At first my students couldn't hear me, which is not surprising given the way face masks muffle sound and prevent projection. So I switched to the plastic face shield so they could hear me but then I couldn't see them through my fogged-up glasses. So it was a rough start for both of my early classes today, but nevertheless it felt great to be back in the classroom.
Well, mostly great. Coronavirus-inspired anxiety about being in the presence of groups of people led to an upset stomach and a nasty taste in my mouth, and I left my travel mug of strong black tea in the car when I got to campus this morning so I approached my classes insufficiently caffeinated. But somehow we carried on and did all the usual first-day-of-class things plus some unusual things, like reminding them of the all-college mask policy (100 percent compliance so far!) and the new traffic patterns inside the building and the procedure for attending office hours online.
And speaking of traffic patterns, I'm accustomed to teaching my two early classes back-to-back in the same room, but social distancing required moving the second, larger class to an improvised classroom space on the top floor of the library, so I'm dashing across campus between classes and hoping not to arrived covered in sweat. But I won't be doing that on Wednesday, when my two first-year writing classes will meet via Zoom. That will be the pattern this semester: two days each week face-to-face, one day on Zoom. Fortunately, all but one of my first-year students have used Zoom previously.
My two literature classes will be more complicated. I have some students with health issues that prevent them from being in class face-to-face, so they'll be participating remotely via Zoom all the time. I'm a little nervous about how well I'll manage class discussion in a class where some students are sitting right in front of me while others are on a screen, but I'm hoping that after a few weeks it will become second nature.
And then there are the clicky issues. The other day I practiced the steps I will need to share a bit of video in a class containing both face-to-face and online students, and it's just a ridiculous number of clicks: turn on the volume button on the main console, check the volume level on the computer desktop, cue up the video, click on "share screen" in Zoom, make sure to click on that tiny "share computer sound" button at the bottom of the screen, and start the video. Skip any one step or do them out of order and you're back to square one.
Every new complication means one more way things can go wrong, all stacked on top of my usual start-of-semester concerns, like learning students' names. I suggested this morning that they ought to wear masks with their names emblazoned across them, but my suggestion was met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. But just wait until Wednesday! I'll see their smiling faces all over my computer screen with names right underneath. Provided that I can make the tech work correctly.
On Wednesday my Honors students will dive right into Homer's Odyssey, accompanying Odysseus and Telemachus on their journeys into the unknown, where they will meet various monsters and overcome unexpected obstacles, but for all of us who are back in the classroom, this entire semester will be an odyssey. Odysseus would scoff at fighting the Cyclops armed only with cloth masks and plastic shields, but if that's what we've got to fight our monsters, I guess we'd better carry on and hope for the best.
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