I’ve been remote teaching since early November. My cohort at school was quarantined after a couple of positive cases came up. And the whole district went remote just before Thanksgiving.

We were supposed to return to our highbred days on February 1, but the district decided to surprise us all by bringing us back a week early. When I say surprise, I mean it – they didn’t even give the principals a heads up.

A lot of teachers at my school seem really stressed out by this. We had a last minute staff meeting this morning to cover some of the new policies and procedures, and the admin had to field a lot of anxiety-driven questions from some of the staff. And that doesn’t include the staff members who just plain didn’t show because they ‘needed every available minute to get ready.’

I get it to some degree. I didn’t really have to change much with my lessons or my classroom to be ready, but just the psychological shift of coming back a week early was noticeable

I have new students this semester Since they had me switch to the other sixth grade cohort to offer more elective options. A few already asked tentative questions on our Zooms this week about how to find my classroom, what if they can’t find my classroom, how hard is it to find my classroom, etc.

I promised that it’s not hard to find my classroom and that I and other teachers would be in the hallway to help them out. I think some of it is typical sixth grade nerves but, as with so many anxiety-driven questions, they come from feeling out of control in general.

Either way, I’m ready for next week and have updated my grades so I closed my laptop for the weekend. Sunday night I’ll have to pack up all my tech equipment to take back to school and decide which books I want to have with me. I have no idea how long I’ll be there for, so I guess it’s back to the fall pattern of making a best guess every day whether I’ll be back the next when it comes to packing up my materials for upcoming lessons.

I also to start planning for things I haven’t thought about in two months – fast and easy breakfasts, portable lunches, shoes, etc.

I’m getting breakfast at least sorted out. While I was in Grand Junction Duane gave me some homemade granola that I absolutely loved. I emailed him last week and asked for the recipe. He kindly obliged, and I got the ingredients to put it together. One of the ingredients had to come through Amazon since he insists on a particular kind of coconut flake that apparently can only be found there. “It makes all the difference!” he wrote. (At $5 a cup, it better!)

He also wrote that the recipe “makes a lot.”

He wasn’t kidding. This is just the base of it, before I add the dried fruits and dark chocolate.