Virtually Teaching?

So school has been shut down in March 13th. In the Spring I felt so useless. Our district told all the students that grades no longer counted so they all stopped doing anything for class. I was teaching to maybe 10 students (out of 60). We weren't allowed to video chat with them, we could only give them review material for a whole and by the time we could give them new material they had already given up.

It was a joke, a huge joke. I just felt pointless as a human being, what was my purpose in life anymore? It felt like time was moving so slow as I created lessons for what felt like no one.

Summer arrived and it felt to not worry about what my point was anymore. I was able to recharge, get stuff done on the house, you know and have an ectopic pregnancy. But I wasn't sitting there with existential depression.

This school year has already been...interesting. So my district decided to do hybrid, one day a week in person and the rest live streamed virtual, so that there's only 5-10 people in the classroom at one time. Well about 2 weeks before the first day of school we found out the the construction that was being done at our school made it so we could not go back for the first few weeks of school. So we are now 100% virtual until we get the ok to go back (if that even happens, we could be virtual because of covid by then). Like what are the odds?

Today was our first day, I made myself a make shift desk in our spare room and logged onto Microsoft Teams and had class. It was bizarre, most students didn't turn on their cameras or mics. I feel like I was teaching into a void. But they were there, I was there and we had class. Hopefully they warm up as they do it but who knows what the future has in store anymore.

If you are not a teacher, please know that this is not easy, we are working our butts off to try to help your kids learn through this. We spend hours and hours creating the content and are grading, planning and answering questions all day and every day. Just because we are not physically at school, we are making school happen.