 Friends, welcome back to another day in the life vlog. So if you are new here, my name is Charlotte and I am a seventh year fourth grade teacher in Southern Arizona. So I'm in the Queen Creek East Valley area of Arizona and I teach fourth grade science and social studies. And guess what today is you guys? Today is the first day of school with students. So it is the year 2020 and as all of you know, life is hard right now. Some of you are still virtual. Some of you are in person full time. Some of you are in person and virtual. Things are crazy all across the country. Here in Arizona, our schools have opened up. Most of the schools in my area opened up weeks ago. We decided to wait until after fall break to open because it would be a better transition for kids to have a two week break between virtual and in person. So just to give you an idea of numbers, I have 16 students coming to school today that are in my home room and I started out with 24 in my home room. So there are over 10 students not coming to school in person. A lot of them are continuing to be online. So parents had the option. They could either send their student to school in person or they could stay online. So there's no like doing both. It's either one or the other. Students that chose to stay online will have to be online until January. So our class sizes vary. I am a departmentalized science social studies teacher for fourth grade. So our students do rotate from room to room. These first three days of school though, the kids are not rotating. We're just staying with our home rooms to teach procedures, get kids used to the difference between what school used to be like and how school is now. All the new guidelines, things like that. So we are keeping our own home rooms for three days. And then on Thursday, we will begin rotating for content classes. My home room has about 16. His home room has about 16 and her home room has about 16. So across the board, we're all pretty level. My classroom right now is set up for 20 students. They are all spaced apart, but majority of them will be sitting from the third row up because I want them to be as close to the TV and the board as possible. We are still going to be using a lot of technology. So I want them to be as close to the front as possible. Yeah, so I'm just, it is 6.52. The kids will start getting here at 7.40. A couple of things I have set out for them. So on each desk, I have a lanyard. I purchased these from Amazon for every fourth grader. My team is reimbursing me, but I don't really care about that. I wanted the kids to have something to hang their masks on when it's a mask break time. I couldn't wrap my head around, well, if they can take it off during lunch and recess and PE, like where are they putting it? Are they just shoving it in their pocket? I can see kids losing them. I'm like, no. I got every kid a lanyard. So when they get here, I'll just have them hook their masks onto it. They can either have it hooked while they're wearing it, which I'm sure they won't care. Or they can hook it on when it's time to take it off. So every kid has a lanyard on their desk and that is across the grade level. And then when the kids come in today, they're going to sit down. They're going to start working on their all about me selfies. So I do have some morning slides, they're not up yet, but basically the kids are going to take out a pencil, which hopefully they have. If not, I will have pencils for them. That is something I need to do right now while I'm talking about it, because we all know Charlotte will get distracted and then there won't be any pencils. So we're going to get the pencils out right now. I think I have some that are pre-sharpened. I hope I have some that are pre-sharpened. If not, I'll just have the kids sharpen up because I don't care. So the kids will get pencils out and they'll start drawing their selfies on their little phones. They can start decorating their phone. I have very direct instruction though to not color them yet because we're going to do that a little bit later in the day. So I'm just going to get these out. And if I have time while I eat breakfast, maybe I'll sit down and sharpen them. So that is what we're doing this morning. And then I kind of have more of like a to-do list of things that I want to get done. I have quite a few games planned for the kids. And then I do have a germ lesson that I'm going to be doing today, tomorrow and Wednesday. So we'll do that. Basically I'm going to get my room set up for when kids arrive that way I can be ready. And then I can show you guys my slides. So as of right now, the room is ready to go. I just need to turn on all my lights and my TV. If you guys haven't seen my classroom set up vlogs, I do have this really cool wireless remote control socket from Blink, BN Link. These are from Amazon. They're in my storefront, I believe. But basically I can turn on all of the things with a click of a button instead of having to like run around and turn everything on by itself. I have that and then my television. I'll get that turned on and I do have a strip of LED lights around the TV that I will turn on when I'm done vlogging because I'm vlogging on my phone today. Now I'm really hoping, oh, I think Rob just got here. I'm really hoping that the soap dispenser and the sink out in the hallway works because we have three grade levels up here and only one sink that is currently running and only one soap dispenser that's currently working. So I'm going to go check on that. And then that way I can call the janitor and be like, hey, yo, we need soap. Okay, you guys, so things are starting to move very quickly. I noticed that we don't have paper towels in here yet. So wiping down desks is going to be interesting today. We don't have any Chromebooks yet. We have an empty Chrome box or a Chrome cart. All three of us have an empty Chrome cart. So yeah, no paper towels, no computers. It's all very up in the air. I'm trying to sit down and eat my breakfast because I have about 20 minutes until the kids start coming and I need to be like completely done, getting ready. So I'm trying to do that. I'm going to set all of my alarms for the day. So for transition times, like recess, lunch, specials, that way I do not mess anything up today. I don't know how to get to hold your hand. It's 4.15. I know that it's super late in the day and that I did not vlog anything, but as you can probably imagine, today was insane. A lot of really great moments. Not any real terrible moments, just a lot of different things that came up that were very either confusing or not communicated well. Props to my school though, they did really a great job with most of the logistics, but there are just certain things that are impossible to do in a school setting. So I know that I'm vlogging while driving, but I'm going to do my very best to keep my eyes on the road and not on the camera. And with my busy day, there's just no other time to sit and talk to you guys. So I'm on my way to the gym, not going to let this day stop me from doing what I always do. I'm actually going to go pick up cash first and then go straight to the gym. So, all right, let's talk about how the day went. So at 7.40, the kids started arriving at school. They came in, they sat down, they got started on their little selfie projects. They did a really good job. They were super quiet, super shy. It was just like the first day of school. They all had their masks on. The masks weren't a huge issue today. I had a couple of students that I needed to remind to pull their mask over their nose and multiple reminders. So I did have to email a couple of parents to say, hey, please make sure they do have to wear the mask all day and that's just kind of how it is. So the masks weren't a huge deal. I gave all the kids their lanyards and then they all had a student ID. So I punched holes in those and hung them from their lanyards. So their lanyards are great because they're not only a mask holder but they also have their ID cards on them. So that was really helpful. Their ID cards have QR codes on them that match their parent pickup QR code card and their bus card. So they get scanned when they get on the bus and they get scanned when they get picked up. So that is actually really helpful that I had lanyards for them to use. That went great. One of the logistics that did not work was we are only supposed to have one classroom in the hall at a time and it's just not going to happen with only one set of sinks. So we have one bathroom upstairs in our hall with a boy's sink and a girl's sink. They have three faucets on each sink and we do a hand washing break before lunch and then after recess they wash their hands. They're supposed to wash their hands before they come to class in the morning and then they're supposed to wash their hands after they use the bathrooms and stuff like that. We don't have any sinks in our classroom so there's no other way to do a class hand washing moment so we do a lot of sanitizing our hands throughout the day. We did this really cool procedure though that I read somewhere else or somebody messaged me on Instagram and told me basically you have your kid's lineups, you have your boy line and your girl line. The first boy will go rinse and get soap and then they go to the back of the line and then they lather up while they're in line the second time. When they get to the sink again, they rinse their hands and dry. So that essentially gives them a longer time to scrub their hands while other people are getting soap, rinsing, drying, washing the whole thing. So basically you rinse, get soap, go to the back of the line, lather up while you're in line and then rinse when you get back to the sink. That worked out really nicely but the only problem is that they don't want us to have more than one class in the hallway at a time but if that were the case, my class would have to stand and wait for the other classes to finish and it just did not work. So we ended up having all the boys get into a line and all the girls get into a line and then they just went into their classrooms as they finished. That was fine. At lunchtime, we had to figure out if there was going to be a trash can to put trash in. One of my students was gone when lunch was distributed so they didn't give her a lunch and then I had to go hunt down a lunch for her to make sure that she could get one. So that was stressful. And then when we do transitions from classroom to classroom, there's just no possible way to have only one class in the hallway at a time. There just is not. So we created a movement pattern to help transition kids. So hopefully that will work we're gonna do practice on Wednesday. And hopefully that will be okay. We got Chrome Cards this morning. We had to create labels for them for every kid. I'm thinking since we all have our own Chrome Cards, we're going to wheel them in to wherever our kids are so that if they need to charge their computer or at the end of the day, they can put their Chromebook back in the cart that it came from and then we'll just wheel them back to each other's home rooms at the end of the day. So for example, my class is in Mr. Cummings classroom at the end of the day. So I'll take my Chrome Cart into his room. He'll give his Chrome Cart to Maria and then Maria will give her Chrome Cart to me so that her kids can put them back in their cart. And then at the end of the day, once the kids are gone, we'll all get our carts back. So that shouldn't be too big of a deal. Lunch was fine. Recess though was, so we get coverage during lunch so that we can eat on our own, but honestly, I would rather have coverage during recess rather than lunchtime because while I'm eating, I could just eat with the kids because during recess, I have to take them outside and stand out there with them and monitor them during recess, which I don't mind doing, it's fun, but I would rather have a long time in my classroom to prep during recess than have to prep during my lunch when I'm eating. I hope that makes sense. So I don't know, that's kind of annoying. And then during specials, I have a prep time, but my kids are in the room for two days a week. So the librarian comes to our classroom. So I can't prep in my classroom during that special. And if I do, I'll have kids in the room while I'm prepping. Parent pickup was kind of a mess. I let my kids out, the walkers and bus riders, I let them out early, I didn't know. I couldn't find anything that said what time each group would be released. So I did let a few kids out early, but they were walkers and bike riders, it is what it is. At recess though, kids take their masks off and play, just like normal recess. So it is kind of like, it's kind of funny to me that they don't wear their mastering recess, but they wear it in the classroom with the same kids. But it is what it is. So kind of an interesting day. Kids were great, they had a lot of fun. Tomorrow will be even more fun. We'll start getting on computers, we'll start doing some learning tomorrow and some more organizing. So we organize supplies, but we will have to do a little bit more supply organizing tomorrow. And yeah, it's, I don't feel as exhausted as I thought it would feel. Honestly, I feel more hungry than tired because I only ate the one lunch because there was no other time to snack on anything. So it's all very interesting, but they did a good job staying away from each other in the classroom. I did after mine, a couple of boys, one of them turned around and was working on the other ones desk and I was like, we can't do that. Like your workspace is your workspace. We cannot be turning around and moving toward another student's desk. Like you can turn around to talk to that person, but you need to stay where your stool is. Like you can't be scooting around and getting any closer to anyone else. So that was interesting. I had to nip that real quick. It wasn't like, it was harmless. Like he was like, oh, he was just asking me a question. Like, I know, but we have to stay, you know, at least desk distance apart. Like we can't be scooting around. Other than that, that was pretty much it. The hand washing, the dismissal was a little wishy-washy, but I think that over time we'll get in a groove and it will be okay. I love my homeroom. They're sweet kids, very, very fun. They love music. So like they, it was so cute. They were like, can we just listen to music at the end of the day during parent pickup time when we were all waiting for their parents to come pick up? They're like, can we just listen to music? I was like, yeah, that's totally fine. The thing is, is I won't have them at dismissal time. I'll have one of my teammates' homerooms. So, you know, just getting used to how things work. I didn't check my phone like all day, other than class dojo. And so hopefully that will be a thing. I also, I'm thinking about making the kids planners, like agendas for the month, or even a weekly planner, just my homeroom kids. I'm thinking about pitching it to my other teammates, making like a printout agenda where they can write down like things to remember to turn in or things like that they need to do at home. Because I was telling my kids like, okay, you need to do this for homework and you need to do this for homework and get this signed and bring it back. And I was like, they don't have anywhere to write this down. Like, so I'm thinking maybe I could make them like a weekly agenda page where they can write things down and it'll be the same color every week. That way that they can't forget. So I don't know, we'll see. I'm gonna see if my team will do that. Also, I forgot this. One of the sinks at our washing station, the soap dispenser doesn't really work. So all the girls today probably didn't even wash their hands because that soap dispenser does not work. So I'm gonna actually go probably to the dollar store and just buy some hand soap. Hopefully they'll have some, like I'll get one of those big bottles and then whenever my kids go to wash their hands, I'll give them each a pump of soap because like the girls anyway, because that soap doesn't work and there's no point in them washing their hands. The soap dispenser doesn't give them soap. I've been telling the janitors for like weeks now because I use that sink when the kids weren't there. I'm like, the soap dispenser doesn't work. Soap dispensers don't work. Anyways, you guys, I think that is it for today. I'm probably gonna film again tomorrow because I do want to keep you guys updated with all of what's going on. It is very hard to film. I'll probably only be able to vlog on days where the kids have a special outside of the classroom because that will literally be my only time that I can stop and like pull the camera out. Morning, the afternoon and then during my prep period if the kids aren't in my classroom. If the kids are in my classroom, I'm not going to be able to vlog because obviously I'm trying really hard to not tell the kids this year about my YouTube channel not because I don't want them to know about it but just, you know, I don't know. It just gives me a little bit more privacy and I can be more honest about things like not talk about students because I would never do that but just be more honest about things that happen especially with this whole COVID difference and everything like that. So anyway, I am here to get my cash monster. We're gonna go to the gym and I'm gonna get a workout in and get myself nice and tired last night. I did not sleep well. So anyway, I will talk to you guys in the next one.