Connected at Home Webinar #1: The Teaching Parent

As we continue to go here.

And that's.

That's just fine. So my name is Dean Shereski and my colleague here, Alec, we're both educators in various sectors of the K20, I guess, world, and we just thought it might be an interesting thing to bring together educators to have this sort of very casual conversation. And if any of us, you know, Alec and I, you know that this is not completely thought out, it's not completely structured, it's very little of any of those things. Both Alec and I have the great privilege of having a pretty large network, and so we like to be able to tap into that. So this was just what we thought would be a good chance to do that. So our goal here is to have perhaps do this on a weekly basis, and that sort of may or may not happen exactly that way, and that's fine. But totally knowing that, you know, there's just a lot of. A lot of things happening for everybody that we thought, you know, rather than coming and giving you some sort of a formal, here's how you do it. We weren't necessarily interested in that, but we did really want to have some conversations about topics that may not weren't being exactly addressed that we saw. And so this was certainly one of them. So the idea of teachers now being parents and all of the challenges and, as some people like to say, opportunities that come with that thought, it'd be good to have some people come together. So this is very casual. So I'm glad you have. Some of you have your coffee, some of you have your tuna or whatever you have. Just be very relaxed. We're just going to chat here. I've got a couple of guests. We'll introduce them in just a moment. And we want you to participate in various ways. And so I'm going to let Alec just give you a bit of a context of the actual space we're in and how we're going to maybe conduct ourselves over the next half hour or 45 minutes.

Sure.

Thanks, everyone, for being here. I think we have a number of other people joining us. Some got in and some didn't, but I'm managing that as well for basically, interaction. This is Zoom's webinar, webinar style, I guess, and basically there's sort of a panelist view, which is four of us up here. You can actually toggle back and forth. If you go to the top, right, and there's a speaker view and there's a gallery view, and you should be able to see one or more people. But the Main thing is we want to make sure that, you know, we're answering questions and letting you discuss and share some of your stories as well. So at the bottom of your screen, you'll see three important buttons. So feel free to use the chat function that will allow you to send messages to everyone who's participating today or just the panelists. You can raise your hand if you want to speak. So we'll ask a few of you if you want to share some of your stories, because that's really what this is all about. So feel free to put up your hand at any time and we can add you for audio only. And I think that's really the big thing. Or there's also Q and A. So if you have any questions throughout that you just want us to answer, feel free to drop one in the Q and A. And we'll get to that as soon as we see it. So that's about it. I'll hand it back to Guy. Thanks for being here today.

All right, well, so as we were exploring this topic and realized this was, I thought about my good friend Danica, who both Alec and I have known for a number of years. And Danica is an educator in London, Ontario. She's a high school teacher, but she's got little ones who are sitting just over at the table around where she is there doing, doing something. And then also reached out to Lindsay Thornton, who's a little bit more local to Alec and I in Melford, Saskatchewan. He's also a high school teacher and he's got, I think, three children. I think his wife is also a teacher.

Yes.

And he's also a coach and a bunch of other stuff too, as many of us are. So we just thought we would use both of these as sort of a jumping off point. And so we're going to share. And so the goal here really, like, I think about three things. I think about learning, connecting and sharing. And I would say the learning part is the least of those three. Just in the sense that I think most importantly, we just want to share. It's just a good idea to share stories and connect with and connect with other people. So if you leave here with knowing a couple people that you didn't know before, whether it's Lindsey, Danica, or other people in the chat who are gonna contribute, I think that'd be a good thing just to. Just to know there's other people out there that are facing this very, very brand new challenge that likely none of you have faced before. And so, and I'm here Really just because I like learning and I like just to sort of hear those stories from you. So why don't we start with. I'll start with Danica. So Danica, just give us an overview of a little bit like who you are and like, just like maybe a day in the life and then I'll let Lindsay do the same.

So. Yeah, so I teach at a high school actually in my neighborhood now. I was, you know, making a half hour commute, which was nice, but a job opened up a couple years ago at my local high school and I got super excited. So I'm the head of English there now and I, I've also been teaching online for about 10, 10 plus years. So I teach face to face. But then each semester I also have one online class. So I've been pretty familiar with teaching online in normal circumstances. Day in the life for me now is a little different, of course. So we have my husband and I, because my husband's also working from home, he makes video games. So he, he's. We have to divide up our day. And so I get 9:30 to 11:30 is uninterrupted me time for teaching. And then I have the kids from 11:30 to 3:30. And then I get 3:30 to 5:30. But so before that I try to get up in the morning workout. So I went for a run this morning and then I did a zoom workout with some people from work, which was kind of cool. And then I go upstairs, I log into my computer, I answer emails and try to make instructional videos and things like that for all of my students, try to check in with them and make sure they're doing okay. And then, you know, look after the kids and try and get their homeschooling done. And throughout the day my house falls apart. It's a disaster right now. And that's okay. And we try to get outside at some point and then, yeah, that's, you know, repeat. We repeat day after day the same thing.

And how are those little ones? Like how are they doing? Like as far as, like you said you have them from what did you say, 11 or 11:30?

Yeah, 11:30 to 3:30. They're, you know, it's really hard. So phrase three and I think she's really feeling the lack of socialization with her friends at daycare. And so there have been a lot more tantrums and she's a feisty little thing at the best of times, but a lot of tantrums. And life is. He's five and I think he also Misses the socialization. But he's, he's really struggling with. Trying to stay connected, to learning because he's very imaginative and he has all kinds of cool things he wants to do. And you could let him play Lego all day and you know, he'd invent stories about Godzilla destroying a city. But to tell him to sit down in front of a computer and let's go through these, you know, flashcard activities, he is not having it. So it's been challenging. We've had some tough times.

Does that sound like your household, Lindsey, or how is that different? The same.

Lots of it sounds very similar. My wife and I have had to sort of divide up the day. She gets the mornings to work, I get the afternoons. We kind of both take time around meal times to try and work together on mealtimes to help feed the kids. Then usually we're both working again in the evening. Once we get the in bed, we're both plugging away again at work. My oldest is. She's on a little bit of a different sleep schedule. She's probably still, she might still be in bed right now for all I know. How old are your kids? Lindsey, our youngest, is in kindergarten and the girls are in grade four and grade six.

Okay.

And so the one in grade six likes to stay up late and sleep in and the other two are on a more similar schedule to bed a little bit earlier, up earlier. So that's been a challenge too. We have having kids awake from 6 in the morning till maybe 11 at night too, in the house while trying to do all these other things too. And.

So.

Well. And we should talk. Alec, you've got a couple kids, maybe even more. I've got four actually.

And I'm thinking about the structure that both Lindsey and Danica are speaking about. Just the scheduling, I think that's such a big part of that. And that's something that's difficult. I've got a 5 year old, a 9 year old, 12 year old and a 15 year old. And as you expect, similar to what Lindsay said or maybe, well, with Lindsay's, they have one still sleeping. Right. Then it's typically the 15 year old that sleeps in and has a very different schedule than the ones that are up quite early. And so trying to figure out a lot of that. So dealing with sort of the social, emotional needs of a kindergartner and the very differing needs from a grade 10 students. It's a challenge. And you have to really have hats off to teachers who do this all the time without having to do this at home as well. It is. It's incredibly challenging. And, you know, and obviously no one was ready for this sort of thing. When we're thinking about how difficult it is just to do our daily job, but then intermingling it with the needs of our children, of course. So it does, you know, hats off to people who are doing this and doing it well, because I certainly want to do it better, which is part of why we're here today.

Well, and that's like. So part of this is like in this sort of framing of, well, this is this temporary remote crisis, all of that stuff. You know, there's. I feel like there's this tendency to say, well, don't get too hung up on, you know, anything concrete or whatever. And at the same time, like, what is the need to say, well, well, first of all, like, we don't know how long this will last. And, you know, to what degree are routines important. So I'm. I'm curious around how you think through and maybe you don't think through. Maybe just let it happen. Sort of this balance between, like, Lindsay, let your kids sleep till whenever, because, like, that's just gonna work for her to here's the things that we should do every day, all the day to just for the good of mental health and so forth. Like, I'm just curious how you guys sort of toggle those two things.

I'd like to say that I've had like a solid philosophy from day one and I've stuck to it, but I feel like everything with the current situation, that it's just really manic. You know, I have some days where I write out my in advance and I have. We've got our schedules and we. I mean, we even have. We do have on our Sonos, we have songs that play that single signal, like different. Different changeovers throughout the day. So, you know, we've got sort of the. On the one hand, this really kind of regimented planned out idea for how our days go. But then other days I just want to go, no, no, just none of that. None of it. We're just gonna relax and we're gonna stay in our pajamas and we're gonna eat whenever and whatever and, you know, watch whatever we want. And I think it's just that you feel so much pressure that sometimes you're. Rather than finding a middle ground, because I don't know where it is, I just keep swinging back and forth from one extreme to the other, and I don't feel like that's good.

And I think Just to add to that, I think that's good to hear because I look at some of the plans and even saying something like, the Sonos has certain songs that trigger certain times. Like, I'm thinking I'm doing not nearly enough as a dad. But it's good to hear that it has to go back and forth. There's also the uncertainty of this time, the stress and the tension that's happening around this. Trying to explain this to our kids, them being in great need for social interaction. And so we kind of have to really go with it in terms of, you know, how structured we're going to create. We're going to make their lives versus just giving them free time like they had before. So it's good to hear because all the things, you know, all the things you see on Twitter or you hear in other places about how parents are coping, they seem super idealist and don't really deal with the very nature of the chaos in the home.

And I think the other, the other thing that's really, you know, like, Danica, when you say that, the challenge of it is when you've got four people living in a household, they might not all, like, some days they may be ready to go and say, well, let's do something, you know, and the other person is saying, I'm not into it. Right. So just balancing the fact that, yeah, your mood might be, let's go. Or you might be just pajamas all day. But how does that account for the fact that, yeah, that's not. Everybody wants. Some people want. Everybody wants to. Has these different needs, just even regulating that. Kathleen had a great question. I'll ask Lindsay. This one first is what do you expect from your child's teacher? And I mean, both being teachers, you know, we'll presume you have a little bit more empathy than perhaps a parent, but maybe you don't. I don't know. Like, what do you want from your child's teachers for your kids?

I think we're really lucky. All three of our kids had, excuse me, had amazing teachers this year, and they were doing all kinds of wonderful things in the regular classroom environment. My wife and I, neither of us expect them to continue that same level, that high level in this current environment.

They're.

All three of them are continuing to provide opportunities for them to work, work on math and English, but we're not expecting them to be the same teacher they were at the beginning of March because this is a brand new situation for everyone. Like Danica was saying, both Natasha and I also teach or have taught online as well. So we were a little, I feel we were a little bit more prepared for this new world than some of our other colleagues. But the level, yeah, the high quality level activities and opportunities they were giving to the kids in the regular classroom is not what we're expecting at this time. Something that they can work on here and there when they have time is really all where it's kind of nice to have that, that we don't have to come up with it.

It's interesting to hear even in chat there's several people that have either partners or who are ed tech specialists or are ed tech specialists themselves. And you know, we think that because we have, we're equipped to this, that we have better example, better understanding about what resources our kids could use just for their own personal learning or how we can address communication with our own classes. So I imagine there are people not only struggling with reality, this reality, but there's another layer that they don't have a clue of how to use some of these tools. And they're learning very late into the game with a lot of this and trying to figure out and cope with just the burden of being online. And even, you know, even with all of this and the knowledge that we have collectively in our personal learning networks and so on, it doesn't really ever prepare you for something like this in terms of coping with just the time differences and so on. So I think it's great to hear people are in goats, I think.

So one of the things that I think, you know, and again in this, in sort of the putting on my optimism hat and thinking about the opportunity for student agency which, which can exist. My question to all three of you then, and even the people in the audience is how much of your child's day in, in the context of learning is very schooly. Like now I'm doing math and now I'm doing these exercises and, and how much of it is like actually kids sort of driving their own learning. And whether that's through opportunities given from teach, from schools and teachers or they're just saying, you know, I'm learning, I'm going to learn how to code or do whatever thing I'm doing. Like how much of. How do you sort of see that playing out? Because that's, I want to believe it's all about agency and I know it's not ever going to be that way, but I don't know what that looks like.

I would say that. I mean, first of all, my life's kindergarten teacher is amazing. She has jumped in right away. First of all, I can tell she's already like a super organized person who puts a lot of time and effort into planning. But she's also got two children at home, and one of them is kindergarten age and the other one is younger. So I'm amazed at how she has been able to switch from being in the classroom to having all kinds of stuff online and posted. And her Week at a Glance that she gives out to parents is really, like, incredibly well planned out with lots of choices and options. And I think she's done a pretty good job of making it clear to parents that these are things you can be doing. Here are some things that you can be doing to continue the learning at home, while also recognizing that parents. Parents may be choosing to do other things with their kids and that those are valid learning opportunities as well. I don't know that that message has been totally clear from other teachers, though, in other contexts. And I say that because, you know, I've been trying really hard as a teacher to make my expectations clear. But it's still getting. I can tell from some of the emails that I've gotten from students that I'm still not there yet. I still haven't reached everybody with making it really clear what the expectations are. And from our school board, we were given a directive that their grades are what they were at March 13th, right before our March break started. And students can continue to do work to improve their grades, but nothing after March 13 that they do can lower their grades, which is pretty progressive. And I think it's kind of awesome. I'm definitely on side with it. I know that not everybody's super on side with it because some teachers are concerned that that means that students are just going to opt out of the course and not do the work. And I know that that's certainly possible. But I also think that our priority needs to be to protect those kids who enforcing, you know, continued work and that sort of thing would really, really be damaging. It would really hurt them. So I have some kids that are still engaging and they are still. And so what I'm trying to do, though, is because there's such a wide. There's so much variety in terms of what students are able to do right now and what students aren't able to do. I just sort of came to the conclusion that now when I do my Week at a Glance, I'm color coding stuff, so I'm doing green stuff I put in green is essential learning, and stuff I put in purple is like enriched learning. And then even with that, I say, if you are struggling to get through the essential learning, that's okay too. Just, you know, keep me in the loop because I think that we really need to be empathetic and compassionate because. And realize that we don't understand what's going on in a lot of people's houses right now.

It's just, again, fascinating because if you. Like, when I think about this one, like, it's for. It's obviously hard for you to know when you have your parent hat on and when you have your teacher hat on. And, you know, somebody in the comment, I think it was Paul, mentioned something about concerned about teacher burnout. And what I wonder is, can you yourselves determine, like, because you're. Everybody's going to be feeling a level of stress and so forth, how much of that can you. Can you parse out? Is that attributed to the teaching side of it, or is that attributed to the parent side of it, or is it just all blurred together? Like, can you separate yourself as a teacher and a parent to sort of gauge, okay, I'm spending too much time or I'm expending too much time as a parent, or I'm expending too much time as a teacher? And again, I think both of you probably are. Again, as you both mentioned, because you've taught online, you have some advantages over many teachers that have never. But I don't know if that question even makes sense, that you can tell how much of your stress and burnout is related to the parenting, how much is related to the teaching. What do you think, Lindsay?

I was gonna say, I think maybe it was easier to tell that before when you were at school and then at home. Now that it's school and home are all the same place, I think it's harder now to maybe distinguish some of that.

But.

And it maybe depends on what the situation is at the time. Some things may be, oh, that's clearly a school stressor, that's clearly a home stressor. Then sometimes it could be that something's happening. You have to attend to something with school, and now the kids are going. And that's more of a combined. Everything kind of all happens at once, and school and home collide, and now we have to figure our way out of this situation.

Yeah, I would say that it definitely swings kind of back and forth for me, too. But now that we've kind of gotten into a routine of kind of how this is working from the me as the teacher side of things, now that I've kind of Got that figured out. And I have a bit of a rhythm established, you know, on like what I do on Monday and then what I'm doing the rest of the week. Most of the stress now for me comes from the parents side of things because I mean, I'm trained as a high school teacher. I used to joke all the time that I could never teach kindergarten. I have no idea how anybody can teach kindergarten. You know, they're amazing people. And now I have to do it because, you know, and my son's in French immersion, so there's that added level. Some of the teaching I'm doing is in French, so luckily my husband speaks French and so when he has them he does a much better job. My accent's atrocious, but. And also just trying to figure out, you know, like, my son is really curious and loves to do his own thing and really engaged in learning stuff that he wants to learn. But if it's something that he's being told to learn, he's very resistant and gets really frustrated easily. And I don't know how I don't have the skills to help him power through that. I have the skills to help a teenager power through that, but a five year old, plus it's also me, you know, and I think the way that he would react with his own teacher is a lot different than the way that he reacts with me. So like in terms of the amount of the day that we're spending on his school type stuff, like really schooly type learning, maybe half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the afternoon. I know there's still learning happening throughout the day, but like formalized, let's log in, complete this assignment kind of thing. That's about it.

So I brought in Colin as well to share some of his perceptions.

Oh, I thought we got zoom bombed.

Not this time. Colin said his connection was a bit flaky. So hopefully I see him paused. So immediately he warned me. Yeah, I think it looks like he's.

Paused right now in like a log cabin.

Maybe we'll try. Maybe we'll try. Lindsay, I think you were about to say something.

Oh, I was gonna say, yeah. I think with the establishing of schedules and things like that, like my wife and I have the schedule, but we've got a schedule for the kids too. They're on technology. Like they've kind of got their free time and then we've got time schedule throughout the day where technology free time. Because if, you know, the kids would play Minecraft all day long if you let Them. So we've got scheduled breaks from technology and then sometimes that's where they're filling in with their doing some school type activities. But yeah, I would say with the kindergarten it's maybe half an hour and maybe it's not half an hour morning and afternoon. Every day it might be one day, it might just be the half hour in the morning. And depending on the day kind of thing. The girls are a little more self sufficient than that and they can kind of take care of their own. But they're also filling it in with. Our oldest is looking up recipes and trying to cook some things and bake some things too. So I think that's a really good opportunity for her. We also have scheduled yard time for the kids.

So that actually fits in well with the question from Chelsea. He asked how are you feeling in regards to the amount of screen time that kids are getting, especially with online screening and then they're watching way more TV than normal. It sounds like some of you have strategies to get away from that. But certainly, I mean screen time's higher than my house for sure. I try to push back on that but it becomes very difficult when you're working.

Well and think about the fact that normally this time of year kids are enrolled in soccer or baseball or lacrosse or other. Other activities that, that they're gone. And you know, whether kids do or do they can't go to the playground. So there's just so many other limitations. So it just adds to the, the challenge of like what do you like, you know, you know when you used to have parents, just go play in the yard. What do you mean play in the yard? What am I doing in the yard now? Maybe Lindsay's got him raking leaves or like this is a chance like I had. Looks like my neighbor's dad used to always call us over and he'd have us moving wood or something like that. Like maybe there's chores and things to do, but it is just tough to kind of. And again, hopefully as the weather improves here in North America we can, we can take advantage of it. But that's gotta continue to be a challenge. We've got about. I don't know if Colin is gonna. You're gonna try to get him to share something here. One last try.

I think he's a non video participant so he might be there.

Yeah, I was working on it when I started my video. I crapped everything out and I couldn't hear, couldn't do anything. So I stopped the video. I live in the country so the Internet here is kind of flaky, which puts a whole other stress on trying to do all this stuff from home, as you guys all know, right?

So you're our rural really bad Internet candidate here. So this is your perception or your perspective. So it's good to hear. So you know, how are you doing things at home, Colin?

Well, kind of the same as everybody. I think the idea that, and I posted it in the chat that I had to do both full time jobs at home. I've come to the realization that being a parent and being, everybody knows, being a teacher, but being a parent is as well, and trying to do them both at the same time. You're doing two jobs at once and it's hard to divide your attention. It's hard to decide when you're going to do what because every parent stuff happens during the day and you got to sort of sort it out. So yeah, it's tough. I don't think I've struck a good balance like some of you who are talking. I know Danica was talking about dividing up the day and stuff. And we haven't done that. And I don't know if that would, would work for us or not. We're not generally that organized to begin with. So I don't know, we're just, we're just trying to make it through. And I think I'm probably not doing a great job at any of it right now. And I know people are saying that's okay. I was on another webinar last week and people were, you know, that over overworked as a teacher and failing as a parent. And I kind of went, geez, I don't, I don't know if I want to do that. There's some things I wouldn't mind failing at and I'm not sure that parenting is one of them. You know what I mean? So I don't know. Sometimes something's got to give.

No, I'm wondering, Colin, I noticed that you've picked up your guitar a lot more lately than you used to, which I think is great. And maybe it's a way that you're coping, stress. And I'm wondering if that is true, if there's other ways. And also Lindsey and Danica, just in terms of coping, you know, what sort of things might you be doing just other than the things that you've already spoken about. Colin, did you want to talk more about that quickly or is there any more to share? I think we may have lost him again.

I've completely lost you. I Don't know if you can hear me or not. Sorry.

Yeah, I was just wondering, just working on that thread of like self care and de stressing. We've noticed that, you know, you've taken up the guitar quite a bit more than you have in the past. And I'm wondering if that's an intentional way of coping, I guess or if there's other things that you do to cope better.

Yeah, I don't know if you can hear me. I sort of got bumped out there. I'm not sure if I'm real time with you or not, but yeah, I think so. It's funny because a lot of my friends are just, you know, we can't get together and play with our bands and stuff. So we're just kind of trying to do what we can and posting stuff for people we used to play with or play for. We kind of try and make each other laugh and do stuff like that and we still like we have a bunch of us at our school that play together in like a teacher band for assemblies and stuff. And I'm just finishing this morning putting together. I learned how to do like a multi track video and piece it all together for, for the kids. So I've been, I've been doing stuff like that and again it's stuff to try and keep busy. Stuff that you know, I was kind of keen to learn how to try and you're forced into it just by necessity. So yeah, it's. You try and find ways to take your mind off of things and do something that's fun for you a little bit too.

So.

De stressors. Lindsey Danica, what's your de stressor?

I've been working out and running. Not as much as I would like to, but I forced myself to do it more and so that helps. And then I have been doing a little more creative writing which was something that I used to do a lot in the past. But I have a little more time for it now after the kids go to bed because my husband basically goes back to work once kids go to bed. So I'm all on my own. So I decided that I get back into doing some creative writing and. Yeah, go ahead. And another de stressor like definitely just being able to get outside even just for a little bit. And then there was something else. Something else. I mean cooking, baking. I'm doing a lot of baking like everybody else. It's kind of crazy how much cooking and baking and things like that that I do.

That's the need to continue to work out.

Yeah. Yeah.

Bake less and you don't have to work out so much.

I know.

How about you, Lindsay?

For us, I think it's just when we take time off around mealtimes and we try and work together, and we can talk and laugh in the kitchen and work together as a team to make some meals for the kids, that. That's good for us. We finally, after a couple of weeks, we had some Brooklyn 99 PBR. We finally took some time to sit down and watch those on Friday night. We were a couple weeks behind, so trying to work more of that into our schedule where we can sit down and something together, just the two of us, I think will be beneficial as this goes on.

So as we kind of wrap up, I have two more things I wanted to share, too, or I have all of you share is tell me a funny story. Because I think part of it is I enjoy. Especially, like, somebody always tells me when somebody tells me something that their kid does that's bad. I always say it's always funny when it's not your kid. So tell us that funny story of something that your kid did or just like, I don't know, Whatever. Whatever you find funny. Tell us a funny story.

Okay. So there have been a lot. You know how it's one of those things where you have so many funny stories, and then in the moment, you can't think of a single one. So I don't know.

Wait.

I'm trying to think of one that's appropriate. There have been a lot that are not appropriate. That's so funny. So just. We had life. Had a Zoom meeting yesterday with his class, or I guess it was on Monday. And they were supposed to come prepared with questions they had about how plants grow. And he was doing the whole kind of resistant thing where he was just like, no, I don't want to talk. I don't want to. I don't have any questions. I don't. I don't need to know anything. I don't. Blah, blah, blah. He was just shut down and disengaged. And then finally, after a couple kids asked a question, he goes, I have a question. And they said, what's your question, Leigh? He goes, I want to know how is it that some animals can eat poisonous plants that would kill humans? And the other kids questions were things like, why are leaves green? Why are. But he had this, like, amazing. And then he said, and I know that when seeds grow, they have their endosperm. That's their food, until the leaf can push. Like, he just Exploded with all of this knowledge and questions. And it was a little. It's just a little. There was some stunned silence for a minute and it was like it made me feel so good. It was such a relief. But it was also hilarious. Anyway, so that was. Yeah, that was our moment of learning from home.

Little pretentious there. That's awesome.

Oh my God.

Go ahead, Lindsay. Well, I think our middle child, the first day she logged into her Google classroom and she just kind of looked at it, went nope, got up and walked away. She'd been back. Maybe there was. There was. I think because it was the first time she'd been on. There was a few things posted and just nope, that's too much. And just got up and walked away and she's been back plugging away at a few things. But that was the first day last. Last Friday morning, our son kindergarten. They were doing a Zoom Google Meet the zoo tour. And so they were trying to watch it. And so we were sitting there with our son watching the zoo tour and there wasn't a lot going on on the cameras at the zoo. And eventually, I don't know, my wife and I were watching and we looked around and it was just the two of us.

He.

He'd wandered off, but we were still waiting, trying to see. Trying to see what was going on at the San Diego Zoo.

Well, I guess that's your kids are contributing to the low app rating of Google Meet. It's getting bad reviews from kids around the world. Oh, and Chelsea's got a funny story of a naked toddler singing dance monkey. That's awesome. There's probably a lot of it and it probably wouldn't. I know the journaling isn't always the easy but I taught first grade for a number of years and I always regret not writing down. I have a number of stories, but I prob had more and more stories. And look at Colin's got a funny story too. What's your funny story, Colin?

I'm sitting beside it. I don't know if my video will work very very long, but this is the kind of stuff that happens in my house on a daily basis is they decided it was costume day today. I have a dragon running around my living room along with my wife who was dressed as a unicorn earlier this morning. But it's stuff like that that just makes me laugh all the time.

That's awesome. That's sweet.

I think what's interesting about our context now is like the kindergartner, the kindergarten teachers become this mythic sort of Easter Bunny, Santa Claus. You know, it's like, if you don't do this, Ms. Peachy's gonna find out about this. And it's like the only bit of discipline that my 5 year old has always, you know, she's watching you with her seesaw and she's gonna see what you do. But it's been kind of neat because he responds really well to that, to this figure that he respects and he wants to do well for his teacher. So it's interesting how that becomes the teacher, become a mythic character in his life.

That's true.

So we're pretty much at the end of our time. I thought we'd just leave and we can let all the participants share.

And of course, our panelists just share.

And I think we've all sort of come to the conclusion that there's not one person now that is reigning expert. Everybody's feeling this sort of, you know, anxiety and uncomfortable. Like, nobody's got this. So we won't assume anybody's got it. But what if you could just leave someone with. Here's this one thing. Like, if somebody just, you know, is brand new to this, which nobody is at this point, what would you have. I guess maybe the better question is, what would you have told yourself on March 15th that would have helped you over the last six weeks that might be helpful for other people? It can be broad things, but maybe it's specific. Maybe it's like, yeah, make sure you buy toilet paper. I don't know what it is. Or yeast. Yeast is terribly hard to find. I finally found yeast the other day. It was amazing. Also, my wife now is very upset because diet Dr. Pepper is off the shelf. And this is like her. This is like her drug of choice. You can't find Diet Dr. Pepper anywhere. So what would be. I love. Cynthia's already put in there space and grace. That's a good one. Space and grace. I love that one. Rodney's talking about routine. Stop for coffee, stop for lunch. I like that. Double check a number of times that it was actually Wednesday. Compassion over curriculum. Boy, these are some phrases. We can put these on bumper stickers at some point. How about our panelists? You got any parting words on tips for people?

I have two. So the one is very practical. You need to have like a dedicated. And this is probably dumb. Other people have probably figured this out long before me. You need to have a really dedicated place in your house where you go to do your work that is ergonomically correct. For the first little while, I Was kind of doing work wherever. I would move around the house with my laptop, and I hurt my neck because I wasn't sitting properly when I was spending all this time on the computer. And I have a tiny house, but I set up this tiny little space in my bedroom, and I can pull my computer out of a closet, and I sit there and I work, but I'm sitting properly. And so that helped. And then two was. And I can't remember, somebody else said it much better than me in the chat, but it was that. That same idea of compassion, of a curriculum, or I was thinking of calling it relationships over the academics that you need to make touching base with your students and connecting with your students a priority. So what I do is I have. When I'm online, I have my office hours, and I use Google Meet, and I post the links for students and say, you're just welcome to hop in and talk about whatever you want to talk about. And, you know, I have some kids who come in, and they ask me questions about curriculum, but then I have other kids who just want to come in and talk to me. I have one little guy in my grade nine class who pops in almost every day, and he's got his brothers and sisters that he's looking after screaming in the background. And he kind of just wants to talk because he said he misses school. And this is not a kid who's, you know. You know, academically minded. So. And I. At one point, I thought, ooh, am I spending too much time talking to these kids? Just about, you know, what's going on in their lives. And then I thought, that's kind of a dumb question. No, because this is the most important thing for them right now. So. Yeah.

Lindsay, you got a tip for us?

Or I guess my big one would be don't. Don't apologize for taking care of your family, too. They're the people in your house, and so don't be afraid to put them first. Sometimes, I guess, is the big one. And if there's teachers out there who are feeling overwhelmed and like, you're drowning, we don't have it together in our house.

Right. Every day.

Every day is a new struggle, and we're trying to get through. And so these. These tips and things we're doing aren't making things perfect. They're just helping us get through, get through the day and get on to the next one. And if you have a bad day, tomorrow's gonna be better.

What about Colin? Do you want to share?

Yeah, just probably echo the same thing. Cut yourself some slack. This is hard for everybody and we're all just trying to do it there. Alyssa just posted this too shall pass, which is one of my go to phrases on this. Right. Just along the line with Danica. The connections with the kids I think is so important. I've got one kid in my grade 11 class. Every morning he used to walk in and say, good morning, Mr. Jago. Just like clockwork. And he did it. And now I get an SBE message every day from between about 8:30 and 9:00'.

Clock.

Good morning, Mr. Jago. Same thing. He just has the routine. He does it every day. So we say good morning and we carry on. So it was a little thing, but sometimes it's those little things that make.

All the difference for kids.

That's. I mean, that's really powerful and such a simple thing. But like, what a. What a gift. And thinking about how do we do that know. Because that kid is, is. Is giving a gift to you. Right. About saying like, I see you and. And that whole thing about just making sure people feel seen and heard and.

Yeah.

We don't have to have the answers for them. We don't.

And so I think that's makes me smile every day. So I love it.

That's awesome.

So that kind of. I think we're gonna kind of wrap up here. And I don't know if this was anything more than what we said it was gonna be. Just a chance to really connect with other people and share. We didn't solve any problems. Wasn't intended to solve a problem, but just I think knowing that there's other people out here. So Alec and I would like to maybe do something this again next week. We have a few ideas that we're rolling around with, but we're certainly welcome for you to message us on Twitter or DM us. A couple topics we're thinking of exploring are really. One is focusing on the littles. Like how are kindergarten, first grade teachers connecting? Right. And really with the screen time and access and those being a priority. So that's one issue. We'd also love to chat with high school teachers again around the graduation complex. Like, what's that? What kind of plans do you have? I think that that might be a really good, maybe more of a collective sharing of ideas that people can implement because people are trying to get really creative around our seniors. Was there another topic, Alec, that we had kind of tossed out?

I think those are the ones I remember.

But if you can help us with those two and maybe either send us a name of somebody you should talk to or if you have an idea, that would be great. And we'll more than likely try to have this sometime next week. And again, we have no expectations. And come, don't come. I just found it fascinating. I want to thank Lindsey and Danica, Alec and Colin and our attendees for sharing. I found it useful for myself. That's just me. I don't know about anybody else. Alex, you have any closing words here? As we.

Scott asked if it would be posted, and certainly we'll post it somewhere, the video, and we'll do the others as well. So that might be. Dean blogs a lot, so maybe we'll put it on Dean's site or. Or we'll certainly tweet it out as well. But maybe we'll find a better place for it one way or the other. We'll certainly share these sessions. And we want to thank you again for showing up and having this conversation. Lindsey and Danica and Colin, for lending your voice and your expertise in this area.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you, guys for doing it.

Go enjoy the rest of your day. Put on a costume. Go eat some tuna. Watch the prices, right? All these things I'm learning, right? Do a workout and watch San Diego Zoo. All right.

Bye.

Bye.

Take care, guys. See you.

Bye.