Back to reviewing

Thankfully prep for online school and work packs is pretty much done and dusted, as I have to re-review the wetland paper for the journal. Reviewing has kept me busy for a fair bit of today. Otherwise did some much needed watering of the garden (it is missing Given our gardner who is at home with his family in Epworth for the lock down). I also did a work out that my personal trainer Demi had sent me. This evening I joined in my sister's online Zumba Zoom class. I still don't feel that coordinated trying to follow at times.

Otherwise have been planning lunch for Sunday for my mum's 70th. I am going to have a go at trying to make lemon, Parmesan and garlic chicken. If I can't find Parmesan cheese I may have to resort to Kefalotiri. Have ordered a chocolate cake from Sorellas. Will have to do a bigger celebration with other friends when we are out of lock down and can meet in bigger groups.

I have also been going through old family photographs. My mum was born in Cromer, in England and lived there til she was 8 and then moved to Kenya. My grandparents moved back to England briefly when my mum was 11, before then sailing out to Cape Town and driving up to what was then Rhodesia. My mum has lived in Africa ever since.

Sunflowers, wood hoopoes and pretty much set for online school

A friend very kindly gave me a spare mask to use and it is making a big difference in that I can breathe better. Also limiting how much I am wearing it as am certain Monday's awful migraine was brought on by wearing a stuffy mask for too long. The police are out and about though on the roads and if you are caught without a mask on it's a hefty ZWL $500 fine. If you break other lock down rules it is a ZWL $35 000 fine.

Have printed out what is needed for my class' work pack. One student has already told me they don't have access to internet at home so I will have to email her dad at work and he will have to download stuff I'm putting online. One student at the school's parents work for the American Embassy and we had to have our pick up and drop off of work plan revised to fit with US protocol for the embassy. This involves passing books through car windows and disinfecting books when they come back. Saw a flock of wood hoopoes at school when I was printing stuff out. Am now pretty much ready for next week. Just have my Zoom meeting with parents and then my students on Friday and need to finish working out how Padlets works.

Passed the communal pavement food garden on Piers Road and I hopped out to take some photos of the beautiful sunflowers. They had quite a lot of veggies growing and it is a help yourself scheme for the less fortunate. A lovely idea that I would like to try too.

Communal veggie garden on roadside on Piers Rd

Of birds and post-migraine work

Got home yesterday and found I had a splitting headache and only eased the nausea when lying horizontally. I think it was my first ever proper full blown migraine. It lasted through til 3 am this morning when I finally felt better. I'm thinking the anomaly is that I wore my face mask more than usual yesterday. I really do struggle to breath in it. In any event, I'm not too keen on wearing my face mask for a long time any time again soon, but I do need to go into school tomorrow to print material for my students' work packs for Monday.

We had two new types of birds in the garden. The first, I thought being a goshawk, but actually is more likely to be a lizard buzzard. The second struck me as being a large type of bee eater, but I couldn't find it in the bird book. Someone on the Monavale Nature whatsapp group though has suggested it is a type of bushshrike, the chunky beak, size and colouring do fit. So two new species in the garden.

Not my photo

I have spent most of today preparing my work plan for next week and sorting out what I'm going to need to print. Have also set up a Zoom meeting with all the parents on Friday morning, to be followed by a chat with my students to touch base. It was quite hard trying to pin parents to a day and time. It is also going to be tricky where students have multiple siblings and they are all going to have to share a laptop or tablet to learn from. All going to be a trial and error learning curve me thinks. Will have to be prepared to go over the work we do in lock down again when we get back to normality as I'm sure there will be some who just don't get it. At least my plan of action for work next week is in place now and I sort of know what I am going to be doing. The days I pick up work submitted are going to be heavy marking days.

Did a bit more on my cosmos picture, experimenting a bit with oil pastel and turpentine. Since I am now prepared except for printing stuff I might try do an oil painting before school starts.

Getting into the swing and Doom's Day

Yesterday was surprisingly exhausting. We had our staff meeting and it was decided that each teacher would adopt the approach to remote learning that they are comfortable with.  One poor older teacher was completely overwhelmed by all my group chat links on online tools. I will be using Zoom but also make Padlets and work packs to be collected and then to be returned to mark. I started some photocopying of past grade 7 entrance exam papers but will see where I can go paperless.

Talk in the staff meeting did turn to Corona and one teacher had watched Carte Blanche on Sunday and was very concerned that they had reported that the Doom's Day book has been recalculated and we now have fewer days left til the end of the world. I am afraid I got the giggles on that one.

Went to get groceries from Arundel PicknPay and most people were wearing masks, which you are now supposed to. Have put in an order for reusable ones. Wearing my mask all day though gave me a king size headache when I got home. I managed only half a Pilates class with my sister and others online before I had to lie down. I think it was my first migraine.

One of the parents at school works at the US Embassy and she is keen for two of us younger teachers to apply for an exchange program for teachers who teach children with learning difficulties. If you are selected you could go to the States and a teacher from there would come here. Obviously right now no one is traveling but they are taking applications for when people can.

Could be my last day of rest for a while

Have had a chilled Sunday. Whatsapp video called my best friend Nina and it was so lovely to catch up and also discuss  online school stuff and online NILD. We have a staff meeting tomorrow morning to finalise what we're going to do as a school. It might lean towards producing work packs that get handed to the parents on Mondays and then returned with work hopefully done on Thursdays to give out more work to be done by the following Monday. I have looked into Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams but both require online payment. We might try use email, Padlet and Zoom meetings. We just don't know how long this will all last and as my friend Nina said, we probably will have to plan for extra revision time when we eventually get back to normal as you aren't guaranteed the students will have grasped stuff (my lot already struggle to grasp things in normal class time, so this is going to be challenging). It is an opportunity to try engage with more modern ways of teaching though. It is just a fast paced learning path and you are going to have to think of a million and one things at once (more so than usual). Nina warned me that you can get bombarded with questions from students and guardians and it is best to make a central Whatsapp group so you don't have to keep repeating yourself on different fora.

So yes, with a big gulp I embark upon tomorrow. This afternoon I did some still much needed tidying up at home. I found my original birth certificate sitting on a book shelf. We had hunted high and low for it previously and I had to go get a new one from Market Square. Amazing the things you find when you do some tidying up. There's still a whole lot more to tidy unfortunately.

I then did a bit of art. Was inspired by the strelitzias in our garden which have been prolific this year. Using a technique Vanessa Hounsell showed a group of us in an impromptu art evening over Zoom, I first drew the strelitzias in the garden using a soft B pencil on tracing paper. You then take your line drawing and shade in sections to start abstracting it. You then get a fresh sheet of paper or card and go over your lines and shading on the reverse side to transfer your drawing. You can play around with your drawings and placement and then you could paint into it. I didn't feel like digging out paint and paintbrushes so opted for oil pastels. I did get some turpentine at the end though to blur and smooth the lines and shading. Started on another piece with cosmos as the focus (this time not abstract). Will have to finish that at some point.

70th birthday postponed

Well shortly after my post yesterday, people shared what ED said on Workers' Day - we are in level 2 of lock down (whatever that means?!) and schools will remain closed until further notice (not really that helpful). Apparently private schools are also being warned not to charge school fees until school resumes. That will mean teachers don't get paid. I get that there is still risk, but a little more clarity and forward thinking would help.

My grade 6 student phoned me yesterday evening and I told her we would be making a plan for some sort of school to continue. I got the feeling that touching base with something familiar was reassuring for her. Never thought my voice as a teacher would be so strongly needed. I think if my class can meet together on Zoom it will help them all. It must have been tough not seeing their friends for play dates all holidays. As a school we're supposed to be deciding on Monday the way forward.

Tomorrow would have been the day family and friends met up with us in Oxford at Folly Bridge to go on a picnic boat trip along the river to celebrate my mum's 70th birthday. Sad not to be seeing everyone and that we can't mark my mum's 70th for now. Next weekend, for my mum's actual day we would have been in an Airb'n'b in Cornwall. My sister had gone to a lot of trouble booking everything and organising it and she is pretty bleak that it has all fallen through. A close family friend has suggested we do a small lunch for my mum next Sunday in the garden.

Did a Zumba cardio class with my sister this morning. It was quite full on. My hamstring that was previously injured a while ago started to twinge so my sister did a full stretch with me afterwards. Have been round and round the garden with my Jasper and Elsie bears photographing plants and the dogs. Looking forward to Skyping my best friend Nina tomorrow.

Quandary of quando, quando, quando

I woke up this morning to a Whatsapp from the parent of one of my grade 6's asking if I can set her some work and requesting me to have a phone call with her daughter as apparently she really misses me. I am trying to prepare for school next week so having to set additional work beforehand is a bit of a burden. I guess I should be flattered that her daughter misses me so much. I don't think some of my other students would ever want to speak to me because they miss my voice.

My aunt said that South African schools are to remain closed until at least June. Really not sure what ED's thinking and decision will be. Must say I am a little nervous to launch back to full time teaching when the number of infections here is still going up. A friend who has just had major surgery here said her specialist said there are way more cases of Corona in Zim than are being reported and people really do need to be careful. At the same time though I don't know what government and rural schools with no internet are going to do. Our one option is to produce work packs for our students that the parents pick up at the beginning of the week and then return to pick up more work at the end of the week. This is quite a different kettle of fish to being fully online and the two require quite different means of preparation. I am basically just organising my worksheets and having some work that I can either email/post online or print out. There's not much more I can do. Doing lessons via Zoom is another thing and then using all the other software I have been looking at. Many of my students are not good at keeping on top of home work so I worry as to whether work will actually get done and I don't think we'll get through as much work as we would ordinarily with normal school hours.

I have eight out of ten of my students supposed to be writing high school entrance exams this term too. I might have to scan all the past papers we have as I only have 2018's papers in digital format. I also have to figure out how my students are going to submit their work and how I go about grading it. I think next week is going to be a lot of work and I am going to work harder than I have in a long time. It's not only grasping a new system but having to remember to think about so many things at once.