In her annual address yesterday, UW President Ana Mari Cauce noted that “the UW became the first major university in the nation to switch to remote learning over the course of a single weekend, Our incredible faculty pivoted to teach remotely — faculty, instructors, and teaching assistants. The fact that our university continued to deliver on its core mission of serving students will forever be a credit to you.”
What I had not anticipated was the level of exhaustion that comes with pivoting back to the classroom while the pandemic continues to chase us. Understanding that the campus environment is a safer one than nearly anywhere else one can imagine does not offset the ever-present worry for all of us. I have written elsewhere about how the pandemic has magnified our cultural rifts and exacerbated fears of science and the government both.
Teaching under such circumstances has its rewards — the gleam in students’ eyes when they get it, or seeing that contact with a fellow student is more important than checking their smartphone during a ten minute break — as does the simple fact that I can see each and every one of their faces and their expressions and respond to what I see when I am speaking.
But since the first week of class I have been dealing with students who are not in the classroom because they are awaiting the results of a COVID test, or who are dealing with an emergency situation at home. The number of missing students for any given session ranges from eight to ten of 32. That most absences are due to colds or flu (determined after a COVID test) is just another challenge that we all face.
Last night we had our first guest speaker who spoke with us over Zoom. Fortunately, one of my students reminded me to turn on captioning before our guest — epidemiologist Dr. Judy Malmgren — began speaking — so we were all able to rise above the technical challenges of speaking through a mask and of having uneven volume levels. The students had excellent questions for her, including one that invited her to speculate at what our lives would look like after this pandemic had receded. Another student reminded us that, though our lives were much improved from last winter, we had lost friends and family along the way.
Next week is all about a more cheerful topic, innovation risk. Until then, I’ll be trying to rest my mind so I can genuinely enjoy being in the classroom, rather than worrying about students who are ill or what else could go wrong.