Last week my friend S. sent me this meme and a message that said “Sending you love and laughs, friend.” I wrote back “OMG. Amen.” I felt so seen, and so in commiseration with her. Why? Because S. is a student, and I am a professor.
Here is a bit of context: S. and I met because our kiddos went to the same daycare. We learned, after a while, that we’re at the same university. She is in the sciences, I’m not. I’m a prof, she’s a student. She has classes on neuroscience and I teach creative writing and literature courses. In many ways it might seem we’ve not got a lot of commonality, but let me tell you: it feels good to compare notes. When we aren’t chatting about kids and their experiences this fall, we’re talking about how challenging it is to be on either side of the classroom this year. She is taking all her classes online. I am teaching all my classes online. We laugh about the difficulty of navigating bizarre and clunky pedagogical platforms (and then usually deferring to zoom in the end). We talk about how unexpectedly draining it is to talk to a computer screen (me) or stare at a talking head on a computer screen (her). And more than anything what we are noticing is that the increase of screen time and the near to totally deficit of face-to-face instruction is depleting.
I knew that the move to online teaching would be difficult. Unlike many of my colleagues, and indeed many regular Hook & Eye readers and contributors, I am not a particularly digitally-situated pedagogue. I rely, I realize, on the kinds of teaching tools that I haven’t yet found ways to translate into the online platform. I knew, though, that in many (most?) ways, online teaching would be more work. For example, my courses are all asynchronous. It is important to say that this is the case for really good reasons: students are taking them from all over the world, meaning time zones are a real factor in accessing the material. Some students don’t have enough bandwidth for synchronous teaching. Accessibility is an issue across a range of specificities. And, unlike with synchronous and in person teaching, this means that my lectures are scripted, with slides. It is just a fundamentally different mode of teaching for me, and it takes a lot more time to prepare a lecture. These are just a few very small examples, but suffice to say I knew this would be different and that it would be more work.
I did not anticipate some of the ways in which it would leave me feeling both over extended and, strangely, simultaneously feeling isolated. I think students are having similar experiences, at least some of the time.
In the coming weeks we’ll have a suite of guest posts from writers who are focused on the nuances, complications, opportunities, and silver linings of this online year. Stay tuned, and let us know if you would like to pitch a post. I, for one, am keen to connect.
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