Back to School (Also Known as 'August'): Coronavirus Edition

Soooooo society is still messed up.

Didn't think that was gonna be possible back in, oh, March, back when it collapsed and we all went into Quarantine.  Alas, nearly six months later, here we are.

Back to School is usually a momentous, hair-raising time.  We're shopping like crazy, the kids are pumped up, I'm super busy setting up my classroom and getting things in order for yet another year of wrangling teenagers and trying to shove American History down there throats.

This year?

Well, this year feels more like that long, lonely walk towards the gallows.  Eminent danger seems to lurk just over the horizon, like when you see something dark and sinister approaching in the distant sky.  At first you're all like, "Great, a thunderstorm - my grass really needs some rain, but damn it all if I didn't have a barbecue to attend later this evening."

But then you realize, in horror, that it's much, much worse.  It's one of those crazy, alien spaceships from 1994's Independence Day, and it's about to level your city with a concentrated laser blast of some sort.

Assuming they're lasers.  It's been awhile since I watched that movie.

Anyway, where was I.  Ah yes, Covid.  So we're all heading back to school this week, but the girls and I are going about it in very different ways.  The girls' school district is going 100% face-to-face instruction (some kids opted for virtual school, but they're using a third-party educational tool and it's clunky so not many people signed up for it.)  My district, on the other hand, is offering the same virtual school option, but everyone else is getting remote learning (through their teachers) for the first month of school.  Eventually, sometime in October, we're to stagger kids so half show up one day and the following day we'll get the other half.  If all goes well, we'll be in Phase 5 or Phase 6 by late October, and then we'll all be doing school normally.

But, as I'm sure you all have probably ascertained as well, the odds of this playing out according to plan are pretty slim.  My guess, if I were a gamblin' man (and I'm not), would be that we're going to teach our students remotely for the majority of the school year, whether we like it or not.

Which sucks.

So, in closing, I'll just summarize:  August is the month of Back to School, and what was usually a pretty exciting month has instead been filled with unease and apprehension.  We're all hopeful and eager to be back in our classrooms, but I don't think anyone expects it to last long.  This month was obviously focused on returning to school, so most of our pictures and video below reflect that focus.

Behold, dear readers:  the Hough's Bizarre Return to School.  Thanks again, Covid.

Alayna wanted me to try on a set of earrings she had found in her room.  My piercings have never closed up after I gauged my ears back in college, so I was willing to oblige.  Not sure if these are necessarily my style, though.

The girls showing off some of their new face masks for school.  Whatever it takes to get them excited for the absolute shit-show that awaits them. . .

So I decided to chunk some of my usual Back-to-School shots of my classroom together like this, so you could all appreciate the process more (and it was a process this year, folks.)  Due to lovely ol' Covid-19, about a quarter of our student population opted to enroll in virtual school this year, and so, consequently, many of our staff were tapped to teach virtual school (through a third-party educational program.)  Because of this, all the existing teams were shuffled around, and Yours Truly found himself not only on a new LC, but also in a brand, new classroom.

While my new classroom is nicer than my old one - better furniture, fresher walls, etc. - it's significantly smaller.  This isn't a big deal right now, obviously - since we're teaching students remotely for the first six weeks - but once all the kids return to class, it's going to be a major headache. . .

I only had to move a few of my rolling cabinets down to my new classroom - most of the desks, chairs, storage pieces, etc. were already moved.  What sucks was moving the contents of all my wardrobes and cabinets, down the halls from one classroom to another.  I moved hundreds upon hundreds of pounds of books, totes, papers, office supplies, notebooks, etc. over the course of a few, short days.  Totally exhausting.

The bulk of what I got done was handled over the course of three days, and then I came in the following week (on Aug. 19th) to straighten up a few things.

It's still not 100% completed - the white board in the back of the room isn't set up, and not all my posters and framed pictures are up on the walls - but it's not like I'm getting classes full of students on September 1st or anything.  I'm gonna be teaching through a Goddamn computer screen for the first month and a half.  Who cares if my room isn't totally set up yet.

Abby is going into 5th Grade this year, and she was open to the idea of walking to and from school every day.  Because of this added responsibility, we bought her a Verizon Gizmodo 2 - a stripped down smartwatch that works as an additional phone line on our existing plan, as well as a super-accurate GPS tracker.  This way we have piece of mind as she walks to and from school everyday, and she can contact us whenever she needs to.  We almost bought Alayna one of these things when she was in 5th grade, but the technology wasn't as great in 2018; now you can program 10 contacts into the watch instead of 4, you can text pictures, audio recordings, etc. instead of just text, you can edit contact profiles with pictures and ringtones, etc. A lot like a real phone, which - as long as Abby can bring home the grades her older sister did in 6th Grade - she'll most likely be getting at Christmas next year.

About halfway through the month, I took Alayna in to Northeast to pick up her Chromebook and get her new locker assignment.  She's been looking forward to this since, well, March.

She's still on the first floor this year, but down the main drag of the school (being in 7th grade now.)

Later that evening, all us dads decided to surprise our buddy Morgan (who turned 40) with a night out at Big E's, following their weekly golf outing.  Some of us guys each bought Morgan a fifth of booze for his birthday, and I offered to pick up the gift Erik bought, which he had left on his porch (since he was in the golf group and didn't want to tip Morgan off to the bar event later.)  Shortly after collecting the gift and taking it up to the bar for him, he texted me this creepy picture that was captured from his security camera.  Not my best pic, I'll admit.

By the time Morgan and the other three finished golfing and arrived at Big E's, most of the other dads were there, and we had the food waiting for them.  He was pretty stoked.

I recently upgraded my phone to a new Samsung Galaxy A71 (like, a day before this happened, so I didn't even have a phone case or screen protector for it yet - I had it slid into a sock in my pocket), so I tried out a few of the phone's new fancy camera settings as we sat around outside Diamond Jim's, downtown, later on in the night (Big E's closes at 10pm, due to Covid.)

Extreme, Radio, Baby Driver, and Lonnie Big Balls.  A lot of us earned nicknames during our Marquette campaign back in June.

Tom (he's new, he doesn't have a nickname), White Lightning, and the Colonel (oddly enough, these guys unknowingly gave me the exact same nickname I had in the Peace Corps.)

John and Jeff also didn't earn nicknames, having not gone on our Marquette trip either.

Morgan and Lonnie are not down with someone's bullshit.

This is pretty much how the kids have spent the last couple weeks of summer.

One Friday, Kris decided it was time to check out the Outlet stores down in Birch Run (about an hour south on I-75) for some Back-to-School shopping for the girls.  The crowds were decent because it was still technically a weekday, and we brought Ella along with us because her mom (Courtney) and Kris had talked earlier about the various items she needed.  As we headed into our first store of the day (The North Face), Abby suddenly felt something crawling around in her hair, and Ella spotted this.  I quickly smacked it off her head, and, of course, took a picture of the 5" long monstrosity.

Hours later, having spent an eternity in like a dozen different outlets, Kris took Alayna down to Rue 21 for some dedicated tween-shopping, so I headed across the parking lot to where one of those Spirit Halloween stores was already open for business (yes, seriously.)  Ella and Abby immediately set to work picking out their supposed Halloween costumes for this year, and made the call that their families would all be vampires for the big occasion (well, except Ella's dad, Erik, who would be a vampire hunter.)  We'll see how that goes. . .

Alayna shows off one of her new school outfits (with a reluctant Pudge.)

Lately Kris has been doing evening, walking laps around the Chestnut Hill playground with some of the other moms in our friend group, as a way of getting some 'steps' (she works in a chair most of the day.)  I opt out of this, seeing how I can barely walk anymore due to my ankle sprain:  after my skateboarding injury back in May, doctors think I sprained my ankle and it healed wrong, so I can't walk or run much anymore, and am doing physical therapy twice a week to build up my muscles again.  Anyway, here's a shot of the girls playing on the playground while their moms do laps.

Our friends, the Bos family, went up to the UP this month, and paid Alayna to dog-sit their elderly dog, Annie, while they were gone.  This consisted of Yours Truly driving Alayna over to their house every morning at 7am, again at 4pm, and then at 10pm to let her out, feed her, hang out with her, give her meds, etc.  The Cannonball definitely didn't mind - she's a huge animal lover - and they paid her probably way too much for her services.

Heading back into Northeast in order to set up her new locker. . .

I never had any of this shit in my locker throughout school - just a pile of books on the bottom and papers crammed everywhere.  Kids these day are spoiled.

(Not sure when or where this picture was taken, it came off Alayna's phone.)

The Hough girls, with two of Abby's friends, Ella and Liv (who don't really get along well, but seemed to co-exist this afternoon) tackling some science experiments.

Came out to the garage one afternoon to find some squirrel had gotten into a back of fungus control I had.  Who knows why he was eating it.  I hope that shit was poison.

We took an extended family walk through Midland City Forest one day, to give the dogs - and my ankle - some exercise.  Oddly enough, we neglected to take any pictures while we were there, but Alayna asked to borrow my phone (she had left hers at home) to snap a few in the van on the way back to the house.

Samson wore himself out.  Thank God.

. . . . and so did Watson.

The annual Sunday Funday Fantasy Football group's Draft Night, at Big E's.  This is the third year in a row we've done this, and the second where I've opted to sit out (I hate football.)

I go to hang out and have a few beers, and help put the players' name stickers on the board so the commissioners can keep track of it.

While we were doing football/beer stuff, Kris and the girls headed over to the Larson residence, where all the wives and kids were having a cook out of some kind.  Here's Jackson, Abby, and Ella, bein' weird.

Morgan had some kinda Bingo-ish ball thing that he used to determine the order of who got to pick their players and when.  Pretty good idea.

Alayna took this picture of Abby on her phone.  Who knows why.

Dungeons and Dragons for jocks.  Fantasy Football is beyond lame.

The Squad.

7th Grade Alayna, on the First Day of School (Midland schools started Aug. 31st, while mine started the following day.)

5th grade Abby

Kris snapped this as she waited in the drive-through lane behind Northeast's cafeteria, where parents drop off their students.

Alayna, nagging at her mom to drop her off in the right spot.  'Cause middle school.

Kris wanted to send the girls to school with motivational notes on the first day of school, and asked me to do the same.  Alayna took this picture at lunch when she found her notes in her lunchbox.

As I said before, I started back remotely this year:  I had to be in my classroom, but my students were learning virtually from the comforts of their own homes.  I set up two monitors so that I could see my lesson on one screen and my students' faces, via Zoom, on the other at all times (I record my lessons as well, just to be on the safe side - you can never be too careful with teenagers.)  Our administration wanted us to be 'mindful of our backgrounds' while we instructed virtually:  set up a 'set' so that students weren't too distracted by anything in the background, that it was free of clutter, etc.  I moved a few trees over behind me, that usually flank my white board, and brought over Skeletor - my classroom mascot - to serve as my wingman during my virtual lessons.

All ready to roll for Pandemic Academy. . .

- Brian