This is hard.
Really, really hard.
Practically every effective teaching tool I have developed in my 20 years of practice is inaccessible, with students confined to desks facing the front and at a distance that precludes p2p or small group conversation.

The classroom feels cavernous with only 9 students in it. Nine nervous, lonely, socially distant but wanting to make new friends or see old friends fourteen year olds, each hidden behind a mask two metres away from potentially their new best friend.

150 minutes is an ETERNITY with all these restrictions on movement and interaction.
Nothing about this even approximates good teaching or good learning. The system is designed to throw us back to 1950, without even the joy of hanging out before and after school or at lunch.

Fourteen year old me would have gone BANANAS; fifty year old me is close.
And we get to do it all over again tomorrow with another half class of anxious grade nines. My great challenge for the year is to find room for us all to be human in these institutional constraints.

Hug your kids when they get home today. And hug your teachers, too, if you've got 'em.