Teaching during COVID-19: What Matters?

By Molly Robinson, Director of Lewis & Clark College Teaching Excellence Program

In a recent blog post in Chronicle Vitae, Rob Jenkins argued that as we reluctantly adapt to the new, temporary “COVID-19 normal” of conducting our courses online, we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, or indeed, the good be the enemy of the good enough. Most of all, he writes, we must aim for teaching that is “good enough that when we look back on this crisis three months or six months or a year from now, we’ll be able to say that we did the best we could for our students, under the circumstances.”

Jenkins’ words, and recent listserv conversations about how we are to evaluate our teaching during this strange semester, have me asking this question: what is good enough? What really matters, as we adjust within a matter of weeks to a mode of teaching and learning many faculty and students have never attempted before?

I am still very much discovering my answers to these questions, but here are some things I do know.

- It matters that we know our role. In any classroom, in-person or online, as teachers we are the authority in the room. We are in charge of what happens and doesn’t happen there. Students will hope for guidance, leadership, and reassurance from us. They will look to us to know what attitude to take about all this. Now more than ever, we must remember that we are modeling for them how one can be confronted with great change and disturbance and move through it with courage, openness, and humor.

- It matters that we show up. Even though the tools at our disposal seem more limited than before, there are still many ways to carry on with our teaching. I’ve been amazed at the variety of creative ways we have found as a community to continue to show up for each other and our students. We may feel successful at times, and like dismal failures at others. Among all the different methods we are using to deliver our content and connect with our students, there is a common thread: we’re still here. We’re adjusting, we’re trying, learning new skills, and so are our students. We don’t have to be polished or perfect. We don’t have to be brilliant or inspiring, we just have to stay connected. We just have to be good enough, and good enough means, we show up with our knowledge and humanity, and we do our best.   

- It matters that we put our best effort into figuring out what’s essential, and what’s not. I know we began the semester wanting to read certain texts, discuss certain ideas, achieve certain goals. Some of those are essential. Some are being replaced by the other things we and our students are learning through all this. We don’t know yet what they are, but they will be deep, momentous, and lasting. Essential means: my students will need to know this by the time they finish this class or they absolutely will not be able to manage the next class in the sequence. That is all. Everything else – the texts, the concepts, the terms, the assignments – is non-essential. Everything else can happen later. Let’s think carefully about which non-essentials could be trimmed or adapted in order to make this semester’s ending less of a strain for them and for us.

- It matters that we show up. Oh, did I say that already? Good. Because that is what I know matters more than anything else. Students have told me over and over: their classes matter to them, now more than ever. As awkward and green and insecure as it may make us feel to teach live classes on Zoom, they want to see us. They want to see their classmates. They want the sense of normality, structure, and social connectedness classes bring. So, if the constraints of your discipline or life circumstances have kept you from holding classes live over Zoom, I encourage you to considering connecting with your classes synchronously once or twice before the semester ends, even if just to say hello.  

Because in five years, ten years, fifty years, most of our students will not remember the detailed content of what we taught them during this or any other semester. Here is what they will remember when they look back on these extraordinary times: they will remember us, disoriented and perhaps disgruntled, showing up anyway, doing our best. They will remember our novice fumbling with the Zoom controls, our squinting into the screen and saying “How do you do this again?”, our kids and pets walking around behind us, our distraction and our carrying on anyway.

With every passing year, as they build lives with jobs and pets and homes and children, they will understand with increasing depth the enormity and the difficulty of our showing up during this time. They will remember our smiles, our faces peering back at them from the screen, our discouragement, our encouragement. They will remember that we walked this path with them, offering our presence and humanity.

And to me at least, that seems good enough.