Will There Be Snow

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 A week ago we were expecting an ice storm. This week we've been upgraded - sort of.

This afternoon it started raining. It is still raining. The temperature has dropped from 50F to 36F and will continue dropping through the night. Eventually, after possibly dumping some freezing rain or sleet on us, this system will move off.

Fear not, there is a second system coming. It is supposed to bring snow, freezing rain, sleet, more snow, and who knows what else.

One major difference between this week and last week is that this week's foul weather is arriving on Thursday night. Because of the very real possibility of ice covered roads in the morning, my school is closed tomorrow.

Let me rephrase the previous sentence. My school building is closed tomorrow. School will be in session - remotely. At 8:30 a.m., I will open my Google Classroom Google Meet and by 9:00 a.m. all my students are supposed to have joined the class for a briefing on what their online assignment are for the day.

At 8:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, my lesson plan will go live on Google Classroom with embedded links to pdf files for handouts and live links to websites the students will need to visit to complete some of their assignments.

Fortunately for me, I learned how to use Google Classroom in the spring of 2020 when we went from live classes on Friday, March 13 to distance learning on Wednesday, March 18. My colleagues and I learned on Sunday, March 15, that we had two days to move our curriculum online. We did it from scratch and on the 18th we started remote teaching. For the next nine weeks most of us put in 14 to 16 hour days converting everything we would have done in class to a format suitable for online instruction.

The lasting benefit of that exertion is the ability, now, to go remote at the proverbial drop of a hat.

This will all work fine as long as the power stays on.

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