Spring to Summer. Face-to-Face teaching to Remote Learning. Health to illth to health. Anxiety to grief. Moving ahead.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. A chronology of why contains many things. I had shingles in February. It was, as advertised, painful. The medication I had to take (an antiviral used to treat herpes) was difficult for me–the dosage and frequency were high. Side effects claimed “malaise”. I had a great deal of pain and malaise. So much malaise.
As I was finally recovering, Covid-19, which I had been paying attention to since at least January, became a crisis. Fortunately, my attention meant that when we shifted from classroom, face-to-face education to remote education, I was able to switch quickly. Teaching remotely, however, was a lot of work. I was excited about it, even though it was demanding. I think, and this may seem a strange analogy to some, but I do think this–I think my previous experience running a small guild in an MMO helped me to use the virtual space effectively, and to understand what students are capable of virtually in ways that other faculty couldn’t. That, but I’ve also spent the last four years putting support content online for my classes, and the past two using online discussion software as classroom support. I had practice.
I had practice, too, at looking at the quarantine remote learning period from the student side, as well, with my daughter. I won’t discuss much about her, because her privacy is important to me, but being her parent teaches me a lot about my own students and what they may need, as well as about what they may be experiencing.
After classes ended for me, soon came the crystallization of pain stemming from the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. The upwelling of the Black Lives Matter movement. Not a flash in the pan, not a brief thing–the legacy of centuries. Pain, and hope and pain and love. Justice demanded. Being demanded. I hope so much that things do change now. My grief and rage are palpable on Facebook–that’s where I share news, memes, info and a few personal things. This place is where I muse. Where I make long thoughts cogent. But I can barely do that these days. Understandably.
Simultaneously, my own body has made its demands. Perimenopause–different for every woman. Apparently extremely challenging for me. The sort of thing people don’t like to talk about–perhaps don’t like me to talk about. I got over that in the ’90s, mostly. Bodies are bodies and we should talk about what they do. In this space, I’m a little more reserved, but I’d tell you in person. No problem.
Work. I’m on the schedule for next semester, but I’m not sure if it will be Face-to-Face or Remote or Hybrid. I won’t know until July. I’ve been thinking about how I teach. I always think about how I teach, though. I love to refine and better my teaching. Remote teaching taught me a lot–I’ll incorporate it. Teaching with a focus on Equity has been at the core of my practice for years now. But I can do better. I can always do better.
I am, in fact, excited to be able to do better.
My focus on Equity in my teaching practice has meant that I’ve changed policies; most recently, no penalties for late work–it’s not realistic for the student body we have, and it’s punitory. I’ve also been incorporating more Black artists into my presentations every year, but I can do better. I need to include more work by Indigenous artists, and to better address the work of Brown artists. I admit to not doing the best that I could in that way because of the overall ‘Brown’-ness of Miami. It’s not that I omit the work of various Latinx artists–I include their work, but I have done so without addressing complexity as much as I really ought to. I can do better by enriching my narratives of history.
It will be my pleasure to do better, and I look forward to it.
There is, of course, also a chance that perhaps I suddenly won’t be on the schedule for the Fall. You never know, as an adjunct, and especially now. We’ll see, I guess.
The image at the top of this post is a print I created at home, during remote teaching. It’s a water-based monotype (using pan watercolors and water-based markers), printed by hand (with the back of a spoon) onto damp-packed paper from a foil-covered chipboard plate. It depicts my rendition of the Amabie–a Japanese spirit said to have told the people upon its appearance that if they share its image, it will cure pestilence. This print was for my NWSA High School class–I focused on the history of Japanese printmaking for them during remote learning, while materially focusing on easy at-home printmaking strategies with basic supplies.