Thanks to our new friend Covid-19 almost every job has moved to the remote model, even teaching. While I am glad I still get the opportunity to interact with my kiddos, it is not the same as being in a classroom engaging face to face. I had my ups and downs in the classroom, but I do miss the little interactions that can only happen when you have twelve extremely different personalities in one room.
Working from my parent's house has required many adjustments. When I first started I was sticking to east coast time, meaning I was up before everyone else and was able to use the kitchen as my home base. It started out as the perfect spot. I had all of the food and coffee right at my fingertips, but so did everyone else. The kitchen became a high traffic area by 9am and I found it impossible to get anything else done and would end up filming lessons on my bedroom floor. When I finally complained after about two days of this, my dad told me they had an old desk stashed in the garage that they were planning on donating.
With a little help from my dad, we rearranged my room to fit this behemoth below the window and I had a sunny, QUIET, work space. I rummaged around and found all of my old college decorations that I didn't bring to New York and made the space a little more personal. None of these upgrades required leaving the house or spending any money, which is exactly what I'm trying to do during isolation. A much as I'd love to refinish the desk and make it look more modern, it does the job by providing me a quiet, distraction free place to attempt to teach my kiddos from across the country.
Some of the things I did to make my workspace mine:
- propagate a plant (this plant has officially been on its own as long as I've been here)
-use old books as a stack to add color
-use old mugs or cups as a pencil holder
-add a candle
-stack your planner and notebooks for easy access, you never know when you're going to need to schedule a zoom game night!
-flowers
-art
