12 Days of Nextdoor

 "I saw a coyote"

   "there's a strange car circling the neighbhorhood

   box springs, mattress, dining room chairs living room chairs sectionals love seats fake plants brass bed  dog crates, lamps

Harp and I are going to record this later to post on Facebook. We think we're funny.

On the first day of Christmas, NEXTDOOR gave to me: a treadmill that actually works. (you know the song, I don't need to babysit your reading.)

 2 Box springs

 3 Matteress

 4 "There's a strange car circling the neighborhood" posts

 5 Stolen Bikes

 6 Coyote sightings

 7 Complaints about local bartenders not wearing masks

8  Whose dog pooping on my lawn?NEXTDOOR

9 Garage break ins

10 Fake ficusesssss

11 Lost pet salamandar posts which are indiginous to colorado and are actually short horned lizards and not a lost pet but that's fine, thank you for posting. Also shout out to the guy who lost his tucan.

 12 Babysistters in search of babies to sit.

Reason # 10 The Soul Crushing Certainty of Uncertainty: Janus Masks Have Two Sides, Here Is The Tragedy

 16 October 2020

          I am in a district that has made the following Covid choice: to stay remote until 14 October, which changed last week and is now 23 October, still remote but now in the building. The daily schedule was eviscerated and replaced by 20 day sessions. This means I teach an entire semester in 20 days, online, in three hour blocks. Do you need a minute to wrap your head around that? Go ahead, take a moment for yourself. The district is set to go hybrid beginning the 20th, but our building is holding back electives and keeping them remote. I've started calling us "ejectives", based on a text autocorrect, because we are ejectable. At any time, you can just punt an elective out of the curriculum, nobody cares. Ejectives.

        Teaching theatre remotely from an empty stage is like sitting on a grave. And sitting on a grave evokes Hamlet. The inability to act. The certainty of uncertainty. His proclivity to over thinking is what brought him down. I'm watching school districts spin and spit and suffer the slings and arrows of uncertainty. The entirety of Hamlet, audiences are flummoxed as to why he doesn't just kill Claudius already. His mind will not allow it. There are too many obstacles and outcomes to perceive and plunder and contemplate. Of course, pretending to be crazy was a great idea, ask Ophelia how that worked out. That's the only thing the guy could decide on: acting crazy. So he acted crazy and spun inside his own head until he murdered his friends, stabbed the old man, caused a suicide and eventually, finally, five acts later killed Claudius. As we all know from the CliffsNotes we read in college and the Mel Gibson movie we sort of watched, Hamlet does say he will put on an "antic disposition", but the meter is broken, indicating a man with a broken mind, yet he does make complete sense when he answers "Where is Polonius?" with "At dinner...not where he eats, but where he is eaten." Clearly not stable, but possibly driven to instability by the insane circumstances surrounding him, and the power hungry Claudius. and the pending invasion by Fortinbras. and the angry Laertes, and by the way Ophelia's dead and the gravedigger is making sense...

     Teaching theatre remotely from an empty stage is like sitting on a grave. The faces in Brady Bunch boxes are just ghosts, floating in and out from home as they feel engaged or not, popping from camera to photo. They are Yorick, alas, from a previous life, returning to remind me that at one time there was playing on this stage. I blast musicals and sing at the top of my lungs and the bottom of my belt to no one, attempting to awaken the theatre ghosts, hoping they'll keep me company. Nobody even comes to see if I'm here. Or alive. Nothing happens, nobody comes. I look at other districts, or even buildings in my own district, and they are functioning in performing arts. It's not great, they stand in marked boxes ten feet apart on stage and there are no theatre games that engage or acting exercises that push students to proclaim "Fuck you, Stanislavsky!", nothing that can be experienced to light a fire of passion, but they're there, at least they're present. I envy them. Once a week I travel to another district, south, and teach in person at at performing arts academy that is still open and functioning and doing shows, and I wonder just how crazy I'd be if I didn't have that. I think we're the only dark district. I hear there are other schools where they're managing to rehearse and hold classes. Many have ceased reporting their Covid positive cases, and up north a district is preparing to open full on in person on the 20th.They've openly said that if you want to know their Covid cases, call the district, they won't be sharing that information. 

   I'd be fine doing all of this remotely if the student population was adequately prepared for college level history and lit theatre, but they are not. Three of my classes are freshmen. The others are victims of a shattered department that has seen more loss than should be allowed a high school. But I'm doing it, and those who stay are learning. 

    How is making me teach remotely from the building beneficial to my students? Hello?

    I'm waiting.

    As long as we've stopped here, I'm switching from Elizabethan theatre to Absurdism.

    It isn't. It makes no difference if I teach from home or school or the moon, it makes no difference to the students. Shall we talk about the difference it's making to my mental health?

   Teaching theatre remotely from an empty sage is like sitting on a grave.

   The ghost of Ophelia appears beside me, she's brought a ficus. She slaps it on the stage between us and says "Like my tree?" She begins a monologue about the difficulty of reinventing yourself when what you were told you were is no longer relevant or realistic. She takes a moment to check in with me, as I'm clearly only half listening, and says "Because I was supposed to marry Hamlet, you get me? I was also female in a patriarchal society which rendered me to the status of chattel. Or property. Carrot?" She offers me a turnip and continues, as I phase her out. First her voice, then her physical being die out-she died twice,  like Buffy-and I sit on the empty stage again...

   My older colleagues are retiring. My young colleagues are looking to get out of education altogether. I have no such options, I have to stay at least five more years to make retirement even relevant, and I am too old to be of use to anyone else. Ageism is real. I am trapped on an empty stage, alone. Where'd that ficus go? I walk a circle and listen to the same song on repeat. Polonius tries to emerge, but his will is not strong enough through age and death and five hundred years and my own disinterest in hearing him talk any more, even if we are trapped and I am alone. If he says "To thine own self be true" I may just lose it.

    I've never felt so old, so useless, so used up. So used. Who Cares? 

    Nobody Cares.

    Nothing happens, nobody comes. The rest is silence.

     And so, I sit in the graveyard and play music from a dead era and reimagine theatre education for the Brady Bunch cubes. 

    I'm waiting.

     Scene

Teachers As Losers

   I feel like, I cannot be any more...angry, sad, confused, frustrated.

   And then I see a post with Trump Jr...

   He called teachers losers who "indocrtincate socialism from a young age."

   As I am, in fact, a teacher, this came as shocking news to me.

   Mr. Junior, I wonder what school did you attend? I bet I could argue that you were indoctrinated with privilege there at the Hill School, founded by a Reverend, Greed, at least Capitalism and maybe a little entitlement. Private schools are notorious hot beds of conservative indoctrination by loser teachers who have consumed the Kool Aid and are being paid peanuts by the rich to teach their little, entitled brats. I mean, aren't all teachers losers by this definition? Foolish enough to give up time with their families to educate those whose families can't be bothered with them? I see The Hill was also a boarding school. Bet your dad was down there every weekend to visit you, wasn't he?

   I infered from your spoken words behind a microphone, that teachers are losers for indoctrinating socialism to children from a young age. But clearly, you are exempt from this indoctrination, as you are not referring to your private school teachers. Based on your vocation, I would assume that you are not a fan of socialism, but of capitalism. Yet you do not blame your teachers at The Hill for indoctrinating you to capitalism. That must mean you refer to the rest of us, those losers in public education, who are indoctrinating our youth to socialism.

   I don't disagree with you, Mr. Junior. I have frequently thought that I am quite a loser, giving so much of my time and energy to my students, many of whom do not possess your privelege. In fact, I am such a loser, I buy groceries for my classroom so these kids can have lunch. I suppose that is a form of  indoctrinating socialism, isn't it? Giving something I paid for to those who cannot afford it. I have a former collegue who is even a bigger loser than I am, as she feeds over 700 families in need at Thanksgiving. Right? What a clown, who does that? She's a pretty big loser who is clearly indoctrinating socialism to her students.

   So, I started this blog as a grumpy person, but I am finishing feeling much better. You are right to call us all out, sir, we are losers, working for peanuts to educate the children of American. And we are indoctrinating socialism by feeding our kids and funding our classrooms with our own money, when clearly, if a student cannot afford a notebook they should simply go without. What kind of a loser buys that kid a notebook? If he wanted to go to school and learn, he'd buy a notebook, right? Screw him. No notebook, no school. Who buys that loser a notebook? Public school teachers do, sir, we, the collective Losers Of The World.

  Thank  you for clarifying this for me, Mr. Junior. 

When They Find Me I Will Be...

   This is a writing prompt stolen from Jovan Mays. He gives about ten prompts for kids to start writing their stories, and this one stuck with me. I've used it repeatedly. I like it becasue the answer is different every time. Depending on your state of mind or situation, it's hopeful  or dark. But even the dark becomes hopeful, because it's a prompt and I make them write at least three sentences, avoiding "When they find me I will be dead", or "When they find me I'll be with my dog." I need more guys, so do you.

  So in my upper level class, we're working towards writing original monologues. I gave them several prompts, and they shut down. So we focused on this one. To help them along, I also wrote, I didn't realize this image was in me, but it's delightful so I'm sharing. My response:

   When they find me, I will be struggling to balance the salad I just bought at the bodega with the ceramic 1970's lamp I found at the Goodwill so that I can open the lobby door. It's an easier door to open than the stage door, where the giant beast key tends to stick. All of my treasures would end up on the ground if I came in that way. The front door is tended to more frequently and opens easily as the house crew needs to be able to get in without any glitches. I usually come through the stage door, so they have to unlock it themsleves, even though they can see me in the lobby, I tend not to unlock that door. I will enter the dark lobby and walk, in the dark, to the box office where I'll leave the lamp and the salad. I will continue in the dark to the house, as per my ritual, and bellow "Mom's home, party's over". I will stand and laugh at my own joke, yet I will wait ten seconds before turning on the house lights so the ghosts have time to clear the stage. As I turn back to the lobby, I will trip over them, they, the one who found me, and ask why were they looking? I am not lost. I did not go missing. I am exactly where everyone expected me to be. They will smile and shrug, and as far as I am concerned, they are dismissed. However, they stay, hovering, as I go about my tasks to warm up the space. Since I now have an audience, I feel compelled to narrate.

          "The SM will be here in ten minutes, but they already do everything, and I think it's nice for                   me to come in first and warm everything up and start the coffee. Well, nice or control freak,                   either one, I'll take either one, it's my theatre, my responsiblity, my home, my church. I want to              be here. It's not a job, it's a choice."

That was my response to the prompt  yesterday. It's complelely different than any response I have written in the last two years, all of which revolve around the shit storm of 2016-2020. It's nice to see that shaken loose, to know that on an unconscious level, at least, I've let it go.

   ANYWAY, it's cool. And a great prompt and you may wish to try it. I find it to be good for my mental health, and, as it turns out, also revealing.

   Scene.

Only Six Days Left, How Did I Get Here?

      My district has chosen to put the high schools on a crazy 20 day online session arrangement. We are virtual until October, longer than any other Colorado school I believe, with the very strong possiblity that we will stay online through the fall. With all the Covid spikes in schools, I'd say we made the proper choice. I was able to write a blog about the first week, and then I went under.  Our model means I see kids live for three hour blocks--you read that correctly, one class is three hours--- four days a week and I have to load a plan into Google Classroom for Fridays, which are not live. It's the planning that is so exhausting.

    There are so many teacher voices out there right now that I am just white noise. Please listen to those who are being forced into their buildings. Please listen to those who are now doing double planning duty in a hybrid universe. They have real problems that their school boards need to address. 

    I have no real problems, I'm just tired. I do not believe I have worked this hard since I was a first year teacher. To paint a picture, I was a first year teacher wtih two small children. I had to learn how to teach while teaching, as I was in the TIR program. I was in two departments, language arts and theatre, neither of which was "part time" as far as the time spent planning, teaching and directing went. I started tapping my nose when I picked up a sixth class in the building and students began to mock me by tapping their own noses. My blood pressure skyrocketed. I could feel salt in my eyeballs.

  I am working harder now than I did then.

  At least, when I started 18 years ago, I was in the building. I taught in a theatre and a classroom, and my TIR classes were in a building downtown. I was blissfully unencumbered by technology other than my beloved red slider phone and of course, the usual theatre stuff, which can be trouble shot on site with a little patience and a lot of name calling. 

   Google Suite cannot hear me when I call it names.

   There is a section of our evaluations as teachers on technology. I refused to even use the laptop and projector in my room until I was bullied into it by a low mark on my eval. No matter how hard I argued, they would not acquiesce that untangling a light board issue--which is a computer --counted as technology. So I would show You Tube videos on my projector/lap top rig:check this box.After seven years, I was bullied into creating a website that I never used in the name of checking a box on my eval. I would use Infinite Campus for attendance and grading, and...that was it.  

   My struggle with tech has been documented for years. I was world famous in my previous district. There was a tech guy who had been working for the district for years but had never set foot in our building until me. Even he was impressed when he sat down to untangle something that he figured would be easy. "I have  no idea what happened," he mumbled. I laughed. "Nobody ever does. It's just me."

   When I switched districts I had to at least learn the basicis of google classroom, as the kids were all using it with the sub. I used it sparingly until the shut down, at which point I had no idea how to do...anything. I was using google chat to text because I had no idea how to schedule a google meet. I still do not have a clue, the district drops the meet link into our classroom for us. THANK GOD.

   I spent the summer in  google classes honestly working through all of this "interactive" stuff Google Suite has to offer. First of all, it's not interactive. Moving a word on a virtual sticky note to a virtual white board isn't interactive. Which is pretty much what all of the Google Suite stuff boils down to. There are a lot of teachers who love this stuff, it makes sense to them and they wield it like I wield verbs on stage,and good for them. But it isn't interactive, please stop calling it that. Theatre classes on stage performing improv, combat and mime is interactive. I invite you to prove otherwise. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

  My first issue is that I don't want to do any of this. I Don't Want To. I teach theatre. I can teach online and create a theatre history, lit or appreciation class, but that is not going to engage freshmen in high school. They signed up to fake fight, play improv games be silly. That isn't happening in front of a screen at their kitchen table, no matter how many jamboards or pear decks or screentastifies or flipgrids you throw at them. They're still alone, creating alone, performing alone. They can't even meet in a park and film a scene with their phone because they don't know anyone else in the class. 

   Then there's the fun internet connection issue. Not for my kids, again my district is the bomb and everyone has a chrome book and access to the internet. I mean my internet, my service that I "bundle" and pay many hundreds of dollars a month for the privelege. I'm teaching from home, and clearly, nobody else in the Green Mountain area is teaching from home (I live near two other teachers in another district, also teaching from home, so this is sarcasm) so weekdays at 9.30 am are the perfect time to shut it off for maintenence. Without warning. Just...blip. I'm out of the meeting. Mid sentence. Much to my surprise, when I got the connection back thirty minutes later, the kids were still in the meet. They were just chatting each other up and one said "It's OK Miss, it was like a real class. We just got to know each other."

   Aweee....

   The first week I tried all of the technology I had learned over the summer. None of it worked. See my shocked face?  I was suspicious of the jamboard, so I contacted the Google Goddess in my building. I told her I suspected that it worked, they just weren't using it. I could not discern which which. I was right. I had to babysit them as they took fifteen minutes writing four words on a virtual sticky note and placing it on a virtual white board. No wonder classes are three hours. Sheesh.

   At first the whole whining over not being on stage was getting in my way. But after the first week, once we all just accepted the reality of a Theatre Appreciation and History Course From Home, it was fun. I adore teaching this aspect and I never get to do it, because I've always had ravenous beasts in front of me chewing their way to the stage. But now we have no choice but to learn history and analysis and they're digging it. Usually the hook for Intro is combat. I do that first, because that gets them into class. Who doesn't love fake fighting? But this time, the hook was learning that the Romans used to throw Christians to the lions. Apparently, none of these people go to church, or have learned any history, because none of them knew about it. We spent twenty minutes looking up other sources to prove I wasn't lying. You can imagine how much fun boys playing girls in Elizabethan theatre was to learn about. When we did Kabuki and the suicide plays, one kid interrupted and said "Now that ain't no real reason to kill yourself, man. Why they do that? That's just crazy, Miss." Which prompted a bit more research into the Shogunate and another round of "No way, this was real?"

   Somehow, I made it here. We have six days left. These sessions are three hours long, four days a week live (say "synchronous" one more time) and Fridays are A Synchronous (you said it, I have to kill you). So In a week, I see them for twelve hours.

    For a theatre class that does not have a stage.

    And I have to teach this class two more times.

    I have somehow managed to get this group of 24 freshmen through a speech, the Greeks, Romans and Elizabethan history, Kabuki, mime,  performing two characters in one body ("One Man Show" like John Leguizamo) , poetry interp, reading The Odd Couple, breaking down a monologue and writing a critical review. In six days we will perform the monologue, teach the class A Thing They Can Do and perform a sock puppet scene from The Odd Couple.

   I only teach for three hours a day, as I only have the am class this session, but I stay in front of the screen and plan until at least one pm every day. Then I have to grade, track down missing kids, give feed back on their flipgrids, stay in touch with Thespians, feed all the animals in my house, clean the cat boxes, mop the floors, grocery shop, make dinner...because I can't sit in front of a screen for eight hours a day as it is,but this model has me on call 24/7. Next session I will be setting stronger boundaries.

    Which is why I stopped writing. I can't sit in front of the screen any more. I had to force myself this morning.

    Every year there is some new thing, some new acronym that's going to revolutionize education, or hold us more accountable shoved down our collective throats and I say "That's it, this is the thing that is going to drive me out of teaching."

     I was wrong in the past...

     We'll see.

     

How So Much Anger Has Deepened My Depression aka "Get Off Of Facebook You Twit!"

  When we were all in this together, sometime between 16 March and 24 March, there was hope. I  had friends and colleagues who did not hesitate to start stitching masks. They were exchanging them for other goods, bartering instead of asking for money. The art teacher who was taking money (or  wine or hand sanitizer) used the money to start a fund to help kids at her school. I went to four different stores looking for toilet paper for my inlaws, who had to quarantine. On Facebook there was a steady stream of trapped at home human beings doing the best they could by playing dumb acebook games like "Which Harry Potter Character Are You" and I wasn't annoyed, because they were doing what they needed to stay sane. To have a reason to get up in the morning. 

To stave off depression.

Then in all just stopped. Dr. Fauci and Trump got sideways. Our government embarrassingly argued over helping us get through this financially. George Floyd was murdered. Suddenly, Facebook was flooded with opposing political screaming and nobody seemed to care about one another any more.

Quarantine was hard enough. This sucks for everyone, we've all been hit emotionally and financially. We were there for each other for ten minutes, taking photos of our gardens and talking to neighbors across the street, and then it was over. 

Now, I don't dare click a news article and read the comments, it will send me into a tailspin. I read these nasty posts and I wonder if these people were always this horrible? How is it possible they have been this nasty for years and have anyone friending them on Facebook? The more likely answer is that they aren't handling this well. COVID has done one thing very succinctly: it has revealed who we are. 

It's not OK to say "Teachers are lazy and just don't want to work" when reading an article about schools going online. I question your reading comprehension skills, honestly, as clearly every article has stated "Schools may go online". This means teachers are working. "Online" is not code for "Not Working". How dare you scream at those who are educating your child? And how dare you suggest that when we teachers draw a line and say "enough" that it's because we're cowards and should "just go back to work." Again, please re read the article: we are working. We would simply like our own health and the health of our families to be taken into consideration, for the first time ever. We didn't complain when we were told we are bullet shields between a shooter and your child. But you've forgotten all about that, haven't you? Because you lost your job or had to work through the quarantine because your company went out of business or furloughed you or is a greedy business who cares not a lick for your safety, so you are taking it out on us.

This isn't our fault. We did not cause COVID and we can't solve it. 

There is the political hate that made me walk away from Facebook for a while.This country has decided its OK to be openly selfish and cruel, so calling someone a "Libtard" for wearing a mask in a state where it is mandated is fine. Writing "Open my gym faggot" on your truck window is perfectly acceptable during quarantine, because you have a homosexual Governor and you don't have access to email or a telephone to call and log your complaint. I suspect, dear, that you don't have a problem with your gym being closed, you have a problem with homosexuals. His sexuality has nothing to do with the closing of your gym, so why bring it up? Again, the governor did not cause COVID. He is doing his job and attempting to keep it from spreading. You're welcome.

Don't get me started on those who continue to gather and refuse to wear masks, or sending your kid to college on campus right now. I worry about all of this, and it makes me sick. Absolutely sick.See the previous paragraph "Not handling this well". This is how I'm handling it, by worrying myself sick and taking depression naps. I'd argue that is not handling it well.

You're welcome to support whomever you please politically, but you are not welcome to attack. I am so sorry you are in pain. I am too. None of our lives are going to be the same, and we're angry. And it's difficult to blame anyone, because as soon as you do it becomes political and other people yell at you. Stephen Sondheim wrote in Into the Woods "Of course all that matters is the blame, somebody to blame." Blame is irrelevant. Unless you've built a time machine during quarantine, and intend to return to stop this by identifying who is to blame, it's a waste of your time. It happened. We reacted. Here we are.

Now what?

You can't move forward if you're still screaming about something that's in the past. COVID is here. I know you're mad, so am I. But trashing friendships and alienating family members is not going to make this any better. Accept that you aren't handling it well, and move your focus to something you can control because you can't control this. OK?

And the next person who types that teachers are cowards or lazy will not impact me, because I'm not reading that crap.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Week One of Remote Learning In A Colorado School District

   I have to preface this by saying that I am not a successful remote teacher. I only cried once and that's because I thought my cat was dying. So, to be clear, I'm just tracking survival. Do not think this is a guide to doing this thing successfully. 

Monday Last day before kids. I've made friends with the new tech teacher who is from Columbine HS and is giving me major anxiety as she's clearly a real techie and I'm just Schleppy the Clown. I spent last week's district theatre teacher meeting in full panic as one of my colleagues has secured a ton of green screen and editing equipment and I can't even get a video from my phone to my email. If this is the future of theatre, I'm teaching a dead art form. 

My new colleague is wonderful, and I'm sure at some future date when I am not in survival mode she can help me live stream or something something from the stage because I am not playing the Brady Bunch scene work game, nor do I have green screen. Also, they're remote as well, so how is he using green screen? Now I'm even more confused and need yet another depression nap.

Tuesday First day live with kids. My class is from 7.30 am-10.30 am, so I got up at 6.45, laboring under the delusion that I could get morning chores in plus a nice walk or yoga time.  

I got my morning chores done.

I logged in at 7.15 saying the words "Don't forget to record, don't forget to record", and checking on the jamboards I had loaded.

By 8.45 the jamboards didn't work, only half of the class had shown up and the google doc I loaded didn't share. It's too early to start drinking and class isn't over, so I soldier on in google meet, waving my arms about the Greeks and forcing participation from these sleepy children, because the jamboard didn't work and I have no lesson plan without feedback from them. 

At 9 I realize I'm supposed to be recording. I click on the little snowman and there is no option to record. It was there yesterday,  but is gone today, just like the "make students a copy" button disappeared when I needed it.

Attendance is a different platform than classes, of course it is, so I have to toggle to IC to enter attendance. We are supposed to count them as present even if they log in for two seconds, but I didn't catch the name of the kid who did that, so I guess he's absent today.

There is a "Welcome" video from admin I am to show. I click on it, share my screen and the kids can't see it. We try again, and they can see it but they can't hear it. As 80% of  my lesson plans are dependent on video, I am a bit panicky. I make them watch it on their own and then return to class. This tech debacle took a good five minutes, and the video takes 23 minutes to watch. So score! It's almost 9.30! I make a note to call the building Google Queen and ask her why nothing works for me. 

I pull out my ghetto Greek slide show---it has been requested by admin in two separate buildings that I cease and desist using that term, but it's more descriptive than "crappy". Maybe it's a scrappy slide show, because I'm plucky. I dunno dude, it's a slide show. Nothing moves or swipes or blends, there is no virtual "classroom" or avator of me, it's google pics copied and pasted with my words flying about. I took a slide show class this summer and learned all of the moving and swiping and blending and even embedding video. I don't care enough. They're not going to like the Greeks more because my slide show was slick, and I don't want to take the time to change it, I've been using it for years. I have very important depression naps that need my attention, thank you.

Somehow, the Hamilton you tube clip works, and we can talk about economy of movement and focus. Because we're not in theatre and flat REFUSE to turn this into a film class, we're going to be expressive and specific and focused behind our laptops. I have discovered I'm very "Get Off My Lawn" on this subject. Hinkley has a film class. I teach theatre. They're still different even if we're in film's milieu, I don't have to give up.

Weds I decide to teach from my closed, dark theatre on campus. 

I haven't driven anywhere that required an arrival time in six months, and I miscalculate how long the commute is. Because everyone went back to work and I70 is once again a glorious shit show. But this time, nobody thinks they need to drive under 80 mph, and I'm almost run off the road twice. I'm doing 75, because I'm running late and the speed limit is 70, and five over is allowed. There are no police to be seen, which is why everyone has decided it's Mad Max on the freeway. I begin to worry it'll be like the LA freeway in the 80's and someone will open fire as they pass me.

On Chambers the light rail toggles descend, lights flashing, and I realize it's 7.20 and I'm five minutes from school.  Why is there even a light rail out here? I hate everybody.

I slalom through the COVID testing tents in our parking lot and jump out to make it to the theatre just in time to log on for class. I realize I didn't think it through, as I have a lap top and my intention was to give the kids a tour. See, I have a theatre tour on my phone that I took with my camera, but it's too long or big or whatever, so it won't transfer to my email so I can then transfer it to google classroom. I'm sure there's an easier path but I don't know what it is. Remember, I can't make a pear deck work. So I'm awkwardly swinging my lap top around the theatre, tilting it so the kids can see the stage and house as I repeat the parts of the stage. Since I'm not looking at my camera because I'm waving the thing around, I assume everyone has gone back to sleep. I start asking specific kids to repeat the part of the stage to me, and they slowly wake up.

Today I wave my arms about Shakespeare, show my "scrappy/plucky" slide show and again try the jamboard. Is it not working or are they not participating? I have an appointment after class with the building Google Goddess to figure out why there is no button that says "make a copy for students", and until I fix that, I have no way for kids to participate in the worksheets. I'll ask her about the jamboard, too. We have a standing appointment. I love her. So, I make them create a separate google doc and send it to me via email. I spent five minutes teaching a kid how to find a google doc. I spend five minutes walking a kid through google classroom to find yesterday's slide show. 

The Google Queen helped me after class yesterday, so I can now successfully turn all of my teaching worries over to You Tube. Crash Course is an online theatre teacher's dream. And I'm starting to realize, all that great support content-biographies, actor interviews--that I never had time to show are now open season. I never showed videos because kids were staring at me, jonesing to get on stage and DO. Now, they're at their kitchen table, or in their room and as we learned yesterday, getting them to DO when they are comfortably at home is going to be a challenge. They can't feel the energy of the space, the nerves of their fellow classmates, the cold air of the perpetually blasting A/C. I can cry about it or I can figure out a way to show videos that get them excited for when theatre does return.

Thursday I look at the mess on my dining room table and remember I was going to clean out the office downstairs and turn it into school. That's a great idea. I go out back onto the deck and log in. I hit "record" and break my arm patting myself on the back. I say "Don't forget PAA at 4" and write two sticky notes as reminders. My brain is mush. The google doc thing was apparently a glitch? It wasn't just ME! Many teachers were struggling with it, so I got that going for me. Also, she has no idea about jamboard and refers me to a lang arts teacher who is an expert. 

Today is their "What I Love" presentations. Aristotle's 6 are guiding this class since there isn't any acting that's going to happen, and we are focused on "diction" and "character". I have 17/23 kids logging on regularly after three days, and I'm taking it as a win that all 17 have written a two minute piece, some with props, about what they love.

We review Greeks and Elizabethan and I walk them through their asynchronous Friday. Which is of course Crash Courses with worksheets---cause the button came back so I could share--and a weekly quiz. The quiz includes a reflection so they can tell me how they're feeling, how their family is doing, etc. They are not required to write the  reflection. In fact, they can video tape their responses, or use flipgrid (which I totally don't get at all if you can upload video,whaddya need flipgrid for?) or a tik tok. One kid explodes "I'm doing a tik tok!" and I am not surprised, as he watches tik toks during our breaks. 

And I'm done with synchronous learning for the day. For the week! Immma stand up and get more coffee. I wander into the house, stare at the coffee. Then I decide I want a smoothie. I get the fruit out. then I have to go the bathroom. The kitten is thumping down the hall. I will follow her, I like to follow her. She jumps on Karen (who is an orange cat). I am delighted and wish I could be a cat. I then return to my computer, and start planning for next week.

Twenty minutes in, I realize I have no smoothie, no coffee and I Haven't seen Sock today. Sock is a cat. She usually comes up in the morning. I go in search of and locate her asleep on the footstool downstairs. She didn't eat, and it appears she's been throwing up.

This is ridiculously hard. Teaching is not easy in the first place, but scrambling to teach theatre online when all the "Interactive tech" you're given from google suite is really just stupid and not "Interactive" at all is ....exhausting.

And don't forget you have PAA at 4

****PAA at 4.30, I cannot put into words what frabjous joy I felt walking back into the church. Everyone is wearing masks, the kids are socially distanced, but they're there. They are present and flesh and blood, not a screen. And we can shout as loud as we wish because we're in a theatre, not at home. And we can roll around and stretch because we are in a theatre, not at home. I'm grateful they thought of me this fall, it's been 100 years since I've taught theatre live. 100. ONE HUNDRED. Don't argue with me.*******

Friday Faculty meeting, which is fine. I used to hate these things, but I appreciate them now. It's actual information about how to get through this, support and the constant "we'll get through this" mantra. There's more technology every day someone's excited about, but no pressure to use it if you don't want to. I don't want to. I'm good. Gimme google meet, google docs, you tube and a way to upload phone video and I'm solid. I'm a little worried about too much video, so after the meeting I look around You tube for tutorials instead of clips of shows, and find a college whose kids did isolation combat that's hilarious, they had to fight themselves. STEALING. Also found a young kid who does voiceovers, and keeps saying "I'm not good at explaining this" but he's demonstrating it beautifully. AWESOME.

I also received a note from my AP that I need to remember to take attendance, but I have been. To back myself up, I go into attendance and look up the kids: Yep, marked absent. She emails back that there seems to be a glitch in the matrix. Some kids are being marked absent for their am class and the system is also marking them absent for pm.

Sock did not get up or walk or eat. I called the vet, who can't see her, so I called his colleague.

I also emailed the parents of the 6 no shows all week, offering assistance if they are having trouble finding the google classroom. I got on google translate and wrote one in Spanish. I hope google translate is accurate, cause I have no idea. But I liked saying I was the "profesora". That was cool. Makes me sound like I have a PhD. 

I do not have a PhD.

This whole tech thing is going to get better when more districts are online. That's sarcasm.

I got on this morning to grade. 13 of the 17 who are showing up did the work.

I'm taking it as a win.

SATURDAY Sock jumped up, ran outside and is basically an ass hole.