Day 8 - LA County enters Orange Tier

Another Monday come and gone…

4/12/21. Monday

8:45 – I’m awake naturally, but lie in bed and listen to The Daily.

9:00 – 10:00 - I need to put my trash cans out before the garbage trucks arrive so I’m up. 102.5 pounds today, even after the chicken alfredo, BUT that was the only carb serving I had yesterday.  It appears that one serving of carbohydrates will not result in a weight increase. Wash face. Brush teeth. Dress in Covid-19 uniform.

-Downstairs and the dog doesn’t understand why I’m up so early.  She also switched couches – now she’s sleeping on the love seat in the dining room.  I wonder why. I rub her tummy and we go outside – she doesn’t bother to grab a toy today. She does her business and we return inside – cheese for her; coffee for me.

L. made tiny, heart-shaped cookies last night, with pink frosting and red sugar.  She did most of her dishes already, so I finish what she started and clean the counters. Outside to take out the trash cans but L. has filled the recycling trashcan with several boxes so I break those down then move the trash cans to the curb.  I sweep my patio, the sidewalk that leads to the patio, and the cement section where I store my trash cans and put the clippings in the gardening trashcan.  Then, I wheel that trashcan to the curb, too.  I also pick up the dog poop from the Astroturf and clean out the fountain pump. Several yellow leaves have formed on my camellia bushes, so I become an “ornamental gardener” and remove the yellow leaves one at a time.

10:00-11:00- In my office and I post this weeks’ modules for my students at College No. 2.  It’s just a big arrow, stuck in beach sand, that says “Spring Break!!”  I tell my students there are no assignments this week and to enjoy their time off.  I check email while I’m at it so I can batch task but there is nothing of consequence.

-I check email from my French Cinema class and see that my new partner, J. M., returned my email and said he approved of the Les Mis presentation. Good news!  He wants to know if there’s anything he should do. No. I immediately submit the assignment to my teacher and thank her for paring me with J.M. Then, I email J.M. and confirm that I submitted the assignment.

-There is another email from my French Cinema teacher thanking me for my testimonial and saying that she’s glad I enjoyed the seminar.

11:00-1:30 – Blog posts.  I drink my coffee and have two of L.’s miniature-heart cookies.  Very good.

1:30-2:15 – I make a spinach salad with tomatoes and celery and read a Money Diary.

2:15-6:00 - Class is starting in 15 minutes so I pull up the Discussion Board and check for mistakes and/or add edits if I need to make them. Then, I make sure class content is ready.

-Class begins.  The students are listening to lecture, then watching a documentary, followed by the video quiz. I post an Announcement to the Home Page, reminding my students that next week is a “combo” lecture and four Inquizitives are due.  Then, I send an email blast with the same information to the students.

-I check the gradebook and note that almost all of the D and F students dropped the class.  The OSD student with the TBI?  Gone. I take a paper attendance.

-I post the link to the documentary.

-I prepare the Discussion Board for my upcoming 6:00 class, as well as a Home Page for the current chapter, then check class content.

-I open up the gradebook for College No. 2 and take role based on who completed the Midterm last week. For the combined college and high school class, the grades are good, which is to be expected as this was a 90-minute, open-book test. Three students failed to appear for the Midterm, so I email them and let them know they got a 0 out of 100 on the test, a true blow.

-I need to calculate the grades from the Discussion Board assignment and this involves making tick marks next to each student to establish if they did, in fact, respond to two of their peers.  Their original post and subsequent responses are worth 5 points each. Scrolling through 88 posts and making a tabulation is very labor intensive.

-I post the video quiz. **Reminder - this is in real time for my core class at College No. 1.

-Still working on tabulating the student’s Discussion Board responses at College No. 2.

-I finish tabulating the Discussion Board responses and post their scores to the online grade book.

6:00-9:00 – Specialty Class 1A begins. There are several moving parts today.  I post the Discussion Board and start with the AUDIO lecture.

-I post an Announcement to the Home Page reminding the students that the Socratic Seminar is due next week.

-6:20-I post the link to a 7-minute video clip that I want the students to watch in current time.

-Same thing for my highschoolers at College No. 2. I open up the grade book  and take role based on who completed the Midterm for Class No. 2. As expected, the highschoolers did better than my college students. They just always seem to have their s—t together and nobody missed the Midterm.

- Same thing for the Discussion Board assignment.  Calculating the grades involves making tick marks next to each student to establish if they did, in fact, respond to two of their peers.  Their original post and subsequent responses are worth 5 points each. Scrolling through 42 posts and making a tabulation is very labor intensive.

-One of the students posted a sloppy, response to the Discussion Board, filled with sentence syntax mistakes and spelling errors.  He didn’t even try and it’s not fair to the students who posted thoughtful, well-crafted responses.  I print his response, mark it up with red pen, then scan his response back to him, explaining that he received a 0 on the assignment.

-Yet another student only responded to one other student, not bothering to post his opinion. I email him separately and inform him that he received a 5 out of 15 on the assignment.

6:40 – I post the link to a second video clip that I want the students to watch. Lecture rolls on. **Reminder - this is in real time for my Specialty 1A Class.

7:00-7:30 – I take the dog for a walk. She’s at the point now where she doesn’t always want to come back to the house and makes it known to me by dragging her feet.  We often do two loops around the compound now… I listen to Today Explained.

-Return and I take attendance for Specialty Class 1A.

-This week’s Module posted for my DE#2 class so I start working on the assignments.  The estimated time of completion is 2 to 4 hours.  Again, I can tell it will be more like 6 hours.  This is my last Module and it couldn’t come a moment too soon, as I am sick of this class and how much work and time it’s consumed.  I read several articles and watch the assigned videos.

-I post the link to the 30-minute documentary in real time for my Specialty 1A Class.

-Back to DE#2 and the first assignment is to quote one of the instructors from one of three videos I just watched addressing Discussion Boards and explain how I’m going to implement their suggestion into my next online course.  Because I wasn’t paying attention to the videos, I have to go back and re-listen so I can find a quote that resonates with me.

-I send a quick email blast to the students, reminding them that the Socratic Seminar is due next week and directing them to AUDIO lectures Chapter 8 and 10 for guidance.

-I post the video quiz.

-Class ends and I get an extremely nice email from a student who opens up about the tragedy her relatives experienced in El Salvador, which happened to be “triggered” by the documentary that I showed. I immediately respond and we have a dialogue which was really great. She said she’s enjoyed taking my class. Awww!!!

9:30 –10:00 - I leave to get gas and pause for a moment of reflection wherein I take account of the fact that my work pace on Mondays is absolutely unsustainable. I am sick of a 12-hour work-day with only one 30-minute break to walk my dog!!

HOWEVER, I come to the conclusion that it hardly matters now, at this late point in the semester. Next week, there is no attendance to take and nothing to grade for College No. 2 as they have been on Spring Break AND there are only two lectures left in the core classes at College No. 1 before the Final.  What’s more is I took next Thursday off and Specialty Class 1A is spending most of next-week’s class time participating on the Discussion Board. Lastly, my DE#2 class ends this Friday. The Monday work-day, as I know it, will cease to exist after tonight.

10:00-12:00-Back to work on my DE#2 class.  I find an appropriate quote from the video and prepare a short essay, then post it to the Discussion Board.

-More articles to read.  Next, next, next…it’s time for another assignment.  The DE#2 instructor asks us to prepare a “graded” Discussion Board in our sandbox with the appropriate criteria that we just reviewed/read. I pull a Discussion Board assignment that I used for my last Socratic Seminar, make a few tweeks, and post it to the sandbox.

-More articles to read in the Module until I come across the next assignment. The DE#2 instructor wants us to create a 2-minute video – clear audio and content is a must, but sound clips can be used to spice it up. I also have to transcribe the entire project.

Rather than creating a video of myself, I decide to use the first two minutes of my Chapter 7 “poli-sci podcast”, which sounds amazing because of the new microphone I’m using and I want to overlay the audio track over the first two Google slides that I created for that lecture.  I have a sound clip in the audio that fades out perfectly. I’m not sure how I can turn the Google slides into a video so I call upon L. for assistance. 

She is able to convert the moving Google slides into a 2-minute video and overlay my voice on top of the finished project. I go back to my office to prepare the transcription, which takes some time.  Then, I return to L. and we submit the assignment and the transcription. There’s a bit of an issue with the first 5 seconds of the video content, but at this point in the class, after spending 6 weeks completing these assignments, and hours and hours of homework and 4-hour lectures every Friday, I no longer care. I’m done.

12:00-1:00 - I return to the beginning of the first day of the 30-day period and start over with the Insanity-Cardio Plyometric workout.

1:00-2:00 - Downstairs and I clean the kitchen and grill the “Beyond Meat” burgers that L. purchased about 6 days ago so I can see how they taste. I also boil some eggs. Will eating the “Beyond Meat” patty be the same as eating a Bacon and Western Cheeseburger from Carls Jr.? Stay tuned. I finish grilling the patties on my George Foreman. The “Beyond Meat” grills similarly to regular meat and the juices look the same… I take a bite…and it’s…okay. It’s not bad, BUT it’s NOT a hamburger, if you know what I mean. I have two more bites and listen to Air Talk.

More kitchen duty and now I have to clean my Foreman grill. I ‘graze’ slightly on cashews, walnuts, and 8 mini-chocolate chips. It’s late in the day, so I wonder how this will affect weight. Curious.

Take the dog out, fill the dog food dispenser, lock up, set the alarm, etc.

2:00-2:45 - Night time routine. Bed. I listen to What a Day.