The best way I could cope with the anxiety I was feeling was to prepare as much as I could. This started with the physical setup of my classroom itself. In the summer, I don’t teach in my regular classroom, so I did a big overhaul of the furniture in my summer room. I had to rearrange tables, chairs, and desks to make open places to walk, and spread out the students at their seats.

Here’s a video showing some of the most important classroom features we added or changed for safety. Read the article for details on all these ideas!

• Spread out my seating chart. Students now sit two to a table, with six feet between them. I made sure there are accessible aisles so that teachers can move through the room without getting too close to students.

• Keep belongings at student seats. I tried to cut down on the times they had to be out of their seats and milling about the classroom by having as many of their materials with them at their seats. They also keep their backpacks, water bottles, and lunches right next to their chairs. It’s a little cluttered, but it cuts out the need for students to get up every five minutes to get water, jacket, snack, etc…

• Give everyone their own materials. Each student has their own seat of pencils, crayons, markers, scissors, sketching paper, tape, glue, etc. Materials that used to be communal are now kept in individual pouches labeled with names, and everyone understands that they have to use their own materials.

• 6 foot markers for lines. Students quickly forget to keep six feet apart. Marking the floor with lines where they can safely stand when they line up to wash their hands, go out of the room, or come in from recess can help them keep those boundaries in mind.

• Cabinet handles and door. Any cabinets that are frequently used by students (book shelves, games, personal belongings etc.) we have removed the doors of the cabinet. Handles are a hotspot for germs, so it’s best to by-pass them altogether. I definitely still keep my personal belongings in a cabinet with doors, but it’s clearly labeled as my space, and it’s out of reach of students. 

I am definitely discovering more ideas and better ways of doing things every day, but this much at least helped me feel more confident about heading back to work.

What questions do you have about safe classroom setups?
xoxo
Laura

The post How To Set Up A Safe Classroom During A Pandemic appeared first on Love Grows Learning.

I was determined that my new workflow wouldn't create a permanent mess in our living room, which is the space we disconnect from work, rest, and play. So I devised a system that allowed me to spread everything out all over the place while I worked, but quickly and easily hide it away when it was time to stop working. I cleared out one of the drawers next to our couch and filled it with all the piles of books, baskets of teaching to tools, and stacks of papers I need on a daily basis. I even fit some of my teaching puppets way in the back. Then I made space on top of a cabinet to keep all of my electronic devices neatly stacked when I wasn't using them (during one day, I might use my laptop, my iPad, my Bose speaker, my earbuds, my noise-canceling headphones, and my Phone… yikes!).

During the day, my space is a mess. The papers get spread out, the pens are everywhere, books are all over the couch. But as soon as I'm done working, I sweep everything up and stuff it back in the drawer. It's actually quite a miraculous system, considering my track record with cleaning up after myself. As my husband tells me, I am notorious for getting something out that I need, and then leaving it there and moving on without bothering to put it away! But honestly, it takes me about two minutes to shove everything back in that magical drawer, and even I can handle that.

Adapting as time goes on

Now that we're eight weeks deep in distance learning, I started noticing that my back was not happy working on the couch for all those hours. I was often hunched forward, with no back support, working on a coffee table that was really too low for any kind of computer work. With one-on-one student sessions, I would usually plop on the floor, angling so that both my face and my table surface was visible to the student. Not so good for the body, as it turns out. So now we're onto workspace 4.0, the dining room table! I'm still using my little drawer, which is luckily close by. But now everything is spread out over the table, and I'm able to sit in a real chair! With back support and cushioning! This is only day one in this new workspace, so we'll see how it goes moving forward. If there is one thing we've all had to learn in this pandemic, it's how to be endlessly flexible in ever-shifting circumstances!

How have you been organizing your workspace?
xoxo
Laura

The post How I Organized My Distance Learning Workspace appeared first on Love Grows Learning.