Day 7 - More things to think about

Wow, the days are really starting to blend into one. I can barely remember what I did this morning now, let alone yesterday!

Today was one of my more productive work days. I’ve been balancing very productive work days with less productive ones in between, mostly to keep motivation up and to not get burned out. This morning I got loads of work done with some Leaving Cert Biology topics. Then, at 12.45pm, I had to meet two students individually online to see how they’re getting on. Both seem happy and glad to chat!

At 1.30pm we had a staff meeting and most of the other staff are changing their online teaching strategy to something similar to mine. I’ve been going with a less is more approach, where I meet students once a week as a group online, and the day before, the students have had time to watch my online lecture and do some homework on it. The other teachers have found that they were attempting too many Zoom meetings and that it wasn’t really working. I showed them some of the approaches I had been going with so far that had been working well for me. My manager also told us that four, out of the eleven students in our Engineering class, have returned home to Oman and Kuwait. Oman seemingly have a firewall that prevents Zoom video meetings, so we’ll see how this goes! Finally we discussed our end of year exams. We’re all in uncharted territory here but it sounds like we’ll go with some sort of model where the students will be graded based on assignments at home, as well as taking their end of semester 1 exams etc into account.

After all these video calls, I did a few household jobs, then had a nice shower before sitting down for our usual gathering around the TV to watch the 6 o clock news. 191 new cases today - a massive jump from 69 yesterday!

Today also Leaving Cert language oral exams have been cancelled and everyone’s getting 100% in their oral exam. Excellent news for many I’m sure, although I hear that Muckross are getting lots of emails from parents complaining already!

7.30pm brought a Zoom Pete/weights session with Fiona and Orlaith. I led the warmup and motivated them, as I’m not well enough to train properly yet. I think all three of us enjoyed the social contact!

Finally, at 9pm, myself and Peter made a necessary journey out to Tesco to get milk etc. I stayed in the car, while Peter went in, due to me waiting for a Covid test. Surprisingly, this has been one of the moments that has made me feel most proud so far. As I looked at Tesco from my car in the car park, I could see people hand sanitising at the door. I could see everyone queuing 2m apart from each other, and I could see lots of people sitting in cars in the car park while they, like us, sent just one person in to do the shopping. A big team effort was going on behind the big windows of Tesco, and actually, for the first real time, I feel like the team is actually the whole of Ireland.Read more