I may never experience this in our lifetimes again, living in the midst of world events which will reshape much of the educational system as we know it.
Content Warning: This work contains references to Covid-19 and death.
The year is 2020.
I am writing this during a pandemic and during one of the largest civil rights moments I may witness in my lifetime. Black Lives Matter – now and forever.
As I write this I prepare for my second year of teaching as an adjunct professor at City Tech, a CUNY located in Brooklyn. This semester my portfolio class was made up of mostly seniors and some juniors. In March of 2020 I began teaching my spring semester online because a pandemic was declared and started to spread across the United States. By April, New York City, my area of residence; had over 700 people dying daily¹. Businesses closed, schools went completely remote, and I had to pivot over to working remotely.
Everything felt like it happened so quickly and I had to still do my jobs while processing my grief. Grief of people I know losing loved ones, grief of an overall loss of routine, and reliving the anxieties of loss all over. My students and I shifted, and with collaboration, trust, trial, and error we all completed our first semester of classes online through a pandemic.
I know that I am privileged to be at home safely, while sharing this and have made this entry as a note to myself for lessons learned and those to come.
Reassess, reflect and be flexible
This was not a regular online class. This was an in-person class forced online because of a pandemic. Being ready to pivot at any moment depending on the needs of my students and myself was vital. I therefore had to alter my interactions with my students:
• Modify and review expectations and communicate these changes with your students. For the spring online semester we prioritized increasing communications mid-week as a new routine. This enabled the students to keep a clear line of inquiry on progress and questions on their projects.
• Build in buffers. Expectations like showing up for class right “at the bell” were met with flexibility to be 10 min. (Normally we have a 5 min buffer). This consideration was made because some of my students were essential workers dashing onto overcrowded buses in NYC during a pandemic in order to make it to class online. It was important for me to be mindful of this. Next semester I plan to ask students about their schedules earlier on, to get a better sense of their needs and any modifications that may need to accommodate those who are essential workers.
• Meet my students where they are…online – in the beginning some were uncomfortable on camera. I presented the option to dial in for the first half of class to give time to accommodate being on camera so often now.
Communication is key
Our first online class started with the why. Why were we pivoting to this remote learning? Why is this new format necessary? Taking a moment to acknowledge the unknowns and the circumstance of this semester made it an honest experience.
• Ensure that feedback and critique is received and understood by everyone. Confirm with students that they understood and share notes with them afterward.
• Hold your students accountable – and discuss why. With mutual trust students understood they could reach out to say they were running later than 10 min, were unable to make class, or could say they needed additional feedback on their assignment.
• Share more about the rubric. My class has always been broken down into percentages for work, absences, and participation. However, now some sections held more weight than others. The participation section changed to reflect more on communication and students’ ranges of participation. With these edits, students are able to get a clear sense of what they needed to do to achieve the best grade possible.
• Everyone in a class had a different communication style – which can shift as a course moves online. Ensure that everyone gets equal time to make comments, give feedback and share their work.
• More follow ups. With moving to a completely remote workflow I was sending and receiving more emails than ever – prioritizing time to communicate helps students understand their work for the following week.
• I had to ensure that students were not speaking over one another – allocating specific times for each student for various portions of the classes was a successful way to ensure everyone had time to speak.
• Provide feedback in a timely manner and find ways to prioritize this throughout the semester.
Show up and do the work.
The pandemic reminded me that compassion and care are vital parts of teaching and being invested in your students’ success. I had no idea how to teach an online class! But, I knew that I had to figure it out quickly and had to show up, work through my own uncertainties, and teach.
• Asking for help and feedback from the students, peers and the education community was absolutely necessary. I was able to discuss various techniques with others and learn from their experiences as they were unfolding.
• I had to find the platforms that worked well for most of us. I may have 10 different accounts by now, but I realized if a platform was not working I had to try a different one. Figuring out the best way to manage notes, screenshare, record videos, and provide feedback for a college class was a new task for me. I learned alongside my students that some services had no captions, but had breakout rooms. Taking the time to adapt to new softwares that were still free and accessible for my students was key.
Get feedback – often.
Every week I asked my students for their feedback. I asked how I could improve on this experience for them. When it came time for them to give me feedback about the online experience they were honest and used the same framework we had gone over previously in the semester when providing critique. This feedback was not mandatory, nor did it affect their grade. With these expectations in place, they provided me with helpful critique! I was so proud of them!
• Feedback helped me to understand that more breaks are needed when teaching for 3 hours. Instead of one longer break we had 3 shorter breaks over the course of the class.
• Feedback also outlined that some emails were getting too long – and some students preferred quick video calls as a way to discuss feedback.
Redefine your boundaries.
When I was commuting from work to class on Thursday evenings it would take about 35 minutes to get to City Tech, and then about 1 hour and 45 minutes to get home. Now, without a commute I was finding myself online all-the-time, as I was saving time. Still, this was not good for my mental health and had to slow down. I was over-stimulated and not resting well. I began to realize I needed to set new boundaries for myself to have time to recoup, rest, and give them my best. Replying to every email as they came in was not helpful to me.
• I created new office hours online that worked best for my schedule and that were less reactive to the students’ request to discuss immediately. I realized that a response could wait for a time when I could give a more focused and thoughtful answer. I made a schedule that worked with my mornings and evenings with a cut off time of 9:00pm.
• Turned off all notifications on my messaging apps. I communicated to my students when I would be checking these apps to define expectations on response time.
• I established an email routine that worked best for me. I set the expectation that I would always respond within a day or two. Creating a new habit to respond to emails during a set time of day (mostly at night) and then doing so with regularity 6 days a week helped me to create an improved workflow.
What’s next.
We are still in a pandemic and additionally in the midst of a major civil rights movement. On May 25th 2020, after the semester was completed, George Floyd was murdered by the police. It was filmed and shown to the world. I was experiencing grief – again. Even while working through this I knew I still had to show up in a few months for the fall semester. What did it mean for the fall as I prepared to teach once more?
It means that I have to take these lessons from the pandemic and keep some and find new ones along the way. It will be the first time I have taught online during a pandemic and a civil rights movement; one that I am actively participating in. This coming semester I will be speaking about this with my class because it is deeply connected to my lived experience as a Black Latinx woman in the United States, as their teacher. It’s deeply connected to the movements of anti-racism and how it impacts the field of education and graphic design. Understanding how we as designers can show up, learn more and do more.
So we begin anew. Have I taught through a pandemic now? Yes. Teaching during Black Lives Matter? No. But onward I go, as I am hopeful that I can take some of the past lessons and apply them anew.
¹https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-deaths.page