The price of progress.

It is the first week of school.

And it is driving me crazy.

A good kind of crazy, mostly.

There are the typical irritations of overexcited teenagers, but those are easy.

My growing flexible seating experiment has its moments too.

But it is my timing that has made me bonkers.

Every day this week my timing has been off, like way off, like 15 minutes off.

I couldn't for the life of me figure out why.

Why is everything taking less time than anticipated?

That is not normal.

Usually, everything takes longer.

Yesterday, it finally dawned on me.

It is the doggone Chromebooks.

This is our first year as a 1:1 school and it has screwed up my timing.

Here is why:

For the last few years, I have had to plan for 10 to 15 minutes of dead time when we used the laptop carts.

A few minutes to check them out.

A few more minutes for them to load.

A few extra minutes to get them all plugged in when the batteries stopped holding a charge.

And another few minutes to put them away again.

I have planned lessons integrating extra time so frequently, it has become subconscious.

So this week, when everyone (or almost anyway), had a brand new Chromebook that worked instantly...

Well, my classes didn't need all those extra minutes, my brain just didn't know it.

This is a mixed blessing.

I mean, of course, it is a good thing.

It is an awesome thing.

But it left me a little out of sorts and rather discombobulated.

I wound up with a whole extra day this week, but I didn't have a whole extra lesson plan...

In the end, that extra time will make up for next week's picture day quite nicely.

Once in a while, a good thing comes with a little frustration or discomfort.

The price of progress, I guess.

An easy price, but unexpected.