Their Instructions

Friday. Halloween. Seventh grade science...

(If anyone recalls how I started last school year--long term for a maternity leave for a seventh grade science teacher--this room might look familiar. Yup, this is Ms. S's class, the class I covered last August/September.)

Because Halloween, Ms. S left a movie. Wall-E. Since the classes are 90 minutes long (block schedule), the kiddos started with a vocab assignment. 

The definitions were written on the white board. Then they were to illustrate the terms and use the terms in a sentence. They've done this before. Several wanted computers to look up images, but Ms. S said no computers. 

(I covered the class about a month ago, and I severely limited computer access per instructions. Those students who managed to find a good enough excuse to get permission to use a computer proved why no computers was the better way to go.) 

It was time to start the movie. But, while many of them had finished the assignment, many still had not completed copying the definitions of the terms. I warned them that I was going to pull down the screen, so they had only a couple minutes left for that task. 

Ms. S had left the movie on DVD and had that hooked up to her projector. 

The projectors were new technology a short time ago. They have been supplanted by the big TVs, but some teachers prefer the projectors. And in some cases those work better for some applications. 

I had not had a chance to test the equipment, but unlike with yesterday's post, I was sure this DVD player actually worked. But I wanted to have everything ready to go before I told a class of seventh graders that we were starting the movie. 

I turned on the projector. Then I turned on the DVD player. It immediately went into starting the movie... 

"You have to pull down the screen." 

"Turn out the lights." 

"I can't see the movie."

"Six seven..."

"We passed this part already." 

I didn't respond as they all shouted out instructions. Because really? I had it. Everything was working. And I was still waiting on one or two students to finish copying down the definitions before I pulled down the screen. 

So, I waited. I haven't quite figured out how to shame them into calming down. I can't compete with them all shouting instructions at me. But if I say nothing, they seem to think that I'm not hearing them or I don't understand what they're telling me. 

Eventually I was ready to get it all started. I explained that we were about ready to go, and that's when I pulled down the screen and fast forwarded to about the 20 minute mark (which was where Ms. S said they left off). 

That age just loves to explain things. They make sure the sub knows how things are supposed to go. Even though this sub did know what needed doing. 

As far as Halloweens go, this one was relatively sedate. 

Some previous Halloweens: 

• Bubble Gum Physics
• How to Address a Postcard
• A Gig on Halloween

Old Broken Technology

In February, I took a long term gig covering a class that had lost its teacher at the semester. It was a mad scramble. 

At that time, the library was clearing out its old technology. They were throwing out all their old DVD players as most teachers now stream video to their big TVs or have the kiddos watch things on their Chromebooks. The aide for the class snagged one of those DVD players and left it for the classroom. 

At no point did we ever use that DVD player. 

Wednesday. Freshman math, special ed. 

New teacher, but familiar classroom. Mr. R arrived, admitting that he had forgotten he was out of class, so his lesson plan was kind of thrown together. The kiddos had a couple worksheets, and then they could watch a video. (He left three choices.) That DVD player, that Ms. S acquired in February was connected to the TV. 

We got through the worksheets and "Good Things". (Every day they do a thing where the kiddos talk about one good thing in their lives.) And then it was time to watch the movie. I let the kiddos pick which one, and I went to start the DVD player...

Only it wasn't plugged into the wall. We searched for an extension cord... 

I turned on the player, put the DVD in, but the TV wasn't getting a signal. I switched out the cable. Nothing. I tried a few other fixes. Again, nothing. 

I grabbed a Chromebook, figuring I could stream the movie. Only, the Chromebook didn't have a spot to plug in the HDMI cable to plug into the TV. 

Finally, after a good half hour of troubleshooting, I cast the Chromebook to the TV. Only, the picture worked, but the sound did not. Sigh. (The sound worked from the Chromebook, so I turned that up as high as it would go.)

For the next class, the aide called a neighbor teacher who is tech savvy to see if she could figure out the problem. She plugged in a different DVD player... and that worked. (Well, the drawer for the DVD wouldn't open, but the TV got a signal from the DVD player.) 

So, the DVD player, that Ms. S "rescued" from being thrown out, didn't work. Sigh. 

If only Mr. R had tested the thing before setting that as the lesson plan... 

The Same Choice

Monday. The last week of school. French.

Tuesday and Wednesday were finals days. So, Monday was a finish-any-late-work day. And study for finals. 

But, the teacher clearly knows her students. She also left them a choice between two movies. 

It's no longer put tape in VCR and press play. Oh no. Nowadays, it's streaming. The teacher had her computer set up with both movie choices on separate tabs. And the computer was already connected to the large TV in the room. 

(I did manage to muck things up early, though. I accidentally closed one of the tabs and then disconnected the computer from the TV. But it was easy enough for me to reconnect to the TV and I opened a new tab and found the movie. I managed to do all this before the students arrived, so no issues there.) 

As I didn't really care, I gave each class the choice of movie. And put it to a vote. And all three classes chose the same thing...

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

Naturally. (The other choice was A Minecraft Movie.) 

And so, once again, I got to see the beginning of the movie multiple times, but not the end. On the bright side, we're on a block schedule now, so I only had to see the beginning three times (rather than five). And, it is streaming on Disney Plus, which I have, so I can actually see the end of this thing. Whew. 

Make Work

Last week we started our annual state testing. (This week we'll finish it up.) I explained the schedule on Wednesday. As I mentioned yesterday, what this meant for me was that I had two hours of "free" time to get some things accomplished. Which meant some things got done that I might not have gotten to otherwise...

Before spring break, the eleventh grade classes did a whole lot of anticipatory stuff for reading The Great Gatsby. We talked about the 1920s. They read about the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald. And they had a couple videos to watch. 

I had them take notes. And then I gave them points for taking the notes (mostly because I expected that they'd ignore the material and spend the time on their phones if I didn't). Or, rather, I gave them points for the first day of notes, but for the rest of them I wasn't going to bother. Because it was practically spring break. 

Thursday. Jocelyn had to go home early. She came to class briefly to find out what the assignment was going to be. She got the title of the video so she could watch it and turn in the notes so she wouldn't miss any assignments. 

I would have told her not to bother, but she did this so fast. Mostly, what I was concerned about was that the video, a biography on F. Scott Fitzgerald, briefly discussed The Great Gatsby including how it ended. This part I skipped over while showing it in class (as we didn't want spoilers before reading the book), but how did I explain this to Jocelyn? 

When I wrote last week's blog post mentioning the video, I looked it up, searching for it rather than clicking on the link Ms. A left. And, surprisingly, the first video to pop up on YouTube is without spoiler. Someone edited it out! Meaning, Jocelyn most likely saw the version without the spoiler. Big Whew!

Then, on Friday, during eighth period, I informed them they'd need to take notes...

Evan: "I'm not going to take notes. You're not going to grade them." 

Yeah, so now I have to grade them. 

So, when all this time opened up this week, the first thing I did was to grade all the notes from before spring break. 

Because, seriously? I'm pretty easy going most of the time, but when someone challenges me like that? Don't tell me I'm not going to do something. I will so do that thing. 

Of Streaming and Screenshots

For second period, I sort of co-teach with another special ed teacher. (The "sort of" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It's a complicated story that I don't want to spend the time explaining.) 

When I started the class, they were finishing up their World War I unit. For a final, Ms. L is having them write an essay about the movie they watched: All Quiet on the Western Front, the 1930 version. 

Because they're special ed eighth graders, this was not something they're used to doing. So, it has taken a lot of pushing to get things going. 

The plan was for them to write about certain portions of the movie. But, of course, they were having trouble recalling the scenes. Then somehow I ended up looking up where it could be streamed, and sure enough, it's currently streaming via Tubi. 

Which they could access via their in school Chromebooks. 

Suddenly, all the kiddos were rewatching the movie. 

"So, I can actually watch movies at school." 

Yeah, probably shouldn't have clued the eighth graders in on the fact that they can stream movies on their computers. (If you look, Tubi has a lot of content. Some of which the eighth graders would like.) 

With me and Ms. L and our two instructional assistants in class, the kiddos couldn't really sneak in other movies. But they do have other classes. 

One thing Ms. L wanted the kiddos to do was to find a photo from the scene of the movie they're writing about. There are a ton of images they can find. But one kiddo wasn't finding the precise image he wanted.

I reasoned that one could take a screenshot from the movie on their Chromebooks.

I explained this to the kiddo. He knew how to take a screenshot. And he managed to capture the image he wanted. 

Ms. L isn't very techno savvy, so when she saw what the kiddo did, she had him instruct another classmate so he could get the image he wanted. 

Yeah, I think I just created some problems. For later. And likely for other teachers. 

But they were actually writing essays on the movie. And about World War I. So, maybe it's a good thing? 

Christmas Cards

Thursday. Third period. Marketing. 

It was a career and technical education class where the teacher was in the connected room next door (that we could see through those windows in the above picture) getting training on a laser engraver that she got for the school. Since Ms. M was doing the training, she couldn't really run her classes like she normally did, but she could give them the assignment and then go back to her training. 

I've had way harder days. 

Before they got to the ethics in marketing assignment, Ms. M had a little project for them to complete. She wanted them to make Christmas cards. 

She explained to the class that one of her students, who is now a senior, had spent a year and a half out of school as he battled cancer. (He's well now.) He had been at CHOC (Children's Hospital of Orange County), which is a local children's hospital. And he suggested the project of giving all the kids who were there at the holidays cards. 

So, Ms. M gave them the assignment of making cards in class. 

She put on a drawing video. This was the front of the card. Then they were to write a message inside for the kids who would get the cards. Some did really well at writing something nice. And some just said "Merry Christmas". 

I thought it was a lovely idea. And some of them really got into it. 

Others weren't too happy with having to draw. They didn't like how their drawings were coming out. As it was supposed to be handcrafted, that made it way more personal. But teens. They can be such perfectionists.

I've mentioned these drawing videos on the blog before, but I thought I'd share one of the ones they used this day. Because it was so cute:

I would stop the video at certain points so they could catch up. And replay other points if they asked. I thought it was a great thing to do at this time of year. 

Not the Target Audience

Last week I covered an eighth grade U.S. history class. Two periods of "advanced" classes and two periods of "regular" classes. 

Mr. C left very reasonable lesson plans. The students had a lot of bookwork. They had two chapters to read along with questions in a workbook. But, to break up the monotony of that, he also assigned a video that I was to split over two days. 

(Although, second period was not so enamored with the idea of a video. They whined that taking time from class to watch the video wouldn't leave them enough time to complete the other assignments.) 

The video was on YouTube. They had questions to go along with it.

As you may be aware, YouTube will insert commercials from time to time. I tried to minimize these by getting things started before class (catching the commercial before the kiddos arrived). But, alas, I could not set things up so there were no commercials for them to see.

Unfortunately, YouTube's algorithm decided to show the worst possible commercial, not just once, but for each of the four periods...

A cannabis commercial.

I clicked it away as quickly as I could, but eighth graders. 

Deep sigh.

Anyway, in case you're interested, the classes are studying the Civil War. And this was the video:

(If you do watch any of the video, check out around 37 minutes, 10 seconds when a few "notable figures" quote the Gettysburg Address.)

Video Proof

Friday. Second period accelerated math, seventh grade. 

Accelerated math means the students are learning seventh and eighth grade math at the same time. (They'll take freshman math as eighth graders.) 

The topic on Friday was what I spent two separate days covering with the eighth grade classes: the volume of a cylinder and the volume of a cone. 

There is a way to derive the formula (something we did in calculus), but for middle schoolers, we do an explanation as to why it is correct, and then we have them use it. 

For the eighth graders, my explanation of "it takes three cones to fill a cylinder" was good enough. Alas, the seventh graders did not believe me.

However, I knew that I could find a video that showed that very thing. (There is so much good math material on YouTube.) So, if they needed proof, I'd show them proof. 

They weren't entirely convinced. ("There's still water in the cone.") I explained that getting a perfect pour wasn't necessarily going to happen, human error and all. They grumbled, but they accepted that explanation.

Of course, Friday was one of those days where keeping their focus wasn't really happening. But I have had worse, so it wasn't too terrible.

And now I'm done with that class and on to a new long term that started Monday. I'll begin talking about that next week.

A Special Ed Day

I was back in Ms. H's moderate to severe special ed class. (When I was last there, I had some car trouble.) 

The first block. Ryder was punching in the air. I was far enough away that I didn't get hit, but I was close enough that one wrong move and I could. I gently mentioned maybe not punching the air. But Ms. S, one of the instructional aides, informed me that Ryder used to punch walls. Punching the air was way better. Agreed.

Ryder had a pretty constant monologue going. Sometimes I could follow his train of thought, sometimes I couldn't.

Ryder wanted to write "superhero" on his paper. Ms. S said he could write it on the back. Later in the day, he wrote it as his last name (although he knows his last name and could spell it when he was prompted to put it on his paper). 

There were worksheets (on the calendar, on telling time, etc). There were activities. Ryder was a little hard to direct, but he eventually got his stuff done.

At lunch, he disappeared into the bathroom and returned in a Batman costume. I had seen him in this costume on previous occasions, and as no one commented on it, I gathered it was a usual thing. Ms. S later told me Ryder gets to have lunch in the costume. Whatever works.

But by math class, Ryder was kind of done. There was a coloring worksheet that he was in a hurry to complete, but I could not get him to do it properly. I directed as best I could, but he wouldn't slow down enough to follow directions. But it was the afternoon of the Thursday before a four-day weekend, so we were all a bit burnt out.

After that, we got to do "fun Friday". (We had a science lesson in the lesson plans, but the IAs said Ms. H had texted them to shift us to a wind down for the weekend. That was fine by me.) Ryder got to hum along to whatever songs he was listening to on his computer. (They got out a Nintendo Switch and connected it to the big screen TV in the classroom. Several students enjoyed that.) 

It was a pretty standard day in that kind of classroom. I've definitely had worse. 

You want to see a bit of their math lesson? We started class with two videos. These were the same two videos I showed the last time I was in class. (They do a lot of repetition. It helps them learn certain concepts.) After the videos, they had other work. But the tunes are kind of catchy. 

Friday Late

I have a phrase I use when a morning kind of goes sideways. I wake up on time. I get out of my house on time. But then I hit every red light. Or I get stuck behind a garbage truck. (Or both...) And even though I should be on time, something caused me to be late.

Since it seems to be a Friday phenomenon (I don't know why), the term is "Friday late". 

Last Friday became a Friday late.

First the traffic lights. Then the garbage truck. (I had to wait for forty cars to dart around me before I could get around it. Even the school bus that I got stuck behind a block earlier was able to dodge the garbage truck.) 

And then on my way to the classroom, I ran into a fellow sub and we got to talking. I realized I should get moving as I knew I had technology to set up, and considering how the Friday was already going, I figured odds were good that things weren't going to work. But still...

So, instead of having nearly a half hour to troubleshoot, I had about ten minutes. Ish. 

I had seen Ms. S the previous day, and she showed me what I needed. She had a DVD player set up. But there were also a couple videos (on Costa Rica--it was a Spanish class) on YouTube, so I had to set up her computer. But it wouldn't let me log in. (This is a usual problem that I anticipated, but it took an extra couple minutes that I didn't really have.) 

As the students arrived, I was still setting up. Once class started, I started the video...

"I don't think we're at this part yet."

I checked the time on the DVD player. Ms. S had left the time code as to when they left off, and it was a good six minutes past that. But that was an easy enough fix.

Phew. The videos worked. And while I spent the first class scrambling, the students didn't really lose any time. (We were missing a video worksheet, but Ms. S had forgotten to leave me those copies.) By the second class, everything was running smoothly.

Friday late got me again. But it's something that only bothers me before class starts. Once the day truly begins, the day tends to fall into place.

(In case anyone is curious, the Spanish II class finished the movie A Better Life. They watched it in Spanish with English subtitles. Then they saw "What Is Costa Rica?" and "Costa Rica: Animal Paradise of the World". Those were in English. The Spanish III classes watched Viva Cuba in Spanish with English subtitles.)

A Recurring Theme

A new week, a new showing video disaster story. 

(It's the time of year. More teachers leave videos as we finish up the year, and inserting tape and pushing play is not how it works anymore.) 

It was still the last Monday of the school year; same teacher's class I talked about yesterday. Ms. A had two periods as the co-teacher of a biology class and three periods teaching her own self-contained special ed science class. 

For Ms. A's two biology classes, we were finishing up a movie. The lesson plan stated that Ms. A's aide would set things up.

Cool. No problem.

Only, while in Mr. B's class, he got a text from Ms. A. The aide was also out sick...

Sure, I could set up the video. What could go wrong?

Well, Ms. A wasn't logged in. The video she had rented from Amazon Prime had expired. And I didn't have her password.

Luckily, Mr. B's prep period was the first period I had to show the video, so he came by to set things up. And everything worked great.

The following period, I just had to do it again. I left everything set up. But, unfortunately, between those two classes was lunch, and during lunch, Ms. A's computer went into sleep mode. 

(I really should have known better. I always go into the power settings and change the time out from the standard ten minutes to five hours, so it won't sleep on me in the middle of teaching. But Mr. B logged into her computer and started the video, so I never did that one little fix.) 

Well, it was lunch. I called Mr. B again... (I'm sure he was sick of hearing from me.) 

Once he logged in again, I immediately went into the power settings and fixed the time out. 

I guess I'm learning all things that can go wrong with showing videos to classes. Next year I'll be an expert.

This Again

Wednesday. Special ed health class. 

It's the end of the semester, so it's time for the STI unit. And on Wednesday, that meant HIV/AIDS. 

The lesson was pretty simple. We did a short reading/worksheet on the basics. Then they were to watch The Announcement on ESPN Plus. (It's a doc about Magic Johnson when he revealed to the world that he was HIV positive.) 

If you've been following my blog lately, you won't be surprised by what happened next. (Back in April. Last week.)

I gave the kiddos a bit of background as life with HIV is vastly different today than it was in 1991. Then I hit play.

Ms. T had helpfully set up computer with the video already cued up. I didn't have to turn anything on, log into anything, or set anything up. Foolproof, right? 

The video began. The buffer wheel popped on for a moment. Then the video played for a bit. Then the buffer wheel. It went back and forth a couple times until the buffer wheel came on, and the movie wouldn't continue.

Later I learned (via Mr. P) that that classroom is a bit of a black hole when it comes to the school WiFi. Ms. T constantly has issues. 

We got maybe 25 minutes into the doc when things went awry. For the next half hour, I tried every trick I know to get the thing working again. Well, almost every trick. I even called Mr. P for help. He couldn't get it working either.

In the midst of this, I had one last idea. I could plug the teacher's computer into the school's ethernet. I hesitated, though. The only cord I knew of was the one that connected the classroom phone. Did I want to not have a phone? 

(If the office needs to contact me, they call. I had already received a couple calls that day.)

By the time I had the idea, class was over. But what about for the next class? 

As I was debating, I glanced towards the floor, and I spied another ethernet cable. This one wasn't connected to anything. 

Once upon a time, classrooms had a couple desktop computers connected via wire to the internet. They've been removing these computers from the classrooms slowly over the last couple years. The computers were "ancient" (at least ten if not fifteen years old), so it's no big loss. But the outlets and some of the cables have remained.

I wondered if the cable was still connected to the internet. I plugged it in...

And I had no more problems with the movie for the rest of the day. 

Before, I couldn't even get ESPN Plus to load a search for the movie. After, the movie popped right up, started, and I got no buffer wheel.

I left the cable plugged in to Ms. T's computer. And Mr. P saw my solution. Maybe that'll help with her WiFi black hole issues. Too bad we figured this out at the end of the school year. Sigh.

Video Victory

Friday. Second period. 

I think the note I left for the teacher really encapsulates how this went: 

Oh my. That did not go well.

Not them. The class was fine. I mean the video…

We had some, ahem, technical difficulties. 

AP World History. Their AP test had been the previous day, so it's movie time.

Back in the day, that meant popping a tape into the VCR and hitting play. Then, later, things got a little more complicated with DVDs (but only a little more complicated). 

Nowadays, videos are streaming. The classrooms have projectors (not a tiny TV screen) and speakers built into the ceiling (not TV speakers), so the rooms are set up for a great movie experience. But getting the videos to play...

I had a similar experience last month when I covered a U.S. history class. (As a matter of fact, that classroom was next door to this classroom.) But then I had time to prepare. 

Ms. G had put a link to the video she wanted to screen into the students' Google Classroom. I was to have a student log in and then use that link to project the video for everyone. 

In theory, this should work out fine. In practice...

The link that Ms. G provided ended up being blocked by the school's internet provider. It wasn't a website I'm familiar with, and a bunch of warnings popped up when we tried to access the site. 

However, another student was able to get the video to play on her computer, so we swapped computers connected to the projector, and all was well... for about five minutes. That's when the same block appeared. 

I had one more trick to play. I figured that perhaps a teacher's account (mine) might not get the block, so I logged in, and under my Google profile, I added in another (student's) account, accessed his Google Classroom, and tried the link.

It worked!

I crossed my fingers. It played. It played for a while. And then the buffer wheel came up...

But I never did get the block again. Phew. I was able to bypass the buffer wheel and keep the video going until the end of the period.

We got to see 35 minutes. In a period that lasts an hour and six minutes. 

Still, I consider that a victory. 

There has got to be a better way to show a video on a sub day. But when the thing a teacher wants to show is behind a paywall, it's hard. If someone can figure this one out, they'd make a mint.

Reviewing the Lesson Plan

Last week was spring break. As is my custom, I saved the posts from the week before the break until now when we're back in school. I will post about this week's events next week.

I managed to catch a full week assignment the week before spring break.  

As luck would have it, I was across the way from the class the Friday before, so I had a chance to touch base with the teacher, and she gave me a heads up on what the assignments for the week would be.

Sunday. 

The U.S. history classes would be watching Selma. Ms. M gave me the link to the movie in the lesson plan, so I was testing it out. I wanted to make sure everything would work so I didn't have to scramble first thing Monday morning.

And... It turned out that I couldn't access the movie. 

I texted Ms. M. Told her the issue. I tried what she said got it to work for her. No dice. 

We reasoned that perhaps it worked at school on school Wi-Fi, and because I was at home, that's why I couldn't access the movie. 

Monday morning, I got into the classroom, and I immediately attempted to log in. 

Yeah, well, it didn't work. Everything that Ms. M said to do got me the exact same result as me attempting it at home. Sigh. 

Although, I had a feeling that would happen, so I took out some insurance. (I thought perhaps she had found a pirated copy somewhere and it was taken down. I was right.) I subscribed to the streaming service that had it. 

(I wouldn't normally do this. But I just had to add Showtime to my Paramount Plus subscription. The price was well worth the panic I didn't have to go through Monday morning. And I could always cancel it later.)

Ms. M has a copy of the movie on DVD. But, none of the current computers have DVD drives. I have run into this issue before, but then I had time to go searching for an alternate solution. This time I did not.

Ah well. Perhaps there's something on Showtime I can watch before I cancel. Anyone have any suggestions? (I already saw Everything Everywhere All at Once.)

Today's A to Z Challenge post brought to you by the letter

No Longer High Tech

When I got the lesson plans for last week, there was a question in them. "Is there a way to play a DVD in the classroom?"

Yup, we have technologied our way out of DVDs. Everything is online nowadays. The computers no longer have DVD players in them. 

Mrs. B wanted me to show them a video. She had it on DVD. It is streaming someplace, but that would have required a subscription that neither of us had. 

Because streaming something is easy now. I have a computer that I can plug into the projector that's mounted to the ceiling. The speakers are also installed in the ceiling. 

I just needed to find a DVD player. 

I called the library.

Hunting down a DVD player was doable, but would a media cart work? 

Roughly a decade ago, the media cart was the go-to for showing videos in class. This was before they upgraded the tech in all the classrooms. 

Yes, I said, a media cart would work. And so, on the days I needed to show the video, I had this in the classroom: 

It's a DVD player connected to a projector with a speaker on the bottom tray. It's plug into the wall and go. 

Did the students watch the video presented? Of course not. But I was able to show the DVD.

Zero Game

I've written this post before. Many times, actually. And I'm sure I'll write it many times after this. Because, kids.

Because hybrid classes (some students online, some in person), and because when Ms. R created the plans for her maternity leave while we were still all in distance learning, the assignments are all online. (Although, eighth grade English was largely in Google Classroom before the pandemic. The distance learning thing just pushed the rest of it online.) 

So, every day the in-person kiddos come into the classroom and log in on their computers.

Thursday. First period.

They were to watch two videos on women in World War 2. (One on Rosie the Riveter and one on the WASPs.) Then they had questions to answer.

The co-teacher was doing her usual circulating around the room when she happened upon Diego. With a game going on his computer. 

Deep sigh.

And he pulled the "I have no idea how that got on my screen" ploy. 

What makes this particularly stupid is that we had only seven students in the classroom. It's not like we're not going to notice.

When they're at home, we can't police them. We hope the parents do that, but in reality, their parents are probably as busy if not more so. But when the kiddos are in the room with us? 

I have a pretty good idea why Diego's parents sent him back to in-person.

Bugs Bunny Broke My Computer

The ninth graders are reading Of Mice and Men. 

I'm doing a long-term assignment for an English teacher on maternity leave.

Since all of the English teachers are doing the same thing at the same time, I checked with Ms. W to make sure that the next day we were going on to chapter 3. Alas, her class was behind. So, rather than get ahead of the group, I took a day to "discuss" what we had just read in chapters 1 and 2. 

I prepared. I went through the chapters and found some discussion questions and created a slide presentation to help move things along.

I was ready.

Thursday morning, first period. 

To break up the discussion a bit, I thought it would be fun to show a short video that references the book. And I found the cartoon I had vaguely remembered. 

I intro'd the video by saying that Of Mice and Men is well-known in pop culture. Then I hit play...

We got to the point where Daffy was going to find a real rabbit for the abominable snowman when the buffering wheel of doom appeared on my screen.

Aaarrrgggghhhhh!!!!!

While I attempted to get the video to play again, I asked the kiddos what allusions they caught. They caught the obvious ones, so I was pleased. With them. With my computer, not so much.

(I have two computers going, one with the meet and the other I use to project stuff for the class. It's simpler.) 

I did everything I could think of. I did a hard shut down of the computer. Twice. A restart. I attempted to load things, but it just wasn't going to let anything play. 

After a few minutes of this, I had the kiddos work on the questions for the chapter that were due. And then I spent the entire period trying to get the stuff to work again.

No dice.

Deep sigh.

Well, at least they had time to get their questions done.

Friday morning, I had second period. Also ninth grade. 

I loaded everything. Crossed my fingers...

And it all worked perfectly. 

Sigh.

At least my preparations were used for something. Yay?

A Random Comment

Last week I took over an English class for a teacher who is out on maternity leave. I don't have to figure out lesson plans on my own as all the English classes in each grade are doing the same thing together. This makes lesson planning really easy. 

The eleventh graders are getting ready to read The Great Gatsby. The prior sub (who had done his 30 days so could continue no longer--our subbing credential won't allow us to work any longer than 30 days in one class) had started some of the prelim stuff, and as of Monday they were still getting ready to read the book.

Monday's assignment was to watch a video on the Roaring '20s: 

Because distance learning and the way kiddos watch videos, I naturally assigned "notes" to go along with the video. And because I detest the listing of facts (which the students half-ass anyway), I decided to create some questions for them.

I made the questions pretty general. They were like, name something that was new in the '20s, name something that started in the '20s that we still have today, etc. I came up with four rather general questions. 

But I decided that I wanted the assignment to be worth five points, so I needed another question.

That's when the influence of too many years of blogging kicked in. I realized what the fifth question had to be.

I had them write a random comment. 

Most did well with that. Some tried to be cerebral and told me a fact from the video. Some said they liked or did not like the video. Some said something they found to be interesting.

And some didn't answer that question at all. And... I...

I mean, that was the easiest question of all. A gimme point. They wrote something, they got the point.

Yet, of the 10% of students who did not get the full credit for the assignment, it was because of that question. 

(And, seriously? Before we started the video, I went over the questions, and I told them number five was a write anything question.)

I may have to assign random comments more frequently. Just because I'm contrary like that.

The Audio Fix

Sunday night. Before I went to bed, I peeked at my email and discovered that the secretary from the school had already sent me all the info I'd need for my assignment Monday morning. 

Since it was available, I took a look at the lesson plans. And, bad news. The teacher wanted me to show a video. 

Deep sigh. 

I have lamented my video issues already. But JE pointed out the obvious: why don't I Google to see if there's a fix? Honestly, that thought hadn't occurred to me before. 

So, I looked on my phone that night to see what would pop up, and wouldn't you know it, there were a bunch of videos on YouTube. I watched two that had weird solutions. The third one I found had a simple fix that looked like it would do the trick. 

Monday morning, I logged in to everything a half hour early so I could play with the video settings. And. . . 

Didn't work. 

It seemed perfect. But the audio continued to sound like it was coming to me through a fan. Yikes.

I ended up having a prep period right after the monster fail in second period. Could I figure out a fix before sixth? 

I went back to the previous two videos that seemed way too complicated. The second video I watched Sunday night was where I went next. 

It was a bit easier to follow watching it on my computer, especially because I could pull up the things as the presenter described them. I made the recommended changes, and. . .

SUCCESS!!! 

The video actually played with good audio. Woo-hoo! 

Then came the test. Sixth period. (Which was the tennis team, so they had a different video than the biology class. But it was still a video.) 

Things did not go smoothly. By making changes to get the video to work, I had knocked out my microphone to speak to the students. When I started class, they did not hear my greeting. I was only clued in as the students sent messages in the chat of "Can you hear her?". 

I was able to tweak things so they could hear me, and I repeated my greetings as well as the intro for the day's assignment. Then it was time for the moment of truth. Would it work? 

I started the video. And. . . IT WORKED! 

Whew. 

Good thing too as I had this class for the week, and the teacher specifically said to show the video to the class. 

In case you ever find yourself in a similar circumstance, or you're curious as to what sound issue I was having, here's the video that provided the actual solution: 

Just to be clear, videos work just fine if I watch them on the computer. But the minute I attempted to present a video in a Google Meet, the sound issue happened. (If you want to get a demonstration of what we heard, go to about 50 seconds into the video.)

Disruptions

Monday at the continuation high school. They had a video. (This was the Monday before the election, so it was about the candidates.) 

First and second periods had gone smoothly, so I had established a routine. I introduced the video, explained the assignment that went along with it (notes followed by three questions), and then I started the video. While watching the first ten-ish minutes, I input the roll (I had two computers going). Then I stopped the video so we could do the notes together before continuing on. 

Third period. A couple of the boys greeted each other in chat, but it wasn't anything major, so I didn't think anything of it. Then I did my intro and started the video. 

We were a couple minutes into the video when one boy turned on his mic and made a noise. 

I looked up from my roll taking to figure out who it was. I went back to my roll taking.

The same boy turned his mic back on and played music. It was something with a strong beat. 

I muted him. (It's a simple thing to do. Usually they mute themselves. And once muted, only they can unmute themselves. But I can mute them if necessary.) 

He turned his mic back on and the music was still playing. 

I muted him again. 

We did this one more time. I was just about ready to stop the video and warn him that disrupters would be removed from class (I have the ability to remove anyone from the meet) when he logged out. 

That solved that problem. And with the attendance software I have running in the background, I have a record of when he was there and when he left. 

But, of course that wasn't the only issue. While that boy was entertaining the class, the class was on the chat, commenting on it all. 

A1: who that

i hear a cat

im very confusion.

A2: lol

J1: lmaooooo

A2: im ball of confusion

hate that song

so

god

damn

much

A3: lmfaooo

A1: love is a b****

thats a pretty good song

very soothing

J1: oml

L: *choke me like you hate me*

A1: ew

J1: stop

A2: WAP

J1: lol

J2: lmaoo

J1: you are me

A1: 1v1 mw

J1: i am you

A1: j1 1v1

snipers only

A2: everyone lets play duck duck goose

down?

L: j1 2 good

Rather than come up with replacement names, I've designated them by their first initial. And since those initials repeated, I just designated them 1, 2, or 3. 

With the loud boy gone, I could deal with the chat. I typed in that they needed to stop playing around and that the chat thread would be reported to the teacher. Then I delivered my coup de grâce. I disabled the chat. 

At the beginning of the year, I lamented the goofing off via chat. I came up with a solution for the class I was in that seemed to work. Since then, Google has added a couple dandy little controls for us meet runners. There's now a little "switch" I can toggle to take away their ability to use the chat. 

I had no more issues while the video was playing. (Then I had to restore the chat so the kiddos who were on task could answer my questions, but by then the problem was solved.) 

And how do I have such a precise transcript of the chat? I took pics on my phone so I could email them to their teacher. Because, I don't threaten things I'm not going to follow through on.