In The Face of COVID-19, An Invitation

For my class this fall, I was asked to submit the format I would utilize in response to COVID-19:

1. Must be on campus.

2. Would like to be on campus.

3. Hybrid—on campus and online.

4. Online asynchronous.

5. Online synchronous.

Most teachers across the country are facing similar decisions.  I like working with students in person because it is responsive and organic.  There is spontaneity and creativity, especially with discussions.  Zoom meetings are fine, but they lose a little in transmission over the digital ether; there is a delay that is stilted, or the Wi-Fi chooses its moments to cut out leading to garbled speech and pixelated images.

Beyond that, I am not so sure COVID-19 will have run its course by fall.  I am thinking that I should plan ahead regarding a second wave of infection and keep the course online.  Like all of the classes and workshops I teach, the course is discussion-based and because its mandate is to help students who are struggling with academics and college life, the curriculum is set up to respond to the needs of the students in that particular class in that particular semester.  The instructor and the students determine how deep we delve and what areas we explore.  In short, it is much different from an academic class where there is prescribed material that must be covered in the eighteen weeks.  In this course, we allow and expect tangents.

Within the limits dictated by COVID-19, I chose online synchronous.  Students will need to log on at the same time each week in a Zoom meeting and we will proceed from there.  At some point in the fall, if the threat of the virus diminishes, I might be able to move it back on campus.  This choice will change the way we conduct class, but I felt a tinge of excitement at the prospect of rethinking the course and how to operate in the digital and virtual classroom.

Scholars of history say that the rise of Bubonic plague in the fourteenth century led to the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  The entire culture was forced to change because of a flea, to put it in succinct terms.

Here in the twenty-first century, we are dropping social etiquette procedures like the handshake as greeting, and we are learning to work from home and conduct business in ways we have only dreamed about previously.  How many times have we considered telecommuting?  We spend so much wasted time in traffic, clogging our freeways and destroying our lungs.  Now, as we commute down the hall, traffic accidents are down and the crime rate has improved.  Air quality is fantastic.  In Venice, Italy, schools of fish can be seen in the canals which were formerly murky and polluted.

We also have changed our social mores.  Although wearing a mask in public has been met with ridicule by less enlightened Americans, it is a custom among East-Asian cultures to wear face coverings to prevent the spread of disease.  It is a sign of respect to cover the mouth when sick so as not to sneeze or cough or even speak and spread germs.  We are rewriting the rules of social engagement with our six feet of separation and our hand-washing.  Americans are reluctant to adopt these revised measures, but maybe it is time to rethink the way we operate.  A simple bow over a bear hug is a good thing, especially in light of the fact that coronavirus was not the first and definitely will not be the last contagion to spread throughout the world.  This COVID-19 situation will be the norm rather than the exception.  With SARS, avian flu, Ebola, we can no longer afford to be callous about personal space and hygiene.

This is, despite the tragic death toll and those desperately sick, an opportunity for creativity.  We have the chance to remake the social operating procedures that we have never questioned before coronavirus.  We can rethink and reinvent the way we educate, shop, live, and work.  This COVID-19 is propelling us into a new age.  Will it be a second Renaissance?  Too early to tell, but we should not fight whatever changes it brings.

This weekend, we are holding our first orientation completely online for new students.  The change is so dramatic as to be disconcerting in some ways.  Some sessions will involve a hundred or more students in a Zoom meeting.  How do we get everyone’s microphone muted so there is no feedback noise?  What if the internet goes down?  What if we fail to notice the student’s signal to ask a question?  Most important, how do we give them a sense of what college life will be like when we are not at the college but in a digital netherworld, each of us ensconced in our offices or homes?  We will be separate, that is for sure, but we are not alone.  In a sense, we are now, truly, a mosaic—little picture tiles on a screen that taken together, add up to the portrait of the freshmen class of 2020.

Is it real if we are part of a virtual group?  Many of our planned activities strive to make students feel excited about this new phase in their lives where they will study diverse curricula and interact with a multicultural population of teachers and peers as they ease into adulthood.  It is hard not to see it as just one person alone with a screen pretending to be part of some nebulous group, one declared cohesive even cleaved as it is by the physical divide.  Can we build a digital bridge to togetherness?  We can, and we will.  Human ingenuity will make it so.  It is up to us to accept the invitation extended by the circumstances of COVID-19, and find a way to flourish in this new, very real world.  Welcome to it.