Starting on President's Day, everyone in my family began coming down with the awful winter cold that is going around. I took a day off here and there to keep one of the kids home from school (my husband is also a teacher, but is in two different buildings and four different classrooms, so it's harder for him to take a day off), and it was nice for me to be home with them - to give them some mothering and get some stuff done at home at the same time.
Then I got a sore throat. It came on really fast, and two days into it I couldn't swallow or talk. A quick trip to the doctor found that it wasn't strep, and so I settled in to wait it out.
A week later and I just wasn't feeling better - in fact, I was worse, with a hacking cough, headache, sore muscles... so on Tuesday I went back to the doctor to see if there was any kind of drug that could speed up the healing process.
Turns out - I had pneumonia. Knowing that this could turn serious if I didn't slow down, I took the doctor's advice (and she wrote me a note too!) and stayed home for the rest of the week. With a big field trip coming up in a couple of weeks and loads of curriculum to teach, I hated to miss school, especially knowing the way many of my students behave with a substitute.
But I put aside my worries (a little) and tried to figure out what I could come up with at home for the students to do - without having to drive into work to copy it off and set it up. Luckily I have a couple of very helpful colleagues who were willing to do that stuff for me - that left me with the planning.
Thankfully, earlier this year I had emailed some work from my documents folder at school to another teacher. I searched in my sent mailbox until I found the things that I had sent - readings and questions on plants. I fixed them up, sent them to school, and voila - one day done. Then I used puzzlemaker to create a word find and crossword using plant words - saved it as a pdf and sent it to school - day two (feedback from sub - not enough work for kids to do - woops!). Day 3 - at this point I had been gone for three days in a row. I had no idea how much of the work that I 'd been assigning was actually getting done; I didn't know if they were ready to riot or if they were enjoying a break from me. So I thought something fun yet educational, easy but still holding them accountable for learning something would be appropriate. My source: Discovery Education Streaming. The exciting curriculum-related lesson? Magic School Bus (gets planted). That was Friday - I haven't heard from anyone yet about how that went.
Thank goodness I have a computer and know how to use it. Otherwise...?
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Ug, I got the sore throat and long-lasting cold, but thank goodness it didn't lead to pneumonia ... hope you are better! And I'm glad technology helped you out under the circumstances ... I think you'll really like what we are covering this month, too, since it could help make things easier for a sub when you are gone.
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