"Bad weather always looks worse through a window." - Tom Lehrer

Double-post Sunday. Sort of like double tap, just not as deadly.

Another beautiful day here in AZ, with a high earlier of 82, just enough cloud cover to make it easy, and calm winds. We had a church picnic this afternoon to bid farewell t a Pathway couple headed back to their point of origin, Clovis, NM, and from there to Arkansas. Sorry to see them go.

Tomorrow I begin the last of three weeks of orientation for teaching online classes. Unless this learning curve takes a giant arc upward I'm nowhere near knowing how to do this. I'm still largely lost within the software they use (Blackboard) and have no idea how the courses are run. I've been told the syllabus, all assignments, and any exams are supplied, so I'm not sure how I would be more than a facilitator/grader. (Communication hasn't been a prominent feature.)

And some things just make no sense, at least to me. You'd think, for example, that each week's assignments would be listed inside the link labeled "Assignments." Nope. Some of them are there, but the rest are inside "Resources." We have a separate email program (Gmail) but sometimes we're supposed to email each other from within Blackboard. Dunno why. And I have no clue how or where we post grades.
They need a "Blackboard for Dummies."

But wait! There's more.

The times, they are a'changing. The tons of reading, and I mean tons, we've been assigned has been heavy on rubrics (had to look it up), best practices, student-centered learning (didn't know there was another kind), cohorts, and some other stuff my brain has lost. Gone are the days when teachers taught students. Now, in a student centered (incl. virtual) classroom, they should be active participants in defining course criteria, assignments, grading.... No more lectures where the teacher says, "Here's what you need to know," or, "Write a paper on...." Now the teacher encourages the students to ask questions and then go looking for the answers.

I think.
I'm not sure.
See, I've read so much new stuff that my brain can't keep ahold of it all, never mind integrate it. I used to think I was a pretty decent teacher, but it doesn't look like it, at least by contemporary standards. I didn't have any rubrics or best practices. I just taught.
I'm pretty lost, and buried with all the work.
One. More. Week.

Just to add some interest to this third week, when we got in Pam's Kia to head into the picnic I knew immediately something was wrong. Near as I can tell first gear is gone.
Transmission issues. Oh fun.