Starting Over

It's Sunday Morning and I'm sitting in my office at school with papers and books spread across my desk, spilling onto the floor to the point that I can't move with tackling a project or making a final decision on what to do with this pile or that pile. Why you ask? Because the new semester starts tomorrow.

It feels like the day before the first day of school in September. There's new classes, new students, the chance to start again, do things differently, do them better, engage students in different ways, apply new things I've learned over the last four to five months. But that's not what I've been concentrating on. I've rearranged my office, added another file cabinet, cleaned my desk, cleaned my files, cleared my bulletin board, and purged, purged, purged. My recycling box is overflowing!

And I sit here thinking, wow, I've got a mess going here, but do I know what I'm going to do in class tomorrow? Jeez!! This happen every year. I start over, I start fresh, clean out the old, get ready for something new. And no matter how much I prepare and plan, it's still the day before the new class and I'm at school putting the final touches together.

But you know what? That's ok, I'm not alone. I've run into colleagues here this morning, I've talked to people doing school work from home, and I know my principal will be in today (well she is every Sunday, so that maybe doesn't really count). This is what we do, and this is what most people don't ever see. The Sunday morning work before church session. The 2am sessions finishing up things. Twelve hour days so we can go home and not do school work for one night. These are teachers. These are people I work with. These are my people, my tribe, and I'm proud to be part of this.

So.......guess I better get back at it........new students to connect with tomorrow, gotta get my A game on! Happy New Semester!

Organize Your App Launcher in Google

For those of you that are like me, you like to have things a certain way. Some might call this controlling, I call it being organized.

My App Launcher in Google is no exception. And in my personal account I can drag the icons around, but in my GAFE school account, I downloaded the App Launcher Customizer.

With this extension, I get the Configure option at the bottom of my App window that you see in the picture below.

When I click on Configure it opens a new window (see below).  On the right side I can drag the icons around and put them in the order I want. On the left are additional icons I can add to my app launcher simply by dragging them over. You may need to refresh your window before the changes go into effect, but you should not need to close and reopen anything.

 

Once again I am in control!