6—>14

Last Thursday my school district went back full time. No longer hybrid half days with an am and pm cohort. All in…all day!

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. The job of keeping 6 second graders away from each other was challenging. How was I to do this with 14 of them? The job of teaching second graders and keeping them engaged is hard when they are right next to you. How was I to do this with the kids in the way back row with plexiglass all around?

I’d be lying if I said I was excited. This was a big task to undertake after all, another shift that in this school year. But as soon as the kids started entering the school their excitement filled it up and of course got me slightly more excited too.

Of course the two days of all in school had its glitches. We had to figure out what to do when frigid temperatures forced us to stay inside with no recess/mask breaks. We had to learn how to wait our turns more to get supplies. We even had to work on keeping our bodies more still because it’s really hard to hear through a mask from the back of the room.

But we made it through! The students enjoyed sharing their new school year backpacks and lunchboxes. They enjoyed morning meeting with more students to “beat” in our activities. They enjoyed hearing other’s strategies of how to solve a math problem. They gave each other writing feedback from afar and made predictions of what would happen in our class read aloud. They laughed at friends we haven’t seen in a while.

We definitely have a ways to go to build our school stamina but I am hopeful we are on the right path.