Yesterday I found myself in a virtual classroom with 57 students, and I have a few thoughts.
When I was first asked to teach, I thought five or six people might sign up for a class titled “History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.” I was startled a week ago when I found out that 65 hearty souls had registered. (The six-week class happens to coincide with Thursday mornings during Lent, so I joked with a few people that signing up must be a new form of Lenten discipline, just ahead of self-flagellation.)
I worked with a terrific young woman, Susan Timmer, who was my tech support and confidant. Five minutes before the class started she let me know how many people were in the Zoom “waiting room,” which could be a way of thinking about purgatory. When she finally admitted my students to the virtual classroom, I could see that most of them kept their video and audio turned off. All I could see was a black square and a name (like “Betsy’s iPad”). Fewer than ten of my students turned their video on so that I could see them.
During my welcome I had planned to say, hoping to start off with some humor, that “some of us might miss Zoom meetings when the in-person variety starts again,” because “you can’t just get up and walk out of an in-person meeting.” As it turns out, what I intended as humor was more or less an accurate prediction. With 15 minutes set aside for discussion at the end of the 90-minute class, I noticed on my screen that class members were leaving the Zoom meeting one-by-one, until we were down to 42 or so at the bitter end. Those 15 students who left apparently got what they came for and weren’t interested in listening to their classmates’ comments and questions. (“Betsy’s iPad,” I noticed, stayed to the end, though she may have fallen asleep or simply left the room while I was talking.)
I remember teaching over the years in a very different kind of classroom and loving every minute of it. I enjoyed the eye contact, the lively give-and-take, and even the challenges from students who were pretty sure they knew more than I did about the subject matter. The virtual classroom has none of those things. I found little warmth or excitement in the experience, though I am still grateful for the invitation to teach.
Frankly, I don’t know how our teachers are managing during the pandemic. Getting everyone to turn on the video would of course be a good first step. But even with the students I could see, I sensed a distance that all of my natural charm and boundless energy could not overcome.
I had a high regard for teachers before the pandemic. It’s even higher now.
Photo: That’s me of course, and I’m sitting in an empty classroom at the Hope Academy of Senior Professionals (HASP), which describes itself as “a peer-led institution for learning in retirement.” It’s associated with Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
Looking forward to life after Zoom
purgatory is the most mild description of 'life on Zoom' that I've heard in a while!
Hey Doug - nice piece! Say hi to my friend, Kim Mendels, who the ED of HASP. She's the administrator on my CREDO team. She's fantastic! That's confirmed, of course, in her asking you to teach a course - she's so smart! Blessed Lent - and happy teaching!