Coming to terms with how it's not supposed to be

Two weeks into our Brave New College World, this strange hybrid method of teaching is starting to feel sort of almost normal. Yesterday morning, in fact, I had such a great 8 a.m. composition class that I thought it was a sign that all my tech troubles were over--and then I went to my 9 a.m. class, where everything went kerflooey. 

Still, after two weeks of troubleshooting, lots of troubles have been well and truly shot. I still bristle over the number of clicks I need to execute in the correct order just to get my class up and running for students both in the room and on Zoom, but I'm making it work smoothly enough most of the time. A new camera setup and new audio settings have made the Zoom recordings of my classes more useful for absent students, although the written transcripts are still problematic. (How did the Philippines sneak into our discussion of Fritz Lang's Metropolis? And what is anyone supposed to make of this random collection of words: "Which will prevent to us were spectacular for the tiger"?)

But still many times every day I suffer this sinking feeling that things are just not right. This isn't the career I signed up for! Where are the teaching joys of yesteryear?

So it's a good time to be teaching Henry Adams's "The Dynamo and the Virgin," in which the aging historian confronts the massive forces arrayed in the Machine Hall at the 1900 Paris Exposition and realizes that nothing in his prior experience has equipped him to understand this new world of force. His culture is on a conveyor-belt moving swiftly into a mechanized future while he looks on from the sidelines, clinging feebly to the tower of a crumbling cathedral. "All the steam in the world could not, like the Virgin, build Chartres," he says, but to the passing throngs propelled by dynamos into the future, the cathedral is just a blur fading hopelessly into the distance.

I hope that our new way of teaching does not become so consumed by technology that it tamps down on art and creativity and serendipity and, dare I say it, magic. These days I'm too busy clicking and troubleshooting to make room for magic, but yesterday I felt it in my 8 a.m. class when a group of relative strangers in a room experienced the alchemy that turns leaden learning into golden understanding. It won't happen every day but if we can still, despite everything, make room for magic to happen in the classroom, then I'll be content. 

Almost. Mostly. Nearly normal.