This is our fourth Guest Post related to the impact of school and university closings that are catapulting schools into distance teaching on the fly!
This guest post is from commenter Pika, who wrote this in the earlier guest post from A Lurker: (Thanks, Pika!)
Most of what I’m hearing from the students–especially as Lurker put it, the graduating seniors–is grief.
I asked Pika if she might be willing to write up a few things about connecting with students emotionally as so many feel adrift, ripped from friends, communities, and their physical connection to an institution about which some have complained bitterly but yet still find themselves mourning the loss of.
Take it away, Pika!
*****
Beth A. McCoy
SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor
Department of English
I’m an English professor at a public liberal arts school in Western New York. Technology is something with which I’m pretty comfortable, but like so many others I was not prepared to go all-remote for the rest of the semester.
I really appreciated A Lurker’s counsel about the perils of perfectionism, about counting what we are doing in this crisis as real LABOR, about being transparent with students, and most of all about being kind and not leaving students in “radio silence.”
As it turns out, I’ve been sick and isolating at home since Monday, and so I had to transition to remote even before students left campus. I’ve thus had a few intense days of immediate immersion in online teaching. I’ve been reminding myself both to choose my words carefully and emphasizing building and creating right now and for after this crisis resolves. I’ve asked them to think about what world they want to build and create going forward. I’ve tried to remind them that regardless of discipline, they all have a stealth major: learning to deal with complicated institutions, for with very few exceptions, they’ll be involved with such institutions long after they leave campus. And even as I’ve shared explainers about ‘flattening the curve,’ I’ve tried hard to remain in my disciplinary lane.
My campus uses Canvas, and so for the first time I’m trying to take advantage of the discussion forums and chat function. The chat I’ve used just for students to tell each other where they are, what their physical surroundings are (e.g., cat, no cat), and what they’re thinking and feeling.
It’s been kind of funny, dashing virtually from the chat function to a discussion forum and then back to chat so that we can bookend the academic work in the discussion forum with the feeling work in the chat.
But the bookending with emotion is important no matter the discipline: biochemistry, business, sociology. Students have just lost their peer group. Some fear for themselves, their families, their towns, and their countries. And so if you are in this situation, I guess my best counsel is to decide what emotional marks you want to hit and then hit them often. Remind them that whether in an accounting, dance, or history course, they are in this together, and they’ll get through it together.
Here are some concrete examples:
I offered the following Canvas questionnaire:
Can you please tell me a little bit about what/how you’re feeling right now? Knowing this will help me bend the course around you.
Can you tell me a little bit about the internet access in the place you stay when you’re not on campus? Do you think you’ll be able to access Canvas and Google documents, for instance? Feel free to tell me about any other tech concerns you might have, including laptop/device access.
Is there anything else you think I should know, anything else you’d like to express?
And in one of my classes, I offered this discussion prompt:
Please read this article reflecting upon Toni Morrison’s 1993 Nobel lecture and listen to the speech (audio embedded in the article).
“How lovely it is, this thing we have done — together.”
As the world as it is has prevented us from meeting face to face to reflect on the last collaborative process, we have to adjust to our new circumstances. I ask that you take some time to craft a careful, thoughtful response to the following:
Did you learn anything about yourself through the process of contributing to the first collaborative essay? What will the challenges be as you embark on the next collaborative process amid circumstances that have radically changed in practical, technological, and emotional terms? What steps do you commit to taking to explore what is possible and offer hope during a challenging time?
Please use class time to write your own response and post it.
Over break, please read your peers’ responses and write back meaningfully to them. Make each other feel heard and seen. This is a way to maintain the fabric between you so that when you return to take up the threads of the next collaborative essay, you won’t be strangers.
Carefully crafted words that flower in the fullest, best parts of humanity can be packed up and taken with you wherever you go. Work your magic.
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
*****
Note from WaterGirl:
For sharing, and for future reference for yourself, you might want to bookmark the whole series.
https://www.balloon-juice.com/category/health-care/covid-19/distance-teaching-coronavirus/
You can also find it under Featuring in the sidebar (it’s in the menu bar / hamburger on mobile).
Elizabelle
I love that you guys are doing this series of posts. I am not a teacher, but find your suggestions really interesting.
Thanks, Pika, for your blogpost today.
zhena gogolia
Thank you so much for this. I need to get to work on my own courses today, but I look forward to reading this carefully later. I have written to my students, and some of them are in great distress.
pika
@Elizabelle: Thank you for this response–it’s great that WaterGirl is curating these!
pika
@zhena gogolia: I wonder if you think it might be helpful for our students to write some encouragement to each other? My job is to be calm but not robotic, to share that I am worried but not panicked. Therefore my toolbox is limited for actually providing comfort. But students knowing that they are connected across institutions might be helpful–
WaterGirl
Repost from the introductory post:
I you have thoughts or experience or recommendations that might help someone else, please consider writing them up for a guest post. It takes a village!
zhena gogolia
@pika:
Yes, that’s a good idea. I’m just so swamped by trying to figure out the mechanics of this . . . .
Elizabelle
@pika:
Agreed. Three cheers to WaterGirl for being so creative and proactive. This is a really good use of the blog.
BGinCHI
Thanks for this post, Beth! Geneseo! (Buffalo PhD here)
As I said in Martin’s thread, I’m going to do something similar in my classes in terms of prompts + responses, then build those out into chats and BJ-style post+thread comments.
Medium Cool meets the virtual classroom.
Thanks also to WaterGirl for curating these posts. So needed!
You know, we’re really gonna find out about the strength of our communities in the next month or two….
WaterGirl
@BGinCHI: I just sent you an email, and then came back to your comment. I conjured you up! I had no idea I was that powerful. :-)
WaterGirl
I just sent an email message to a friend in Mexico, so I put on James Taylor’s “Mexico” on YouTube as I wrote. I found it instantly calming, which made me think of the conversation we’re having here.
I wonder if there’s a way to include music in the online classes occasionally – as a way to keep the students engaged but also perhaps as a way to calm fears or provide comfort. Maybe even having a bit of music on as the class starts? Someone this week mentioned that just hearing the kids or the dogs in the background of one of their distance learning classes helped with their connection to the instructor and the class.
Omnes Omnibus
I don’t currently teach, but, fwiw, I have forwarded the link to the series to people I know who do. I AM HELPING, DAMN IT!
BGinCHI
@WaterGirl:
Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man. But will they come when you do call for them?
debbie
Students here at OSU (the The has been quarantined for its own safety) have a petition going on change.org. They are demanding refunds for part of their room and board (“their amenities”) they will lose because they have to vacate the campus.
pika
@Omnes Omnibus: This made me laugh…a lot. THANK YOU
Fleeting Expletive
What a perfect laboratory for social scientists! “The Dynamic progress of familial/social relationships under involuntary temporary isolation” or something, pertaining to quarantined populations in Italy/ Seattle/cruiseships. What really will happen to extended proximity in marriages, roommate, sibling relationships? Birth rate spike, sure. Domestic violence, OMG.
After the mail was delivered this morning my thought was, Well, that’s the last face I’ll probably see until he comes by on Monday. This level of solitude may be dangerous for people predisposed to anxiety and depression.
A good deed from hotel chains not getting their usual business would be to maintain their supply chains for, like the soap and other stuff in rooms, to donate to the homeless. Distribution of free soap bars and bottled water would be a good public health measure as well as maintaining their own commercial suppliers’ businesses. Carrying soap is probably not a bad idea either.
Balaban
Another university professor here. I am so grateful for these posts and sharing them with friends. We have an active Center for Teaching which has been carefully focused on student needs and equity, so thank goodness that is already a part of the conversation. I reached out to my students individually in some cases and am shattered by the amount of pain they are in. One of my students told me he is afraid he’ll never see his boyfriend again, once they are dispersed to conservative families on opposite sides of the country. I don’t think we have even begin to recognize the depths these kids are in. The lesson here is, keep expectations for thoughtful and precise work low and modify your syllabus to emphasize support rather than measurable goals. And each student I connected with mentioned that no other faculty had yet reached out to simply ask how they are. Best to you all–you are doing good work here.
PenAndKey
@debbie: I can see that. Room and board and campus services were more than half of the tuition at my college when I attended. I’d be pissed if I was kicked off campus and expected to pay for any of that still if I were them.
FlyingToaster
As a parent of a Middle Schooler, a former instructional designer (approximately 12 years out of date, see said Middle Schooler), and having just returned from our last live instruction for the forseeable future, Thanks SO MUCH for this series.
Our Middle School and Music Schools are going to Zoom for classroom work, effective Monday. Instruction starts Wednesday for Middle School, next Saturday for Music School (because WG’s violin teacher is in Honduras this week). We have a Monday pickup of materials at school (it looks like PK-5 without older siblings come Tuesday). The Aikikai is closed until further notice.
I’ll keep checking in on these threads, because right now, I think a lot of us will need to report on how things are working in the field.
Another Scott
@Balaban:
Heartbreaking. :-(
Here’s hoping that we all start recovering from this within the next 6 months or so. (Or sooner!)
Thanks very much for this, Beth. The emotional side is so very important. School is so difficult as it is, everyone involved must be scared and upset and more.
Thanks WG and everyone who is posting. I don’t teach (I’m at a research institution) – this is helpful and important. I hope it gets a lot of visibility.
Cheers,
Scott.
smintheus
I have to teach two courses remotely, both of them historical courses (35 and 18 students) for a college of about 2000 students – so a fairly tight knit community. I’m sure our students feel some combination of fear, despair, anger at being cheated of their (expensive) college experience, and a sense of dislocation.
I was initially thinking of doing a few simple things: live discussions of primary source readings (maybe just audio connection) each preceded by several short videos/podcasts/written notes that present a partial lecture framing the issues and presenting historical context (maybe also walking students through the occasional slide show). Supplemented with some Blackboard fora in which students can ask/respond to questions; and discuss issues in advance of the live discussions; and occasionally work in small groups on a larger presentation/project.
What I’ve been wondering about mainly is this: Would it help students cope better – or worse – if I did some of this stuff in a light hearted fashion, treating the mini lectures as liberating rather than confining? For example, rather than going the simple route of recording podcasts, instead doing these as mini-videos while outdoors at unexpected locations or hiking in the woods, or in the study with tongue-in-cheek musical breaks (“An innocent bystander, Somehow I got stuck between a rock and a hard place, And I’m down on my luck”) or hand written titles. I know that at least some of my students enjoy oddball humor in the classroom, but whether it would be too much in this strange new world is hard for me to gauge. Some students might just prefer not to be annoyed by another dumb thing.
I suspect that our ban of in-person classes is going to be extended for most of the rest of the semester, but for now the college is saying just for the 2 weeks after spring break.
pika
@smintheus: Maybe ask the students what they think about the lightheartedness? I am confident that it’s impossible that they’ll be unified on that or any other subject, but asking them to consider the both/and (i.e., the risks and the rewards) might make them feel that they have more of a stake in the course, regardless of what you eventually decide…
Central Planning
I work for Cisco, and Zoom is a direct competitor to our WebEx product. I don’t want to turn this in to a product pitch, but we are offering our regular version for free for 90 days (which has a few more features than our base free version).
If you’re using WebEx (and even if you’re not), you can register for different WebEx training classes. Click “Load More” at the bottom of the page to see more options. Some sessions (most are 30 minutes) are:
There are some others there that are relevant to remote working but not necessarily education.
If anyone has WebEx questions, I can probably answer them (or find someone who can!)
Also, previous session recordings can be found here.
Kent
Just starting this at the HS level. Here in WA all public schools are closed for 6 weeks. Having done this a little bit before, my advice would be 3-fold.
Let/encourage your students to turn your class portal into a social gathering space. Let them build or maintain an online community of friends. If they want to use an online comment section to talk about Netflix options, let them. They need it. That will keep them checking back in to your site.
Empower your bright students to take leadership roles. I’ve done some partial online AP classes where I would log in at say 9 pm to check on the class and there has already been 10 questions about the homework that have been answered and analyzed by other students. It is an amazing thing when the class runs in your absence. Maybe have some virtual study hall times or something when student class leaders can be available for instant messaging help. Something like that.
Let your students help you. My daughter is a soon-to-graduate senior at the Univ. of Arkansas and her friends are all sending merciless memes around about old professors and online learning. “Hire” some of them as virtual TAs for extra credit or something to help you organize your virtual course content and that sort of thing. They are better at it then you are. The digital equivalent of having students make your photocopies.
Central Planning
Also, previous session recordings can be found here. I tried to add that to my last message after posting, but clearly it didn’t take.
Kent
@smintheus: I would love the humor and I think most students would to. As long as you aren’t being too black or insensitive about it. I wouldn’t joke about coronavirus, for example. You might have a student who’s grandmother just died. But the sorts of examples you give? They sound great.
TomatoQueen
My question a few days ago about how St John’s would cope has been answered at least in part, in that there will be no return from spring break, and the St John’s academic calendar tends to run well into June. This has broken some seniors’ hearts, as their academic requirements are completed by this point (Senior Essay is turned in and accepted, oral exam on the paper is done) but the loveliest part of the Program is yet to come, favorite readings and enough skill in seminar so that the conversation naturally becomes Good Talk, whether about Lobachevsky or the Right-hand Rule, Lincoln’s Speeches or Plato’s Phaedrus; all these Last Things are torn away. In Santa Fe, night before last, a seminar night, the Philosophy Kidz were out on the Quad, singing a cappella, a Leibnizian paean to the Newtonian Italians. In Annapolis, well, if it were my era, there’s be a keg going, but hell they don’t smoke there any more; no formal announcement about the annual Croquet Tournament, in which we beat Navy and the whole town comes out to spend some damn money, but likely it’s cancelled this time.
WaterGirl
@Kent: Would you consider writing up a guest post, expanding on what you wrote here?
WaterGirl
@Central Planning: I added that to your original comment. Hope that’s okay.
BGinCHI
@TomatoQueen: That place sounds like a YA novel about college, and I mean that in the best way.
Hogwarts with no Voldemort.
Or Kanelos as Voldemort. Your choice.
mvr
Just sent out a notice to my 150 student class to give them an overview of what to expect when we get rolling again in two weeks. I was actually expecting to start Monday but the University decided to go the week before Spring break without instruction.
I’m going to try to use Zoom with Powerpoint slides on the desktop to do the lectures for a large philosophy class meeting twice a week with smaller discussion sections meeting once a week with TAs as well. I will distribute my notes/handout via PDF to help them follow along (as I do in class). And I will also record the lectures and make them available on Canvas. The downside that I see looking ahead is losing a lot of the interactiveness that I try to build into even the large lecture (not that I am great at it) using clickers followed by some student back and forth. Since some students use physical clickers they would have to sign up for Reef accounts to connect remotely, though I guess they are now free courtesy of iclicker in response to the virus. But I’m not sure I can pull that off easily.
Also not sure how bandwidth issues will shake out. I have super fast internet at home and can go to campus to do do the classes as well, but the students will have a range of connections and some of these may be problematic. So my guess is that the problems will come on that end. I won’t know until we try it in two weeks.
Thanks for the thread!
Fingers crossed . . .
Brachiator
@smintheus:
Sounds great if it matches your style. You don’t want to come across as corny or forced, or let the background and theatrics get in the way of what you are teaching.
Also, if you are outside, watch out that distracting sound a mike might catch don’t cause a distraction. Same with potentially distracting background visuals.
TomatoQueen
@BGinCHI: The similarities to Hogwarts, particularly as to academic structure and insane rituals, are quite striking at times. And every era that I know about developed its own Voldemort, whether it was the Dean by default, or Heidegger as long as the senior German faculty were running things, or Mortimer Adler.
Argiope
I’m late to these threads, but just want to applaud them. I’ve taught graduate health professionals almost exclusively online for 11 years, and these tips are golden. It is really possible to create an active and caring community of inquiry even for completely asynchronous courses, and synchronous discussions and other activities will likely help disrupted communities of undergraduates stay connected to one another over the coming months. We’ve found that high levels of engagement (with other students, with faculty, with the university) really improve performance and reduce attrition, a real threat as students’ attention and cognitive bandwidth are stretched by this pandemic and all its implications. I’ve learned new things reading these tips. Like Omnes, I’ve forwarded them to some educator friends who are doing the online McGyvering thing now, and they’ve appreciated them as well. Thanks again!
Kent
@WaterGirl: I don’t really have a lot more to add. Everyone’s portals are different. The stuff they are using at the university level is way more sophisticated than the free google classroom stuff we use in HS which is basically facebook groups for schools.
But at the HS level with a lot of kids getting sent home and being more or less isolated from their usual friends, I think there is benefit to letting them use your class to maintain connections and to some extent socialize like they would do in school. They already do that with their actual friends on social media. But not necessarily with the wider group that you have in class.
I don’t teach AP classes this year so I’m not stressing the grind towards some eventual monster exam in May. I’m just going to try to keep them engaged. I’m not really even going to stress the grading and will make most things completion grades or check-offs. I expect about 1/2 of my students will be more or less diligent about doing the work and the other half won’t even look at it until a day or two before it is time to go back to school.
No one has any idea how this is going to play out. But I am pretty positive at the HS level they will do everything possible to make sure that:
There is no possible world in which coronavirus school closures result in massive numbers of students getting set back. That’s just not to happen. Especially in a world where private schools and home schools have zero standards to follow.
Martin
@debbie: We’re discussing that as a campus. I’m guessing it’ll happen, but its going to take a little time to sort it out.
WaterGirl
@Kent: Thank you!
Kent
Isn’t it the opposite? I thought Hogworts was more or less a caricature of English boarding schools. The recent movie Tolkein about the early life of JRR Tolkien portrays much the same thing about his time in English schools and at Oxford.
Kent
One thing I do expect? That these unusual times will inspire new creative forms of online collaboration that we haven’t seen yet and haven’t even imagined. Anyone remember Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choirs? The first one is now 10 years old, believe it or not. I expect new versions of this sort of thing to flourish over the next months as people figure out how to connect and create online in our new age of “social distancing” https://ericwhitacre.com/the-virtual-choir
Central Planning
@WaterGirl: That’s fine. Thanks!
hofeizai
This series so far has been great. How would one volunteer to contribute? I live and teach in China, and in February became an online teacher, much to my surprise. Surveyed my students last week, and got rave reviews (“Not too bad,” “I can understand you most of the time,“ and “fine, I guess.”) I don’t have much new expertise, but know a bit of what this is like over a month in