Winning

I connected with the middle school assistant principal, and she sent me a bunch of resources for the seventh grade success classes I was covering while the school was in process of hiring the teacher. In those resources was an offer that the counselors had made of coming to the class to help the seventh graders create accounts so they could access their online gradebook. 

After the previous week's debacle, you'd think I'd reach out to the counselors and have them help. Wouldn't you? Yeah, that's not how I roll. 

I could do this. 

The school is on a block schedule, so the class I met on Monday was not the class I had the issues with on Friday. Rather than chance another computer mix up, I put the students' credentials on paper that I handed out to them. 

I went through the slideshow. And I had the same issues I had Friday. 

"You have to create the password. Just make one up."

"It's giving you an error message? Did your password contain one capital letter, one number, and one special character?"

"Just go to your email and click on the 'confirm email address'. No, don't put in a code..."

Oh, and they had no idea how to find their email. 

Hands in the air, and I'd go over to find that they just weren't listening to my instructions. They plowed ahead, and then they got stuck. I'd have to answer the same question individually several times. So, basically what I expected. 

I handed out their credentials. I went back to showing them how to log back into the account they just created. "No, you don't have to do this screen again. You created the account. See how it says this account exists." 

And then, suddenly, they were all in. Poof. 

I just... 

I looked around, and they were looking at their grades. (I had not input any grades yet, but other teachers had. Their history teacher had maybe one assignment, so pretty much everyone had an A+ in that class. Some were amazed.) 

The feeling of accomplishment overwhelmed me. They did it! Mission accomplished. 

I won the day. Whew. 

Yeah, I knew I could get them through it. 

(As for the other class, the lady at the district office sent me an email early Monday morning. She had disconnected all the accounts that were attached to Sadie's info. This time I put their credentials on paper, and that worked. They got it all set up, too.)