This will be a VERY BRIEF post as I only took two photos and NOTHING different happened all week. Well, other than the number of daily cases of COVID-19 in Thailand surged from 10,000 to more than 16,400 yesterday (it’s around 15,800 today). I ended up staying at home all week — teaching online from my fourth floor apartment mostly due to the construction (and other) noises at the school. It was nice and quiet, downright enjoyable (and it wasn’t until Thursday afternoon that I realized I didn’t need to sit at my desk and teach, moving my base of operations to a Japanese tray table on my bed — my background image was that of a classroom and now I was relaxed and positioned between my floor and ceiling fans for a much cooler “experience”).

The students are supposedly returning to on-site classes tomorrow, Valentine’s Day. However, this was NEWS to most of them when I mentioned this during my online lessons last week. Several parents told me outright that they felt it was still too “dangerous” for their children to come back to school. My feeling is that there will be half-empty classrooms with some students on-site and others online. I assume that I will have to broadcast my lessons if that happens although nobody has told me one way or the other.

I printed a few flashcards while I was in the office today so that I have something to use in the classes. However, it was taking a long time (the computers in our office still use Windows 7 and nothing has been updated in YEARS) and I didn’t want to use ALL of their ink so I decided I would just load everything onto my tablet and display “digital flashcards” rather than the laminated variety. For the online students, I will record a short video of my PowerPoint presentation for each level (I am only teaching P1 and P4 levels this term) that I can upload and provide a link for them to watch during the lessons.

Besides, any students who actually show up tomorrow will be more interested in chatting with their friends and swapping Valentine’s Day stickers than in anything I will have for them. I did make a Love-themed lesson with cards and games but forgot to buy colored paper for the students to make their own Valentine cards. Oh, well. I did buy heart-shaped candies and a few stickers to hand out on Monday (and, perhaps, the rest of the week too for the younger kids).

Other than teaching all week, I graded quizzes each evening and re-designed my scoring spreadsheets as well as creating lesson plans and flashcards/presentations for the upcoming week. Fairly boring, routine stuff but I was proud of my level of productivity. I even found time to add some music into my MusicBee program and put together an article about this year’s Love stamps for Philatelic Pursuits. The only time I left the apartment all week (other than quick trips to the market) was to teach lessons at Central Festival on Thursday evening and this morning.

Still reading The Cowboy and the Cossak.

That is all….