Technically, this is day 2. However, yesterday I had just enough anxiety to make me productive . . . at reading and phone games. I did get a few things done near the end of the day, but the entire idea of online learning and all the things that my district is placing on us for training in the meantime has me a bit overwhelmed. In communication with other teachers, they are feeling the same. 

In some ways I am learning. I am gathering ideas for what to do. In other ways, I wish I could just get to work on my own classes without being hindered by district trainings, meetings, and check-ins. From a critical discourse analysis perspective, the message the district is sending is that they don’t trust us. They think we are going to waste these 8 days the governor has granted and not do any planning, as if we would let our students down like that. 

At the very least, I am finding the district training to be at least moderately helpful and calming in some respects. For starters, having a standardized home page and communication format is helping take the weight of how we are going to issue information to students off my shoulders. However, our coordinator for the district is absolutely clueless in her understanding of what we do at the high school. She has created “trainings” that are as worthless as used toilet paper to us. It’s literally the basics of using Canvas. Guess what? We already use Canvas. We don’t need any of this stuff. It makes me irrationally angry that someone with any level of authority over us and has decision making power has no concept of what we do at the high school. It’s irritating.