The Chronicles Of Nay

Good evening! I hope that everyone had a great week! Overall I had a good birthday week! I spent so much time with people I haven’t seen in far too long, I did some geocaching and I took naps! 

Pool started again on Wednesday. I had missed my little team! Since we played at the home bar they celebrated my birthday! I had a little flyer reserving our table, they bought me dinner and even had a cake for me. The bar even put my name on the marquee over the bar! To top it all off I won my match. That was the most surprising thing because I had not even touched my pool sticks since the end of February! It had been so long I was even having a hard time putting my pool sticks together. Kathy asked me “are you sure these are the right pieces?” I was like “um… yes!” Like if she was the crazy one…well… they were not the right pieces! haha it was amazing when I got the 2 pieces together that went together how easy they attached!

Courtney and I finally got out to do some geocaching together. It was nice first to see the Kersey family but it was also nice to go geocaching with someone. We found some of the usual altoid tin ones but we found a pretty cool one that was attached to a fence post cap and dropped into the fence post. It was probably the coolest one I had ever found. 

Yesterday I went on a little adventure. I had a full tank of gas and nothing really going on so I went on a quest for some caches. I started out in south Fort Worth. I ended up in west Fort Worth. I just kept going west. I found myself in Weatherford, looped down toward Godly. Ended the day down toward Cleburne. Which brought me back to Burleson. There were a couple more that I found yesterday that were fun. In Godly I found a wooden bolt that was stuffed in a fence post. In burleson I found a bolt. It was hollowed out and the log was on the inside. It was glued to a magnet and stuck to a light post. In total yesterday I found 12 more caches. My goal was 100 by the end of the summer. But after finding the 12 yesterday, and the quick 3 I got today when I was on the phone with mom, my cache count is 86. I think I am going to try to hit the 100 by the end of the month. I think I can do it. That is 14 more in 10 days. I am pretty confident I can do it. The next step now is to hide one! I have some ideas of where I am going to hide the first one! I am so excited. Courtney and I are going to try to go again soon and hopefully we find more! 

So something else that happened this week is the district I teach in released their plan for returning to school in August. The plan says that the parents will have the option to allow their students to go to school in a normal school setting or they can opt in to online learning. The plan said that the parents would be able to start making this decision on July 1st. The plan said that my in class students would be limited to under 25 kids a class. This raises so many questions for the admin, for the teachers, attendance, parents and students.  What will that do for my classroom, for the students sitting in my classroom, for the students sitting at home? If I see 125 students a day how many online students will be considered a full load?  Can I hold my online students to the standards I hold my in class students to? Will we have the internet infrastructure to allow students to video message into our classes? What about labs? What if a family decides that they want their student is going to do online learning then in say October they realize it is not what they wanted or are capable of handling? Then how do we transition that student back into school? Or the other way around. Texas has decided that it will be safe for everyone to go back to school in the fall. We will not be requiring masks. This raises questions now that are not only education questions but also health questions. So I will be exposed to 125 kids a day. What are we doing for the teachers that are at risk? Are we doing passing periods? Lunch? How do we keep 6th graders from hold hands or making out? I mean we try every year, don’t get me wrong, but they are middle schoolers with hormones. They find ways and places to make out! This last year my campus had just shy of 500 students. We don’t have the space to spread 500 students out 6 ft apart. If I am calculating the numbers correctly each person would need about 36 square feet to themselves, at 500 students that is 18,000 square feet. In case you are wondering, that is about 4 and a half acres. Not only do we not have that, we don’t have space for the students we had pre-covid. So many unknowns. I want to get back to my classroom! I missed my students and the thought of not making those connections this coming year makes me sad. However, I want to get back to them the safest way possible. I just hope that we can all figure out what that looks like so that we can do what’s best for the teachers and the students.  

How are schools in your area dealing with back to school? Do you know? People nearby if you wanna go out and do some geocaching this coming week let me know! I will be out of town the following week but I am all in this week! I hope that everyone has a happy rest of your weekend and Father’s Day!