I've not had Motivation or Discipline Lately.

I've not had Motivation of Discipline lately: It's been a year since I've posted a blog, and follows a long story that may shed a little light on my low-functioning-ness.

The time between my last post and this started out well indeed. I began my Detailing business, and did ok business in the time that remained in August before I started school. I spent my free time planning for changes in the coming school year, and making some good progress in both Curriculum and Systems Building. I re-invested the money I earned in my business (didn't quite break even with my purchases and tools, but came close, and now had the tools/products and a little liquid cash for the purchase of more), and set on doing the best I could as a teacher.

The fall semester of 2019 was the best I've had in 9 years in terms of efficiency, health, connections with my students, and advancement of my classes and programs!!! I finally achieved my goal of leaving school by 6 pm 95% of nights (many times earlier!!!), and working a max of 4 hours on the weekend and I felt FANTASTIC for it!!! After the Christmas break, Covid hit and it really rattled me. Knowledge of it was already on the wind in February when I took a student to Regional Orchestra, which was decided to go on with precautions in place. We got up very early in the dark of the morning and drove the 4 hours to the school hosting the Festival planning on an excellent 3 days, which she was well prepared for. The Governor of our state held a news conference that morning at 11 am, while auditions were still in full swing (just starting really). The decisions he made caused us and the State Organization that runs the system to cancel the festival that day immediately after all auditions were completed. The kids had gotten one run through of the Symphony they were to be working on for the three days, and then all was over. String auditions lasted into the evening, and once done my student and I set off for the 4 hour trip back home. We arrived late at night, but since our school was still in session the next day - Friday - I went in to work after my 16 hour Thursday. The entire school day was up in the air with questions and a weird air of uncertainty, and 5 minutes before the end of the day, as kids were just starting to line up to head toward buses, the announcement came over the PA "All students and staff take everything home with you you think you will need, school will be locked down for the next two weeks"... So we packed, and left, never to return for the year.

There was not any guidance over those two weeks (from the state) and we teachers were frantically planning for any and all possible outcomes. I spent long, long days researching tech, curating large lists of YouTube educational content for all of my varied classes, and recording video lessons for my Strings kids; I chose YouTube for these too because I live in a very rural area with largely only one option for internet, and that is so far behind the rest of the US that I can only play video content through YouTube, due to it's compression algorithm that lowers the necessary bandwidth low enough for video to work at home: videos loaded to Google Drive, or streamed from another platform - even Facebook - won't even load, let alone play at my home, and the homes of the vast majority of my students....... So YouTube is my only option that will actually work for my students as well as myself. I also tried during that time to plan a safe instrument distribution event so that my kids could get their instruments and play/practice while stuck at home, but with the lack of knowledge and state guidance at this point my school admin said 'no', so my pre-recorded lessons on YouTube weren't much good, especially for Elementary kids who were already on the buses and en route to the High School when the announcement of the two week lockdown was announced. Later in these two weeks, as I was getting content out by driving to school and sitting in the parking lot to upload, I also got some feedback from students that had taken their school chromebook home that YouTube was blocked. I reached out to remedy the situation and my school tech department said that YouTube was off limits, and there was no way I could get them to lift the ban. This was a huge kick in the face because at the time I needed it most, the huge repository of educational material I could use and that other teachers were sharing through linking their lists and personal content through social media for everyone to use during the lockdown, I was banned from using it. Actually, not really: as I was instructed to "make SafeYouTube links" to all of the content I wanted to use. I looked into this option, having whole playlists to share which don't function in SafeYouTube, and not only does doing this go against YouTube's Terms and Conditions, but SafeYouTube itself, on it's front page!!!, states that "We highly respect the intellectual property of Youtubers and recommend our valued users to only use Safe YouTube with videos that they own or have permission to use outside YouTube framework. We are not liable for any breaches of Youtubers' copyrights.

We are not responsible for any copyright infringements and we will remove immediately any video that has a copyright claim."..... meaning, to the best of my understanding, that using this service in the way I was told to was breaking copyright law and stealing and blocking revenue directly from the creators I so desperately needed during this time. If I was a YouTuber who was making great educational content, who suddenly was in demand due to this crisis, I'd be defeated if all of the teachers that were now using my content were stealing it from me and I didn't get any earnings or view-count for my valuable work!!! My conscience won out and I decided that I couldn't do this, and thus chopped off my teaching legs. The chagrin I was subjected to by not being willing to steal really hurt my inertia and determination in already anxiety-ridden times. Never-the-less, I started working on a different tack through Google Classroom instructions, and regular Google Call lessons and videos I had to create-shoot-edit and drive to school to upload (15 miles one way) myself, thus being able to use SafeYouTube for content I actually owned and without breaking the law. I also went through my extensive website and created SafeYouTube links for all of the other videos I have created and posted there over the years (a site for which I pay out-of-pocket a $200ish dollar hosting fee every year, and have since I created it 8 years ago during an administration that was very antagonistic toward helping, or even allowing teachers use the internet, communication tools, and media tools to teach). Through the long slog of lockdown, which was so hard for students, parents, administrators, teachers etc. alike, this tack worked only marginally, and that not even well. It was very hard on me to know I wanted to do better, but was unable to execute...... (like everyone else in the pandemic...). For a final project I decided that I was going to do a Virtual Orchestra for my Jr. High and High Schools groups. Only one song each. My media computer crashed a blue-screen-of-death right after I rolled this plan out, and I spent almost 2 weeks re-building up everything from a fresh Windows install: all of my media creation software is large, and each one would usually take 5 or 6 nights of trying to download and then failing to actually get them re-downloaded (daytime is useless: I'll not be able to use the internet at all and wait for 7 hours while it tries to download, only to fail and have wasted my entire day of not being able to do anything for work...). Once I finally got the necessary tools re-downlaoded (three of which I had to buy updated versions of since the ones I was using were so old they were not available for download with my Serial # anymore -- another $750 down.....) I set to create accompaniments my kids could play along with to keep everything in sync, and help them to practice without the benefit of rehearsing with the group. This took about 2 weeks of entering all of the parts into Finale and creating basic accompaniment tracks, bouncing them to a thumb drive, and driving the 15 miles to school to sit in the parking lot and use the internet to upload these tracks to Classroom and my website. Once they were working, I spent 3 days to shot/edit videos of me conducting these pieces so that the students could put in their earbuds, watch the conducting video, and record their playing along. I then drove to school and uploaded these for the kiddos.

I spent the next month harping on them and trying to work with them to prepare and get these videos in. This was during what I think of as "The Doldrums" of the lockdown, where kids stopped communicating, stopped showing up for lessons/Google Calls/responding to e-mail/etc. I tried so hard to keep them motivated, but it was not easy, and largely ineffective. The due dates came and went, and only 1 Jr. High student submitted a video, and 5 High Schoolers (3 more would trickle in after school ended for the year, so kudos to those kids and the others that did it, even beyond the scope of the assignment!!!). I ended up cancelling the Jr. High Virtual Orchestra, because they were all not responding, and I had to let it go.... The High School one took literally hundreds of hours to download or drive and pick up a thumb drive from kids, edit the videos and audio, edit them all together, and finish/upload the video. I just finished it on July 24!! I learned a lot about needing to demand that they play along with the accompaniment, find a quiet place not close to a tv, don't record right next to a fan on high, don't record when someone's mowing the lawn outside your window, etc, etc, etc. It would've taken an enormous amount of time anyway, but editing out/around all of these things easily took 100 hours....... and that's just to get each of the stems clean and ready to start editing together. I'm very proud of my kids that submitted, and I'm very proud of the outcome, but it was a stressor that lasted a month beyond the end of school (which was extended two weeks for teachers because, apparently, we had two weeks "off" when the lockdown first started...... ugh, I worked longer, harder days in those two weeks than I did at any time in my wonderful, efficient school year up to that point... cest-la-vie...).

I have only gotten a few detailing jobs this summer, and I was oddly burnt out, lethargic, unmotivated for the past month. It's hard to navigate the social temperature as to whether to go strong with my business, or whether people don't want someone around their cars, so it's been hard to make a big push for appointments for me........ School is starting pretty soon, and I'll hear about what the plan for our district is and then have to dive in and plan how to make a weird year actually work soon as well, but I've been trying to hold my health by not worrying about it until there is a clear way forward, something I really struggle with and which can tear me down if I don't control it.

So, I've not been very productive and have not been able to find joy in most any of the things for which ClintonCraft stands for a while now. I'm starting to see the clouds lift, and I hope that it'll be a little easier from here out. For the past month the only things I've found enjoyment doing are life-planning, budgeting, and researching. These are all good, but I'd like to drive some things to fruition for once. I'm starting to develop some plans, strategies, and systems to do just that.

Here's to wholesomeness and productivity from this point forward, and here's the Virtual Orchestra video that the proud small minority of my HS Orchestra kids and I created together!!! Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3As9hxevLtY