My Rough Re-entry to the Classroom

Like most educators, I’ve been teaching remotely on Zoom since March 2020, for almost three semesters. Now we are back in the classroom, which is a wonderful milestone.  Barnard College has worked so hard to equip classrooms, solve ventilation problems, reconfigure dorms, as well as set up and pay for extensive testing of students, faculty and staff. They have invested a huge amount of money, especially considering we are not a rich school, though people assume it is. Our Provost and President, and everyone working on the transition, have been extraordinary. I feel grateful to be here, but that does not mean everything has gone smoothly for me.

I had gotten used to being in my apartment, teaching and meeting my students for class on Zoom, even using FaceTime calls for advising when Zoom wasn’t the best option for them. I put in a huge amount of time preparing for these classes, doing things differently, even changing my courses to address and reflect our time of the plague when I was teaching the seventeenth-century literature. I checked in on their well-being to begin each class, making the class as intimate as possible, even though we weren’t in the same room. I asked students to keep their video on (unless there was a reason not to) so they could see one another and identify faces with a name. Amazingly, my students bonded, forming close friendships from being able to “see” each other. I might be terrible at tech but I’m great with human connections. Virtual class discussions were often better than in a physical space, where (unless it’s a seminar room) students typically see the back of each other’s heads and rarely make eye contact. Still, we all longed to be together again.

But I had a feeling walking into class that first day was not going to be my best, most graceful moment. 

As we prepared for courses to start in September, we were advised we should expect to still record sessions on Zoom, since there would be times when some students could not attend in person (either not feeling well, or having tested positive for Covid, or being a close contact).  So we’d teach in person, but not entirely? This was, I guess, hyflex and even more of a challenge than I expected.

The first day I showed up for my 17th-century class, but couldn’t get the computer to work properly to record. An hour later, I showed up for my other course (in a new building and beautiful room with the latest tech features) only to find that a couple of hours earlier a young male professor in another department had been given my classroom, leaving me and my 14 women students with nowhere to be! I stood in the hall and had what you might call an expletive-laced meltdown, but actually I had not lost control. I simply allowed myself to express justified outrage! I didn’t care if I wasn’t “lady-like” or “professional.” This happened in a liberal women’s college?

After kicking and screaming for four days, I was notified I’d been assigned a room, a modern one, but in the windowless basement! I thought of “The Chair” on Netflix, which I watched, and felt like the hilarious Joan, exiled to a subterranean room. I thought: why can’t they give the guy the basement room. I felt like a toddler yelling “I want MY room!”

Then several students in my class either tested positive for Covid-19 or just felt unwell. I told them I’d try to record the class and well… that was a bad idea. The computer in the classroom had no built-in microphone, so I had to either hold a large mic (which only worked briefly or not at all) or attach a little laveliere mic to my clothes. But the little one recorded my voice only if I stood right behind the computer, in which case I couldn’t see my class and they couldn’t see me! It was a disaster, the worst class I ever taught and I worried I’d lost them.

Knowing I have a tech disability, or that technology inexplicably shuts down with me (is it my strong energy or an incompatible frequency?), I despaired. But the AV guy came and assured me it wasn’t my fault. Instead, he explained, the audio system in the room was inadequate for the task.

What to do? I want to help ALL my students, but admittedly I cannot teach remotely and in person simultaneously. After a long sleepless night, I concluded I can’t be all things to all people. I decided to commit to my class, to focus soley on those who are present during the class. It is the only way I can be fully effective and not distracted. And if it won’t record? Well, I will share notes or meet with those who are absent. But I will not teach the same class several times to different people in a week. I think these days all of us feel the demands are just too much.

As if this was the only challenge. With mandatory mask wearing while indoors, it’s hard to recognize individual students and learn their names. I never realized how much our sense of a person, our recognition of their individual identity, depends on seeing one’s entire face. Moreover, often I can’t hear my students when they speak, which of course ruins discussion and the level of interaction I want with them. They have trouble hearing me and I end up coming home with a sore throat from having to shout for more than an hour.

We so want to be together, but are still anxious and fearful. My students, especially those I taught last year, long for more personal contact with me. But more than a year and a half of virtual communication has left many of us also fearful of in-person contact. Speaking for myself, I had long been fairly extroverted, but maybe I’ve lost that, living alone in my apartment with its soft rugs and pillows, feeling safest when alone. How do we get over that feeling? Or is it likely to be permanent, especially for some. We are pulled between such conflicting feelings.

It’s as if people and the world outside are potentially toxic, something I want to limit contact with. Yet my heart overflowed when some beloved students from last year asked to meet me in my office. We sat and talked for a long time, and it was just beautiful, wonderful. When they were leaving, most of them asked for a hug, something I would have gladly done before. I hesitated, but then thought, what the hell. They need it. I need it. And so we hugged while averting our masked faces, enjoying and feeling the love. 

I remain anxious, continually trying to be careful. But returning to class has taught me a very valuable lesson: we need each other.   

 

Peter Costanzo