole new learning environment; teaching from home. Covid-19 was here.
I was meeting with my principal in her office during lunchtime that Friday. She received a phone call from the district leadership team. We were being sent home to teach. We were asked to tear apart our Chromebook carts and iPad carts to pass out technology to students before they went home. The same day. In two hours. Everyone needed to quarantine at home. Teachers had a weekend to figure out how to teach their students virtually, from their home, with the technology they had on hand.
The steepest learning curve that educators could have imagined. Teachers had to learn:
- Google Classroom and/ or Seesaw
- Zoom, Google Meets, or Microsoft Teams
- Screencastify to create “how to” videos. Students and parents had to quickly learn how to access all of the many new logins, processes, platforms, websites, and software needed to get through a typical school day
- Learning new ways to take roll, manage student accountability logs, and produce bi-weekly progress reports
- Complete a “crash course” in SEL because of the challenges students and their families were facing
- Accessing new students engagement techniques by using Nearpod, PearDeck, Kahoot!, Quizizz, Khan Academy, Cool Math Games, and on-line libraries
One MAJOR need was identified. Teachers and students were in a state of flux. Where will teachers teach students next month? Where will students be learning? Teachers needed creative solutions. Teachers started reaching out to us to combine our printable resources with our online digital resources into one product. A new “Blended Bundle” solution was born.
Since March, John and I have been working hard to combine our resources into bundles for teachers to help them have more flexibility. As we embark upon 2021, we will continue to find creative solutions to help teachers find solutions to our ever-changing educational landscape.
The Teacher Team is amazing! Thank you for putting together such a practical bundle of blended resources that teachers desperately need and just don’t have the time to create. LOVE the Emergency Sub Plans… 😊
Hi Sara Pelly!
Thank you so much for finding our blog and making a comment! How exciting:) We’ve had it for eight years and every once in a while I find time to post new blog posts… we are actually hiring a lady to give it a tune up since we haven’t had an expert review it for 8 years…there is so much to WordPress (the backbone of the blog) and you could make a career just learning about it… so we’ve been self-taught, but know that we need outside to help to help it grow. If you ever want to do a guest post from a principal’s perspective (or day in the life of a principal) that would be super fun! We will have the best 2021 ever!!
Carol