I am learning that my office, which was once a craft slash cosplay room, is my second home. I spend eight plus hours in there some days. It is not much different from my office at school though. I just spent less hours in it since I was in classrooms teaching as well. But I still spent lots of time in there isolated and plugging away at IEPs, paperwork and emails. At least in my new environment here at home, I have my sweet pup Murphy to keep me company. She is awesome! She doesn’t complain, she doesn’t talk back and she does not disagree with anything I do or say! It is awesome! However, she does tend to be slightly unproductive, sleeps alot and sometimes disturbs me with her speaky toys! My daughter’s dog, Ridley, a spunky little chihuahua, sometimes pops in for an occasional visit! She crawls into her cocoon bed and sleeps.
I also have a window! Right outside my window sits a huge evergreen that gets frequent bird visitors. When it is warm outside, I will open the window and I can hear them chirping. My daughter gets bird visitors to her window occasionally. One day, many months ago, she had a cute little black-capped chickadee sit on her windowsill. For an hour or more this little bird sat there and pecked at the window. If she did get spooked by us, she would fly away and eventually come back and peck at the window some more! The little bird has not returned though. It is cold and winter now, so my window stays closed and I only see the occasional bird from time to time. I still have the pleasure of looking out and getting some sunshine or watching the snowflakes fall. Believe me, in school and in the building setting, a classroom or office with a window, was prime real estate!
Murphy will sit on her dog bed most of the day. She is quiet, but she also has her moments of play! She wants me to throw her ball or her toy. She will drop them in my lap. Today was a tennis ball that she found in the backyard. It was a pristine ball for being found outside. She has started to peel with her teeth the outer layer of green tennis ball fuzz on the top. At the moment, it is one of her favorite toys and finds itself in my lap all the time. There are other toys like the ones that she has not completely de-fluffed and still has the squeaker. She will squeak in the background which is hilarious if I am in a meeting or in a virtual class session. We do try to take breaks. They say all of our students need brain breaks. I also need brain breaks. Today Murphy and I took a moment to dance! She loves to hug you and she jumps up and places her paws on your waist or chest. Today, I grabbed her and we danced! I smiled and let out a laugh. I would also like to think Murphy was smiling too!
Sometimes I get so focused on my computer that I don’t see what is going on around me. I sometimes don’t notice the shredded used Kleenex that is strewn around the room from my bathroom trash that one of the dogs got a hold of, and I don’t notice the tiny brown and almost iridescent spider that is crawling up the ceiling. Murphy reminds me of that. She notices everything. I watched her eyes track across the wall and then they locked on it. The spider. We sat throughout the day during different quick breaks and watched the spider travel across the room. We played the, “Where is the spider Murphy?” She looked up and we found it!
I also spend my time on virtual class sessions with my students. Last week I was talking about my lesson and students would tell me, “You’re muted. We can’t hear you.” Sure enough, I was muted. At first I thought it was me. I thought I was moving my curser over the mute and it was clicking it on and off. Then, after a couple students were muted as well, I realized it was a student doing it. The perks of technology and students knowing how to manipulate as they sit in front of their computers. You can’t see them smile and click away. Oh the possibilities of doing this in a classroom! Just so it was the other way around! I would be muting some students! Today I was smart though! I had to do some research on additional tools for Microsoft TEAMs! I found it! I made sure as each student came into my virtual session that I clicked on them as “attendees.” No one had the power to mute me! It worked!
The session was a success although there were other glitches. One of my students started the session right away with, “Do we have to be here?” He continued with, “How long will we be here?” He also wanted to know, “Are we doing anything interesting?” We even got halfway through the session and he asked, “Are we almost done?” The positive was that he was there, and he stayed the entire session even though I am not sure if he was following along or playing “Among Us”, looking at YouTube or even watching television. I then ended the last ten minutes of class with a frozen computer screen. My only saving grace was the fact that I had two monitor screens. I was still able to maneuver with my second screen! We got through the lesson.
IEP virtual meetings are definitely interesting. We have to always have a general education teacher present in our meetings. It has been fun having different teachers attend. Since I am at the online school for the pandemic, we have teachers and students from all over the district. I had a meeting last week with two former co-workers I taught with from two different schools. Thank goodness one of the teachers started a conversation about our time together at “said” school. So thankful because I could not place her or where I knew her from! The other teacher was kind and told me, “Erica you look like you haven’t aged a bit!” Awe, thanks Mark I had replied! So kind of him to say as I pulled the stray hairs that escaped from my everyday ponytail out of my face.
With virtual meetings, comes technical issues. I have had meetings where parents who are not able to login. But I also have meetings with parents right in their living rooms. I feel like I am right there with them! I have also had meetings with parents via phone when they are at work. My most interesting meeting and one that I can officially say, “I have never experienced that before” was the meeting with the mom who was a delivery driver and she was driving a huge truck as we had our meeting. I can now say, “I have held an IEP meeting with a parent driving a delivery truck and dropping off packages.” I have to say this mom was a rockstar! I assumed she was staying on the road. I didn’t hear any sirens or crashes or road rage language. She was quite the multi tasker as I heard her hand off packages to individuals. It was absolutely not a boring meeting!
Each day in my little office at home is a new day with new experiences. Even though I am sitting in my new desk chair from Amazon and looking at my desktop screen daily, I feel I am so many places in so many kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms and even on a delivery truck delivering packages. I even get to dance with my dog and track spiders on my ceiling!