Skip to main content

Powering Down

So I took a step back this week to focus on myself. I buried myself in housework and yard work, and a good book. It was peaceful, it was relaxing, and most of all it brought back a sense of normalcy that has been missing from life lately. During this time I stayed away from social media, I did not spend hours on my laptop reading through news articles and watching YouTube videos, and I did not think about the news or schoolwork. 

It was so refreshing to not feel the pressure of being connected all of the time, and after walking away I can definitively say that pressure is exactly what I was experiencing. Having access to information and social media is powerful, and wonderful, but with it comes responsibility. Responsibility to use it wisely- we tell our children to be careful about what personal information they post online and should probably heed our own advice. But there is also a different kind of responsibility that I realized I feel due to social media. I feel a sense of responsibility to do more and to be better. I hadn't realized that being connected all of the time was making me feel pressured to constantly improve- my cooking skills, my empathy, my own ability to spread knowledge and help others. 

We should be grateful that we have this tool to help ourselves learn new tools, share resources, and support one another- especially while trying to navigate a pandemic. However, we should also be kind to ourselves and forgiving. Allow yourselves to take a break and shut down, I promise it is worth it to step back for a few days. 

Comments

  1. CourtneyJune 18, 2020 at 12:59 PM

    Your post was so relatable. I did the Detox Challenge and I do have to say I was definitely refreshed as well. Social media certainly has its pros in its ability to connect everyone, however, sometimes it can be overwhelming to stay up with. I enjoy taking some time to clean the house, that is always refreshing to me before I dive back into school work. I actually come back even better and ready to knock out more school work ( like you shared) :). Thank you for the post, I enjoyed reading it and found it to be very relatable.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JFoxxJune 18, 2020 at 3:14 PM

      I am glad to hear that you also did the detox challenge, and that I am not the only one who enjoys having a clean house before returning back to work or school!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sutori and Other Thoughts

We had a two-hour meeting today with our union representatives about our school re-opening plan. We go back to work on Monday and not a single teacher has any idea what we are teaching, who we are teaching, and how we are expected to teach it. Talk about overwhelming and anxiety-inducing. I wanted to start lesson planning this weekend, and next week when we have our "preplanning" week but it doesn't seem like we will have an instructional plan in place. Why am I telling you all of this? To explain why I went down a rabbit hole reviewing our tools from this course over the past few days. I thought it would be a great time to explore some of the ones I only grazed over and decide if and how I can implement any in my classes this year- no matter which format I am expected to teach in.  I started with Sutori since I merely made an account during  Week 10 and never spent time exploring. First and foremost, the teacher tutorial is excellent! There are short videos, screenshots,...
2 comments
Read more

Week 6 Tool Review

This week the tools focused on writing/publishing, annotating, and mind-mapping or concept mapping. These are all types of tools that I would love to incorporate in my classroom and share with colleagues. There is such a need to help students improve their critical thinking, writing skills, planning out their writing, thoughts, or arguments, and these tools may be tools that can aid in teaching those skills. I tried out several of the tools that were recommended and then explored one of my own as well. Here are my thoughts for each tool.  Framapad is a collaborative text editor for writing/publishing. At first glance, this tool feels very similar to Google Docs allowing multiple users to collaborate on writing and editing a document. Each user is assigned a specific color, which is nice, it makes is very clear who has added what content- easy for users to edit and easy for teachers to grade. There seems to be a lot of different ways users can collaborate as well, mind maps, graphs...
1 comment
Read more