The Best Laid Plans

Today is a day where a lot of plans are going topsy-turvy. The plan for the blog was to write a post about The Faculty Lounges by Naomi Schaefer Riley, but I don’t have the brain power to be all intellectual and marshal my arguments coherently. Why?

Well, I get migraines (among the other health challenges that I have) that make it really hard for me to think clearly. I’ve taken my meds (well, not the one that’s actually effective because it also knocks me out, and well, people frown on leaving a 6 year old in charge of the household). But I do teach like this. I do it all the time. The thing about being an online adjunct is that you teach regardless of how you feel or what’s going on around you (with some obvious exceptions: extended hospitalization; family death; etc.). But even with a family death, I’ve managed to teach my students. I was online from midnight to 3am every night handling things after my grandmother died in 2005. Why so late? Because I had to use dial-up and couldn’t connect during the day because I would tie up the phone lines and that wasn’t cool.

Also? My son is sick. The kind of sick where he’s sitting in chairs, refusing to eat because his tummy hurts, and taking naps. Remember, he’s six. He doesn’t take naps. He thinks naps are for babies (and mommies who are overworked) but not for him. So, he’s not really doing school, but I debuted the “new” thing for him last night and it worked to keep him quiet and resting. What new thing? Um, a stripped down, non-web accessing first generation iPod Touch. He hasn’t discovered that his music is on it yet. I’m waiting for him to get curious about that music note button. He also hasn’t discovered the videos that I put on it for him (a Word Girl, a Martha Speaks, an Arthur). He’s been obsessively playing TeachMe: 1st Grade. He gets frustrated with the handwriting portions because they expect him to be accurate with his letters, BUT I see a vast improvement in his handwriting after he plays (it’s also on the iPad), and it helps him with math and money management, so I consider it an all around win.

When you teach online there are certain things that you know you have to do every day. One of them is check in on the discussion boards. I try to do this a couple of times a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. If I can get the afternoon in, I consider it a bonus. On a day like today? I usually skip the morning check in. I have my work email forwarded to my home account, so if there’s a catastrophe, I’ll know about it from my inbox (which, of course, is on my phone, my iPad, and my computer). When the kids go to quiet time, I’d try to jam in a discussion board or two and then grade like the wind. At the school I currently work for, Monday is grade day. If I’m not done by Sunday, I’m way off schedule and usually panicking by this time. Of course, all of this is moot because I don’t teach the August session. Too many family obligations this month.

A day like today is a disaster from a planning and organization perspective. Kids who won’t eat. A mom who can’t really concentrate well. We have a dinner plan, but I don’t know for sure what it is. I think I’m supposed to be moving laundry around, but I’m not sure. Planning only covers us insofar as I can follow the plan.

I suspect this post doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’m okay with that. It’s kind of what the day around here is like :).

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