Good news! Our resident problem-solvers have been hard at work solving various difficulties re: classroom space, and they've solved one major problem--and created a whole new one!
The 15-student class has been moved out of the 14-seat room and into a classroom more appropriate for its size, and it happens to be my favorite classroom in the building, so no worries. But meanwhile, while no one was paying attention a few more students added my freshman comp class, which made the class too big for social distancing in its assigned classroom, so today I've learned that my first class of the day will be held in the worst classroom in the building.
Okay, I realize that there's a limited number of rooms available at any given hour and under pandemic conditions we all have to make sacrifices, but I've made plenty of sacrifices already and I think I may have reached my limit. I have endured faulty technology, moldy ceilings, and an improvised room in a busy social space, and I've put up with rooms that were so hot, cold, or cheerless that they seriously distracted from learning. But this room will be the death of me.
As much as I hate chalk, I can put up with a chalkboard if that's the price of teaching in the middle of a pandemic. And the computer setup in there is notoriously slow and cranky, but again, I can put up with that. What I can't manage is that stupid little stage.
That's right: in an otherwise flat-floored room, there's an elevated platform up front, and the only way to get to the chalkboard and the computer console is to step up on that platform and teach from there. It's not even a very big platform, a meager half-circle just adequate for a not-very-mobile prof, but if I'm pacing around waving my arms while pontificating about the glories of the semicolon, I'll be over the edge in a heartbeat. No
matter how carefully I maintain my situational awareness, at some point
in the semester I'm going to miss the step and fall, or I'm going to
suffer a vertigo attack and fall, or I'm going to get distracted by a
student and fall. It will not be pretty.
Moreover, the awareness that falling is inevitable will make me dread every moment I spend in that classroom. I'm already grinding my teeth to pieces because of the anxiety of teaching under pandemic conditions; by the end of this semester I'll be one giant toothless walking bruise. Is this the kind of future anyone really wants?
The paranoid part of me wonders whether this is some sort of evil conspiracy to nudge me toward early retirement so the College can replace me with two adjuncts and a trained seal, but I suspect it's just the result of our overworked records office staff trying to match enrollments with available spaces without any awareness of which rooms are workable and which are actively malevolent. If no other option arises, I will have to teach in that room two mornings a week for the next fourteen weeks--if the room doesn't kill me first. It will be a fight to the death between me and the room; if you don't hear from me, you'll know the room has won.
2 comments:
Could an extended 4' ramp be built up to the "stage" such that there is no precipitous drop off? Sounds like that might be a justified safety improvement for the setup, if the stage must be retained for some reason.
Here's the thing: there are so few classes taught in this building at 8 a.m. that it ought to be easy to find another classroom....and sure enough, when pushed, they did. So now I bid good riddance to the worst classroom in the building!
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