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[nicksgal]

Hey everyone,

I just finished NaNoWriMo (got inspired to write at all for the first time in many years) and was thinking of you all a lot this past month and how you're doing during the pandemic. Hope we can catch up properly individually and all those other things if you all are still here.

~Dee

[mare]

Well holy crap! Welcome back Dee!

I was just thinking about you the other day. I came across a container you made me forever ago lol

Hope all is well!

[nicksgal]

Aw, Maremas! I've been doing that konmari thing this year and I came across the frame Sarah made me. And this quotable gem in particular still brought me joy, so it stayed: "We're 20 something's who write Backstreet Boys fan fiction and spend our evenings chatting on message boards and you're concerned about the intelligence level of our inside jokes? lol Mare, oh Mare..."

All in all, things are well here. Work is a new stressful each day of COVID, but the students make it worth it. And my husband is running out of things to do at our house, which is good because restrictions are getting worse again, haha.

And then my November got weird because I had a "Rose plot bunny moment" in September because of DWTS and Masked Singer bringing out my inner teeny bopper (That's not a spoiler here, right? Everyone knows?) and I thought, "This year I will write every day of November and see what happens."

How's everything with you? Good to see you're still here, though it's kinda dead here, huh?

[mare]

I’m glad to hear things are going well for you. Yeah COVID has been quite the thing to deal with.

Things here have died down significantly, sadly. No one really posts on the site much because spamming got to be such an issue that we had to disable reviews and without that feedback feature people started posting elsewhere, which is understandable . The site keeps going down so if you feel sentimental, you should go in and save anything you wrote that you don’t want to lose.

As for me, I stopped writing quite awhile ago but this board does still see some activity from time to time. It gets most active when the guys are on tour but with AJ and Nick doing their thing, people have been checking in more frequently.

[RokofAges75]

Wow, welcome back, Dee!  It's been a long time!  I love when old regulars randomly return.  Glad to hear you're doing well and writing again.  AC has been dying a slow death for awhile now, but there's a few of us who still post.

[Rose]

Wow. Welcome back! The site is slowly dying but a few of us are still here.

[Rose]

I also love that "Rose plot bunny moment" is a thing.

My brain is still that random lmao.

[nicksgal]

Regarding COVID, I basically gave up... three months ago and have been the shrug emoji ever since. So any new and terrible thing that happens this year, I'm like "Yup, sounds right, 2020, lol."

That sucks about the spammers. I thought it would probably be a little slower, but figured it was still worth it to say hello (and maybe secretly hoped it was busy as ever to come back and settle back in). Thanks for the heads-up about the site going down. I have meticulously backed up most of the writing I deeply cared about on Google drive for many years now in case the urge to write ever struck again, but there's probably a couple things on there that I should grab just in case. Where are people posting these days if one decided to tempt the fates of supreme writers' block?

I feel you on the not writing thing. Are you still writing original work or just not at all? Also glad it's not a spoiler. I have one group of friends that watches it and in season one, they made me promise to flat out tell them if one of the Boys was on, instead of cheekily saying "_____ is a good guess." But out of that friend group, I've been dying to share background information on clues with so many people and they don't want to know, haha.

Hi Julie! Hi Rose! How has everything been with you both? I didn't officially say "Hi Mare!," but I hope you know it was implied. I'm assuming most of the people who post still are "supreme time wasters." Glad to see there's not a distinction past that and I can claim some membership to it still.

Random character conversation is probably more accurate, but I can't picture calling those random writer moments anything but a "Rose plot bunny moment," especially in present company.

[RokofAges75]

Archive of Our Own seems to be the most active place to post for BSB fanfic these days.  Some of us have started posting our stories there.

Things have been fine with me, relatively speaking.  I'm an introverted homebody, so quarantine and social distancing kind of suit my lifestyle LOL.  I've actually been teaching in person all school year though.  My district is doing blended learning, so the kids come every other day and learn at home on the off days, and I only have half the class at a time.  It's been going surprisingly well so far.  We haven't had any COVID outbreaks and have managed to stay in school since we started in August.  My family has managed to stay healthy too, thank goodness.

I saw you mention your students.  What do you teach?  Are you in person or virtual?

[nicksgal]

Good to know! I will check out what y'all have been up to over there. Posting elsewhere might give me enough update backlog to give myself a head start on content to have writer's block for months (I was rereading my feature month post and asked myself if I had really been planning four of these things. No wonder I lost all inspiration.), haha.

I'm glad to hear you've been fine 2020 style, that it hasn't been too hard on you all things considered, and that your family has remained healthy. Zoom happy hours have been getting me through (Zoom committee meetings less so), but I've become more and more of a homebody as time goes. I think the only downside is that I've slowly run out of things to watch on TV.

That's impressive and a blessing that you haven't had any outbreaks! How is blended learning? Are you meeting with the kids on their online learning days too or only if they're in-person that day? I'm glad to hear you've been safely in-person though, it's so much better for the kids.

I've been teaching Pre-K for the past couple years, so I've been in person every day since everything shut down in March. I recently took on a new position running a learning pod from our school this fall and probably at least part of the spring unless vaccines are plentiful quickly. It's been an adventure since we're hosting kids from eight different schools and grades K-3, so my co-teacher focuses on enrichment type things since he's run our summer camp and I'm in an intervention type roll providing some 1:1 and small group support for their learning. I miss being in charge of all aspects of my own classroom though. In August, I tried to write a million lesson plans based on our state standards for what they might be learning and in September, I decided I would just be a day behind their classrooms in my lesson content because pre-planning four curriculums simultaneously was impossible!

[RokofAges75]

That does sound challenging trying to plan four different curriculums at once!  Co-teaching can be fun, but I would miss being in charge of my own classroom too.

Thankfully, I'm only responsible for the teaching the in-person kids live.  The kids who are at home have independent assignments I post through Google Classroom, and I just have to check in on them and answer questions if needed, but no live instruction on those days.  That makes it much more manageable.  We're not moving through the curriculum as quickly as if I had them all every day, but I already see a huge improvement in their typing and technology skills, math facts, and other things that I hope will help them down the road.  There are also no behavior problems with a group of 13 students compared to the usual 26.  I could definitely get used to that!

[nicksgal]

It's nice because we have different strengths, but then there's the added challenge of also complimenting their classroom teachers while having zero interaction with most of them. And other things like teaching phonics while wearing a mask, that was my favorite last semester.

That's good that you're not live for both every day! First because it feels like two different curriculums to offer both at the same time (I felt like last semester was the hardest I've worked since student teaching when I was doing that plus working 40hrs/week to pay my bills) and second because the kids dialing in to live instruction for other kids is not equitable learning for them. Not to mention, I imagine that would be exhausting for you and self care is so important especially in times like these. Does your district offer a virtual only option or is everyone doing the hybrid model?

I feel like there will be a big asterisk on this year for a lot of things, education included. I wonder if more districts will look at looping or more split age classrooms next year because of this. Right? They're better at zoom meetings than I am! And we thought the Gen Z in college now would be technology experts. One of the kids in my class challenged me to a type off and I thought, I can win this. Which I did, but I only type 67 words a minute? (Though that feels faster than writing typing, but I think that's because your not thinking of the words while you type.) Right? We went down to twelve when the schools Irene back up and it was amazing, time to really give each kid substantial personal attention. Now we're back up again and there's behavior incidents again. So frustrating.

[RokofAges75]

Oh yeah, I can't imagine teaching phonics through a mask!  And trying to stay with their classroom teachers without being able to plan with them has to be tough too.

We do offer a virtual-only option, and thankfully, there are other teachers who are responsible for those students so none of us have to try to balance both virtual-only and hybrid.  The tough thing is that they give the virtual-only families the opportunity to come back to hybrid learning after every trimester, so I just got four new students this past week.  Also dealing with kids being quarantined for two weeks at a time is tough.  I've only had one case of actual COVID in my class (he's fine and back at school now, thankfully), but several other kids have had to quarantine due to being exposed or having symptoms but choosing not to get tested.  It's tough trying to keep them caught up.  Like you said, the equity is an issue - nothing I can post on Google Classroom for them to do at home by themselves can totally replace the experience of being in the classroom for a live lesson. 

I think flexibility is going to be key moving forward.  For the next few years, we'll all have to adjust our expectations about what the kids should come into a grade knowing and meet them where they are... which we should be doing already anyway.

[nicksgal]

The hardest part of it is my Kinders because all of their teachers are focusing on different things for whole group instruction. I have one still on letter sounds, three on blends, one on "faking it until you make it" reading and writing (I'm teaching them blends because they keep replacing most of them with /v/), and one that has been taught 40 sight words but is still confused about certain blend sounds. It's crazy. I think the hardest for me is that one of them was in my Pre-K class last year and they were just starting to get so many phonics concepts where they would have been ahead and all this just caused such a backslide. I hate that I couldn't do more for them.

I'm glad they have dedicated teachers, but that's crazy that they can pop back into hybrid after each trimester! I hope they're more on par across the board with instruction at the same headed level in the same school. But the classroom community aspect must be tough. I'm glad that you've only had one case and that they're healthy. Did your whole class have to quarantine then or no? Our governor is trying to pass some guidelines that in a classroom you would only have to quarantine if you individually were working x number of feet (I can't remember exact numbers) of the kid for x amount of time and I just don't know how that will work. I get that it's to keep more classrooms open, I don't think anyone is arguing against in person learning being better for kids, but I just feel like it's an outbreak waiting to happen. I wonder if it would be better for the quarantining kids to pop into the full virtual option during those weeks? But then I think about the stress of a new schedule when they're online half the time already and think probably not...

The name of this game is absolutely flexibility and creativity. I'm excited to see what curriculum and assessment innovations may come out of it. And I'm hoping the differentiatio n will be that much better access the board.

[nicksgal]

Also, poor Mare and Rose. They've been inundated with shop talk here. Delightful shop talk, but shop talk none the less.

If you both want to skip it, I asked about general life updates and writing updates.