too many triggers

I tried to plan my lessons for the week yesterday and found it so upsetting I had to put it aside for a while.  There are just so many things I'm usually doing with my students at this point in the year.  We've worked hard all year, and now we're supposed to be doing the really fun stuff together, like making models of the solar system that are accurate for size and distance (that's two models, doing a combined one would be very tough!), or making wet mount slides and getting in some good time with a microscope so as to be familiar with how they work... that is certainly not going to happen.

I was so distressed because I couldn't read my students "The Microscope" that I actually made them a video.  It's a minute long but it probably took me more than an hour to make. I do love the poem though.  It's sweet and funny and even a little educational, and yesterday I couldn't bear the thought that my 8th graders wouldn't get to hear it.  Many of them still won't hear it, of course, because there's no way I can make them actually click on it, or listen all the way through.

This week I'm taking a side tack into Cornell Notes with them.  I'm not there, I have no idea what they're actually doing, so I figured I would give them more responsibility for their learning than last week.  So I assigned: here's a lesson I made you on taking Notes!  And here, practice taking notes from this power point.  After that, take this online quiz thing, using your notes.  The only thing I'm grading here is completion of the online grading thing.  We'll see how it goes. 

Tuesday, both 7th and 8th are doing "skills practice" in a new-to-me platform called iXL.  It looks pretty solid and it is nicely coordinated with my lessons, so I'm not having to re-invent the wheel.  Yay for not having to develop new material. 

We've got slightly less than 2 weeks of school before Easter and our spring break, and then I'm hoping maybe we can be back to normal by that point or we'll extend our spring break to the beginning of May so we can all have a good cry and then actually go back to school.  This is just so very, very weird and every time I think about what should be done it makes me sad because I know what I want to do but that's not at all possible right now.

And then I end up spending an hour making a one-minute video that no one will probably watch.  But my heart feels better.  Plus next year, when kids are absent, I'll have all this material to give them for make-up work!
***
Today was DH's birthday.  I almost forgot, but remembered late yesterday when I was updating the menu.  We have a weekly calendar and as I was writing in the days I stopped short.  Wait a minute, the 29th?! Fortunately I remembered yesterday and could therefore actually make him his favorite dinner (chicken parmesan)  and his particular favorite dessert (he really isn't a dessert guy), cheese cake.  We had a nice dinner and even gave him the night off from the dishes.  We tend to go low-key on celebrations these days anyway, and I think he enjoyed his day.  None of the boys (including DH) seems remotely as traumatized as I'm feeling, but that might be because they are better at hiding it.  I just want to cry all the time.  I don't actually cry at all.  It's exhausting and now I am up too late again.  Perhaps after sleep I will feel better, but I am grieving this loss as though it's permanent even though I know it's temporary.  I never deal well with uncertainty.

The boys & I make a great team. I love them so.