All students return

I started out my week on a 6 am zoom call with my kids to celebrate my son’s birthday. It was technically mother’s day in the US and his birthday with me here in China. Becca bought him a cheesecake and candles to deliver to him in advance. It was a great start to the week!

We already practiced school for the last two weeks but starting this week we now have 6 grades on campus. We have about 70% of some of the classes back but not that percentage of teachers. They hired substitutes while the teachers that are gone continued online teaching. Those of us that are back are also covering classes.

Elementary start next week with a few grades with more added a week later.

The infrared cameras detect temperature. If it shows above 37.3 C (just over 99F), someone else takes your temperature to double check. There is a station where everyone must use alcohol gel before entering. Buses still take your temp too.

Both of my classes were combined in one. I planned a lab that was videoed and live. Kids can’t work together so I needed a set up for every student. A bit flustering. There was actually more students who showed up for testing and for school than they originally planned on from family surveys. As a result my class was split between two adjacent rooms and a monitor watched the other room. Only about 8 of my students were still online elsewhere.

Besides that class, I monitor three others. It means setting up zoom calls with the teacher and making sure they are on task and following rules.

Lunch is different as they cannot sit closer to each other. Individual chairs are set up for them to sit at. I think this would be the hardest for the students.

Phys Ed classes are combined and because there is a large number, they use blankets to mark off social distancing but there is lots of room to spread them out for activities.

It was a very tiring week but the students were so happy to see one another and it went well. We have been receiving a lot of press for the proactive work we have done. We are done with school on June 9th as scheduled as we started online learning immediately at the start of February. Only a few more weeks to go!