Hey, Everybody!

So one thing I’ve learned this week in my online education adventure is that I am somewhat terrible at working from home.

Turns out that being at home around all my things and having the distractability quotient of a Shih Tzu don’t really mix.

Whether it’s a burning desire to binge a TV show, or play the piano, or check my phone, or just eat ALL THE THINGS…

…Managing my time was becoming a problem.  During the summer, I had become used to finishing all of my work pretty much every day.  Everything was graded, every message was responded to, and all extra tasks had been checked off by the time I signed off every day.  Although I remained my distractable self during the summer, I’m a fast worker, especially on a computer, so with the reduced student load, I was able to get through all of it in just a few hours every day. That’s not happening for me anymore and it’s stressing me out!

I mean, I even ship my kids off to preschool every day, and I still wasn’t measuring up to my expectations!  Although, that did cause some extra problems, seeing as we’ve all been more or less deathly ill since the first week of school…

However, I got to thinking this week that perhaps I was being a little too hard on myself.  Perhaps what was possible during the summer with the reduced load simply wasn’t going to continue being possible for me during the regular school year.  As difficult as this was to accept at first (If I don’t get something done during the day, I have a tendency to neurotically obsess over it all night), once I got the idea through my brain, it’s been strangely liberating, and I was able to make a plan to make better use of my time.

First of all, I cleared my workspace, which happens to be a tiny desk in my bedroom, of all potential distractions.  Most importantly, I moved my phone charger out of that space and now keep my phone plugged in away from me during the time that I’m working.  To go along with that, I’ve started breaking down my work into smaller, (approximately) 45-minute chunks, and giving myself permission to take 10-minute breaks in between those chunks to do something else like check my phone, or do a bit of exercise, or grab a snack.

I’ve also given myself permission to not get everything done every day, and I’ve started creating a prioritized schedule for each day of the week that I’m going to implement starting next week.  It’s still a work in progress, as I haven’t figured out the exact timing needed for each task yet, but I’m pretty excited about what I’ve got so far, and I hope it will help me maintain my sanity!

I think my main takeaways from this week are:

1. Keep your expectations reasonable, especially the ones you place on yourself!
2. Prioritization and organization can make seemingly insurmountable tasks manageable.

I look forward to implementing my prioritized schedule next week.  I’ll let y’all know how it goes!

 

Why, hello there!

I’m gonna stop you right here and warn you that this whole blogging thing is somewhat alien to me.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love writing.  I’m an English teacher, after all.  And a Spanish teacher.  And before that, I studied computer science and software development for a while.  So I’ve basically spent my entire educational career learning about languages and how to use them.

Some of you might be wondering what computer science is doing, just sitting there in the middle of a paragraph about languages, amidst all that social science mumbo-jumbo.  I’ll tell you.  While studying software I learned four distinct programming languages.  On a basic level, these languages are a lot like any other language; the goal of learning the language is to be able to communicate meaning in a way the person on the other end can understand (only, in this case, the “person” was a machine, of course).  A software designer or programmer works within the rules and limits of the language to tell the machine which functions to perform.  However, software compilers are the ultimate grammar nazis.  One little mistake and the whole masterpiece of complicated language falls apart or gets stuck in an infinite loop.  A machine cannot infer your meaning, despite minor errors, or interpret meaning based on tone.  There is no sarcasm, no metaphor in software code.

Feeling a deep void left by the lack of sarcasm in my life, I veered back to my original love: human languages, and became a language teacher.  I studied all sorts of writing — poetry, short fiction, creative non-fiction, literary analysis — but I’ve always stopped short of truly sharing my writing with others.  So this whole blogging thing is rather alien to me, as I said.  Oh, what?  You forgot that’s where this ramble-fest started?  Well, scroll up a bit to remind yourself.  I’ll wait.

You good?  Great.  Moving on.

So, yeah.  Point is, I’m a bit nervous for this blogging experience, but at least I get to talk about things that I really care about.  You see, I recently landed a gig working for an amazing company called Michigan Virtual.  As a non-profit educational service provider, Michigan Virtual contracts with schools, districts, and parents to provide a quality online learning experience to students around the state in a hue variety of subjects.  Each online class is led by a highly-qualified and certified teacher, who spends his/her time coaching students and helping them to build knowledge and develop skills.  And I get to be part of that!

My job is somewhat different, as I have been hired on as an iEducator, part of a 21st century digital learning corp.  Basically, the idea is to take newbie teachers like me and give them immersive experiences in online and technology-aided teaching (skills that are becoming fundamental to a rapidly changing educational landscape) and then unleash us upon the world!  Muahahahahahaha!

Well, maybe with somewhat less evil laughing.

It’s an amazing opportunity to learn vital skills and see great work first-hand before venturing out into the void.  I’ve been teaching classes for Michigan Virtual for a few months now.  I taught a couple Spanish classes over the summer, and we’ve recently begun the fall semester.  I’m mostly teaching Spanish classes again, but I get to teach one section of a sophomore English class, which is very exciting.

This blog will, hopefully, become a place where I can share what I’m learning with a wider audience.  I hope to be able to both help other educators and learn from them as I continue my adventure in online learning.

Want to join me?