A Day in the Life Teaching Remotely

I’m not a traditional teacher. I do, however, have several years of experience working in schools with students. I currently work at a high school in our work-study department. Before COVID, I managed the transportation for our program and on average taught a class once a month. Seeing as how students aren’t going to physical work location my role has changed and now my team and I are teaching at least 2 classes a day virtually focused on professional development. I'm sharing my experience to highlight my struggle and the struggle of many other teachers but I also wanted to share the little structure I have found in our chaotic times. Being vulnerable and being human is especially important during these perilous times and I hope a sneak peek into my day, will create some solidarity in knowing, you are not alone.

Before I get into the day in the life of not only teaching but doing so virtually, we have to start the day before, with prepping. The goal has been to get a week ahead on content but I have yet to achieve that goal. The first part of prepping is the slides and filling in the content. I have a team member who is our content expert and we collaborate on the content and then I do to the slides what she calls "making them pretty". This first step is a lot of work because we are virtual, we want to make sure all the directions and activities are clear so that if students need to go back to review them all the information will be there. Then there is going through and adding the engagement factor. What activities, warm-ups, chat questions, can we add to not only deliver content but keep the students engaged with the class. Once all that is done, it typically takes us about 2 hours, even when we aren't creating the lessons from scratch, we put all the assignments and resources on google classroom. We do this for all 4 grades the 9th and 10th graders are on one track and the 11th and 12th graders are on another.

Now we can begin with the day in the life of teaching virtually.

8:00AM: I normally wake up around this time to review the slides ahead of time. The morning class I don't have a hand in prepping that content and I only teach morning classes 2 sometimes 3 times a week.

8:25AM: Before class starts, I Gchat my co-worker that teaches along side me and ask about attendance. We often switch off. During this time, I arrange my screens: the slides that need to be presented, the chatbox, a grid view of the student, and the spreadsheet that we use for attendance if I am taking attendance that day. My 28 inch iMac really comes in handy.

8:30AM: Class starts and I start to take attendance while my co-worker is leading class. I enjoy taking attendance, it helps me visualize the students in my class even though I don't always see their face.

8:45AM: Finishing up attendance depending on the class size. Because many students don't have their cameras on either for personal reasons on because of wifi issues I type in the chat the students that will be marked absent and occasionally get an "I'm here" from a student I may have missed. A few minutes later, I enter attendance officially.

8:50AM - 9:20AM: I swap with my co-worker to teach the latter half of the class. This also includes monitoring the chat as students may be responding there.

9:20AM - 9:30AM: Class is ending and by 9:25 I've repeated what students need to have completed for this class and where they should go next about 5 or 6 sometimes even 7 times. My co-worker and I stay on until students log off - every so often there are students with questions. After answering any questions, I wave bye to my co-worker, and the class is done.

9:45AM - 10:30AM: I use to have a class during this time. This is what we call "Async" time where we go over the instructions for what students should be working on during this time but they are working independently. We've gotten smarter and now we give them the instructions in the class before. This time is probably the most random in my day. Sometimes I use this time to check and respond to emails or maybe prep for a meeting. Some days I use it to actually be a person, brush my teeth, shower, normal things.

10:30AM - 11:15AM: Breakfast. By this time, I've either place an order to pick up something or decided on making something so that I'm eating no later than 11. Sometimes it's just a bowl of cereal if I have other meetings or need something quick. Most times I cook something. Bacon, eggs, and pancakes are my go-to. Sometimes it's Wendy's (love that they offer breakfast) Starbuck's is also a frequent option.

11:15AM - 12:30PM: This is really my work time. I may have meetings, have grades to enter, and responding to the various other task related to my job.

12:30PM - 1:10PM: By this time I'm freaking out about the next class. Is everything ready? Do I have everything timed out? Are things scheduled to post to Google Classroom? Have I even looked at the slides?. I also use this time to prepare myself mentally. Teaching virtually requires so much more energy and engagement than if we were in person. So I just like to prepare myself and basically pump myself up.

1:10pm: I'm logging on and organizing my screens. I need to be able to see the presentation, the chat, the student cameras, and have google classroom or any other extra resource on hand.

1:15PM: Class starts and I typically greet the students with a "Welcome back from lunch, I hope you all had a good lunch." Yup, it's the same every time. Then I direct students to the quiz/review that we do before every class that is in google classroom, the slide that is presented says go to google classroom and work on the quiz but I still narrate, "Okay everyone, before class gets started please go to google classroom and find our review under today's date it's called [insert name of review]. It can be found in google classroom under today's date. Please get started on that as we take attendance. Once again we are working on [insert name of review] that can be found in google classroom under today's date and we are working on that before class starts". This is literally verbatim. There will still be students that ask in the chat what we are working on and I recite the above script. I normally give the class about 10 minutes for the quiz even though it is usually only four questions often times multiple choice but it just takes some time for students to get going.

1:25PM - 2:45PM: Class starts and there are long pauses and starts and stops in the chat. I sometimes feel like I'm just talking to myself as students rarely turn on their mics and their cameras. I do try to have at least one point in class for them to unmute themselves and share. It's hit or miss. Class ends at 2:45, it is the last class of the day so we go over what's due for the day across all the classes. Students type "bye" in the chat, you get the rare student that unmutes and actually says goodbye. I stay behind for a few minutes because there are usually questions. After class, I'm exhausted and normally need about 30 minutes of just nothing. I mindlessly play Best Fiends and recently have become hooked on this Harry Potter Puzzle and Spells game. (If you play, I need a club to join.)

3:15PM - 6:30PM: The rest of the days is dedicated to planning for the next day, finishing up any non-teaching related task, and procrastinating on all the other things I need to do like grades.

Then it all happens again the next day.