Slice of Life: Highly Efficient But Suddenly Forgetful

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

I thought I was being very efficient as a teacher, lining up the release of assignments in Google Classroom to coincide directly when I would need the students to access them. I worked on Sunday, thinking on Monday, for the morning work for school and home students in our hybrid model and for a writing prompt in my three ELA classes. I sent an email to all students in my sixth grade, about materials they would be needing (as we shift this week to synchronous teaching, with Zoom Stations in the classroom).

Everything was aligned, all set, and everything, wonderfully efficient. Or so I thought.

Winter Storm Through the Door

Then, the snow storm came, and the superintendent called off Monday on Sunday night (a bit pre-emptive, I thought, but OK, fine) and I completely forgot that I had these different things all ready for Monday to be released on their own. Google Classroom knows only the clock, not the weather.

I noticed something amiss early on, when a few students (who would be in the home hybrid) began to email me early.

“I thought we had a snow day?”

“Is this is a mistake or is this work we need to do on a snow day?”

“Mr. H, do we have today off or not? My mom says we do. But I see work here to do. So I’m confused.”

Oops. Dang it. I scrambled to pull back the assignment, to send an email out to everything, to relabel the assignments already live with a bold SNOW DAY MISTAKE — GO PLAY, and apologized to those who had emailed me directly.

(A part of me thought, it’s so cool that they were so attentive to the ways our days begin that they were even paying attention enough to notice and email me … that’s another Slice on another day.)

As I write this, I just realized: I have something scheduled for release tomorrow that needs to be adjusted. I need to unschedule that. Be right back …. I’m back … all set …. thanks for waiting.

Peace (forgetfully yours),
Kevin

7 Comments
  1. The difficulty of living in the future in the present… the future trouble of juggling the students at home and the students in real life. Anyone could forget something.

  2. I also had to do a bit of google classroom shifting because of weather. I’ve learned that there will always be something to disrupt my best planned days…

  3. Yeah, real life interrupting well laid plans. Better to be planned in dance than caught short and yay to your with it kids (and a snow day was probably appreciated by all!).

  4. I love this: “Google Classroom knows only the clock, not the weather.” Bravo to those alert students and to you for being brave enough to make a mistake and admit the error graciously. You have earned playtime in the snow, too.

  5. Best laid plans…It is exciting that you did have students who paid attention to your email, Kevin. I can’t wait to hear more about your new super-tech classroom and how your students respond.

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