Truth was, I needed to grieve the loss of the physical classroom, my office, and the right-in-front-of-me relationships with my students. I didn\u2019t realize this, however, until I showed up for Sean Michael Morris<\/a> and Jesse Stommel<\/a>‘s first set of office hours for educators (which you can read about in this lovely piece<\/a> at The Chronicle of Higher Ed.). There I asked for help in reframing my trimester as something other than a terrible loss. Jesse replied, in the chat window \u2013 \u201cIsn\u2019t it all loss right now?\u201d and I almost burst into tears again. This time it was because someone affirmed that there was<\/em> loss involved in switching teaching gears this way, and I didn\u2019t have to put a cheery face on an experience that was disorienting and made me sad.<\/p>\n Jesse suggested that for him, it was easier to feel the buzz of a room through textual means rather than audio or visual cues. I\u2019d already set up a Slack channel to communicate with my students, so I decided I\u2019d make a channel for us to discuss books there, and give that a try.<\/p>\n It was a revelation. We couldn\u2019t see each other, but people\u2019s senses of humor came through in every gif deployed to sum up a historian\u2019s argument. We could leave emoji reactions on each other\u2019s comments, so even when discussion moved fast, I could affirm to everyone contributing that I\u2019d seen their words and thought they were great. We could bounce ideas one off each other, and I could pull in documents and images from the web when the conversation took a new turn.<\/p>\n At the end of last week I polled my students to ask if they wanted to do Zoom or Slack, and they all said Slack. I felt profound gratitude and relief.<\/p>\n I wanted to record this moment because the stories I\u2019ve seen circulating on twitter have mostly been success stories \u2013 stories about flawless switches to a new online environment and about loving students and finding purpose in being with them. I am 100% behind everyone who\u2019s had that experience; who wouldn\u2019t want to celebrate that? But I also know I\u2019m not the only person who must have had major hiccups in trying to get this thing rolling, who\u2019s felt terrible loss as they\u2019ve done so, and who didn\u2019t have the resources or energy within themselves to solve the problem alone.<\/p>\n I needed a community of teachers to give me ideas for getting online, and to hold space for me when I couldn\u2019t figure it out, and to give me advice when I felt completely isolated. I needed Sean and Jesse\u2019s office hours, and simple affirmations of kindness. I needed time, and to push back against the narrative that time is a scarce commodity.<\/p>\n I needed the space to understand that one (or three, or five) awful class(es) through a brand-new medium did not an awful teacher make. I needed to know it\u2019s okay to be a beginner again. And if that\u2019s you, I want to affirm how hard you\u2019re working, how much you\u2019re putting into this, how hard it is to make this switch on a dime, and how many people there are who can help you.<\/p>\n Thank you, everyone, for trying \u2013 for ourselves, for our institutions, and most of all for our students. Thank you for dealing with loss and change even as you have to keep moving forward. Thank you for showing up exactly as you are, and becoming a beginner again, just like me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After teaching my first emergency distance-learning class, I burst into tears. My upper-level seminar class contained just eight students, so we met on Zoom as I thought it would do us all good to see one another. But the experience was nothing like I had come to know and love in a face-to-face environment. With mics muted, we couldn\u2019t hear ambient noise, or laugh with one another, or quickly follow up with one another\u2019s comments. Some students had tech issues…<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/abc-books-chalk-chalkboard-265076-scaled.jpg\")
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