Like everyone else in this world, I’m figuring things out day by day. Both personal and work things. I’m thankful to have more time for that balance. I’m also thankful to have more time to plan out the kinds of lessons that I want to. The past 2 weeks especially have been a bit all over the place work-wise, as the county was figuring out how to do online learning on the fly.

I personally am very comfortable with teaching online, so I didn’t really any anxiety about the change in terms of planning out lessons. But being in the midst of a whole system figuring itself out has been frustrating. Anytime I think about the students who I know don’t have technology or go situations at home, my chest gets a bit tight. I saw one comment online that hurt but was the absolute truth: I’m teaching almost exclusively for the privileged right now. I was in that position before, but at least I could at least do something in my classroom.

In terms of what I’ve been preparing, I’ve recorded video tutorials (with accompanying written instructions) through Google Meet to help the kids and families transition. I’ve also been looking at different online apps such as Duolingo and LingQ. I already use Duolingo as a resource for the kids, but I’ve gotten more time to see how it could be used. Also using Forms “quizzes” in my Google Classroom to go along with videos from friends. I’m thinking about asking other French-speaking people I know to record more videos, but that also requires more planning.

This is all exciting for me to do, and honestly really fun. But I also got word that my job is getting cut next year as a result of funding. Everything that I’ve put into this job feels like it’ll disappear come June, along with all the relationships I worked so hard to build with my students. So while I get lost in coming up with material, just getting started is hard some days.