Grades are due today at UCI as we come to the end of the fourteenth week of grappling with shuttered classrooms, unpredictably unstable wifi, a public health fiasco, and economic crisis. We’re never fully aware of other people’s struggles, but the consequences of covid-19 have made this truth more apparent; the situation brings the presumption of struggle to the top of our minds. The addition of urgent, intense, and persistent widespread public protests against racism and violent policing—despite the health risks now inherent in such gatherings—mean we all have a lot to talk about with our students, no matter what we teach.
The SOH-FLC rounded out this unprecedented and troubling spring quarter of all-remote teaching and learning by thinking ahead to next year. Despite uncertainties about what the 2020 summer sessions or the 2020-21 academic year will hold, we collectively set some priorities for addressing our students’ needs, our needs as instructors, and more general challenges for maintaining our sanity and humanity—as individuals and for the university community.
Our conversation reaffirmed the stress of working long-term in a crisis mentality, emphasizing the need for moral support among teachers and the role our classes can play in providing such support and a sense of community for students. “What does it mean to teach when your country is falling apart?” we asked. We did not find a clear answer in 90 minutes of robust conversation. Voicing the question collectively turned out to be a cathartic transition from wrapping up this year to looking ahead to the next.
The other foundational question we grappled with: What is our ethical obligation as professors? How is this entangled with the current higher-ed landscape populated by instructors who teach many more classes than we do at the UC, the different expectations of teaching at learning at UCs, CSUs, community colleges, and private schools? In this context, what are our obligations to the many adjunct instructors who are our colleagues?
We didn’t only tangle with the moral and political implications of our work. In spite of world-wide trauma, we still have practical questions about mounting effective, meaningful classes that work in real time—whether experienced synchronously or asynchronously. Next year, we’d like to hear from colleagues about:
- successful practices for discussion boards
- a range of experiences teaching online
We’re also interested in sessions about
- What do we think we’re doing when we teach?
- How do we reckon with grade inflation as a consequence of exercising compassion and flexibility?
- Might student self-evaluations be one way to address this conundrum?
Although we may have ended this year asking more questions than we answered, I’m confident that we continue to find support in addressing teaching as a communal project and that we improve the experience for our students and ourselves by approaching our instructional engagements as problem solving rooted in structured intellectual inquiry.