Live Lesson Carnage

After my first week of teaching my full timetable live, I have some successes and some well... carnage!

My first ever live lesson with Year 13 P1&2 Monday morning was going so well, my writing on the graphics tablet was finally legible and the students were happily unmuting and interacting with me. Skip to the end of the lesson and I'm happily going through the exam question annotating on my computer so they can all see feeling very smug and confident. I get to the end of the exam question, one of them unmutes "Miss, were you talking during that because if you were you were on mute". After a long discussion we established that they had happily sat there watching me annotate over my screen without thinking to tell me they couldn't hear me... the explanation was much more concise second time round!

Today P1&2 however wasn't a patch on Monday year 13. Joined my teams meeting seeing about half of my students waiting for me in the lobby and was quite pleased but thought it was strange as last time they all turned up on time. Enter the meeting and one of them unmutes "Miss, X has text me and says he not on the team" followed by multiple students telling me the same about others. I check the team and for some reason it has randomly decided to boot half the kids out, why you ask? I have no idea. So I go to minimise my teams so I can get the register up to add the missing students to the team and I click close instead. After some swears were said I reopened teams and rejoined my meeting! Some more students had joined and were waiting in the lobby, and with one misclick I had hung up instead of clicking on the lobby. So I join my meeting for the third time and then the laptop dies with no warning. After joining for the fourth time I am greeted with cheers and 'Its a series of unfortunate events for Miss this morning' in the chat. My teams issues sorted we start to get on with the lesson. I share my screen and start teaching. About 30 minutes in I can hear the dog crying, can't see her anywhere so I assume she's on my bed having a dream. The crying gets louder and more worried, then I realise she's trapped in the kitchen behind a curtain, yes curtain! Curtains are apparently terrifying according to Suzi! So I tell my year 11s I need to leave momentarily to release Suzi for her curtain prison. Dog released back to the lesson. About 10 minutes later Suzi comes racing down the stairs barking, my OHs breakfast delivery has arrived and she is protecting her house from the evil delivery man. Back to the lesson distraction all gone and carry on teaching them. Drawing diagrams over my screen to compliment my explanation I've very happy with my doppler effect, red shift and blue shift lesson. Year 11 are communicating and answering questions. Skip to about 1.5 hours into the lesson, explanations all over so I ask them to complete the questions on the screen. Yr11: "what screen Miss?" Me: "The screen, my screen that I have been sharing this entire lesson" Yr 11:"You haven't been sharing your screen Miss". I mute myself and some swears are said again: "So, how exactly have you been taking notes this past 1.5 hours Year 11?" Yr11:  "Well, we've been listening to what you've been saying and just googling it" Me: "Googling it? At what point did you not think to tell me you couldn't see my screen?!" Yr11: "We didn't want to interrupt". 

I go to end the absolute carnage that was P1&2, and every single student unmuted themselves in turn and said "Thanks Miss", or "Great lesson Miss". They were absolutely un-phased by my carnage and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. My Year 11 are fantastic and I will definitely miss them! 

I hope reading this has made you laugh and put a smile on my face, and please learn from me make sure you're not on mute and you're definitely sharing your screen!