Notebooks in the Composition Classroom

I used to be one of those people who collected various forms of notebooks as though finding *just* the right one would solve all my problems. It's a common joke. After I was introduced to Ralph Fletcher's Idea of A Writer's Notebook, I found filling notebooks, using them consistently, easier, and more helpful. My office closet is full of 60+ notebooks from the last 23 years. Since the beginning of Covid, I admit they are more journal than full on writer's notebooks, but I also keep a separate notebook of article/book chapter ideas that's a writer's notebook, as well as another notebook for teaching ideas and reflections.

I have tried over the years to get my students to see the light with writer's notebooks to no end. When I taught high school the interactive notebooks I had them create and use were great. Students loved the organization, layering, and interactive nature. But introducing writer's notebooks to college students, English majors, was a failure when I tried it here my first year. They found them constrictive, fiddly, and most of our last week of class discussion was about how much they (jokingly, but not really) hated them. At the end of that academic year Covid shut everything down, so the combination of factors meant no more tries with writer's notebooks.

But I ran into an earlier Tweet than this, but using the same quote:

"“The word text, like textile and texture, comes from the Latin root textere, “to weave.” Writing is rarely purely personal or purely technical and objective—it’s a mix, a hybrid, a text.” ⁦@Tom_Newkirk

This inspired me to start my Composition I class this semester with a textere activity. Students weaved together pictures and poems. They were great. I enjoyed starting class this way because I felt it set a great tone for how we would view things in class. Today in class we read “Rebecca Nagle on Craft Lessons from (a Different Kind of) Crafting" because it was such a great coda to our class. And students SAW it! Which was even better.

I always end up having books I read for homework that shape my ideas for classes. One year it was Ordinary Notes. Then The Trayvon Generation. Sometimes we end up using the book, sometimes it's just the idea of it that I use to build my syllabus.

These are the books that I'm noodling on for spring's Composition II. I've always loved Lynda Barry's Syllabus and have used it in Advanced Composition.

I also often bring these books in to SHOW students specific examples of what I was thinking when I designed the class, or chose a reading, or built an assignment. I also often revisit these texts, come back to them, when refining or revising something for class.

I think I'm going to try a version of the writer's notebook in Composition II next semester for a couple of reasons.

1. Students really enjoyed the tactile, arts and crafts stuff we did this semester.

2. No tech days and assignments are not only valuable for the different ways we think about things but also for the mental break it provides.

3. I talk a lot in class about process and revisiting ideas and layering and some students really get it. It is a struggle though to see through when students are absent a lot (for all very valid reasons, this is not a shaming statement) and may not complete, do all assignments. It's hard to ask them to revisit an idea or piece of writing if it's not done.

So I think first day- decorate notebook, make it yours. I'll provide if you need one (old school composition, by design not made for tearing stuff out). I have gone back and forth on accessibility of this, but won't have any issue with digital versions.

Then I'm going to provide an index they can insert. I figure I'll do this by module, steal from interactive notebook. Students can know what we did if they missed, see my example if they need to.

Then for the pages, I want to have a mix of notes, brainstorming, drawing, scrapbook-y stuff, that they then will "mine" to type up for larger assignments. I want them to revisit ideas with Post-Its and layer thoughts. 

I have three sections of Composition II next semester, so we'll see what they think.

I'm also going to have independent reading in all my classes next semester. This semester was just my Tuesday/Thursday classes.

Concerns in the Classroom Fall 2024

The Chronicle of Higher Ed posted an article, "Customers in the Classroom: Students increasingly treat college as a transaction. Who--or what-- is to blame?" (McMurtie, 2024).There are valid considerations in the piece and a lot of "kids these days" but it did not offer really any solutions or interventions that professors could try or consider to push back against some of these ideas. So below are some of the interventions I'm trying this semester/academic year to try and address some of these, and other, concerns.

The article addresses fearful faculty and contigent faculty so I think it's important to state that while I am a queer, heavily tattooed professor with a shaved head, I am also white and tenured. I teach at a small HBCU with a student enrollment of roughly 2200.

Care

• "Few uncaring and dynamic professors"
• "in many cases the academic benefits of a college education prove difficult to demonstrate"
• Students don't see value in subjects
• "Studeets were highly attuned...to whether their professors seemed to care about their subject and about their students"
• "students rarely speak openly about why they feel disengaged or shortchanged by their education"
• "desperate for a connection"
• "Colleges don't offer sufficient services to help students in need"

I start most classes with "it's nice to see you," "how are you," "how was your weekend?" It's a simple thing but I think demonstrates a lot. When I walk around class looking at work, seeing what they're doing, I also comment on it. Talking to them, asking questions.

I do check in surveys in week 3, 7, 12. I do them in Google Forms, put the link on the syllabus, and students complete them as a "do now" when they come into class. 

The first one asked how they are, what barriers they're facing, if they feel like they know where to get help, asks about their planning and time management. I made a little brochure of resources on campus and give them a blank weekly planning calendar. I also go through and read to see if there is anything specific I need to follow up on.

In the following weeks the questions are similar, offering different tips with questions, like eating right, taking breaks, dealing with stress and anxiety and again I follow up. I usually do a funny "on a scale of" of cats or Muppets. The last question is if there's anything else they want me to know.

Each week there is a sign in sheet for class and at the end of the week I put into our admin system. But I also identify students who were significantly absent and email them checking in on them.

I also ask, for assignments students turn in, if they're alright with me displaying. There is student work all over my classroom and my office.

There are lots of ways to show students you care.

If I see a students nodding off in class I ask if they're okay. Then I tell them to go home and sleep. Same with being sick. I send them home.

There is a caveat of course with all of this. This kind of work tends to fall onto women. It's extra emotional labor. If your version of care does not fit gender-conforming ideals or is not the type of care students expect, there can be issues.

However, I think there are lots of ways to provide care that can be easily implemented. The emails at the end of the week take less than five minutes. The conversations in class take nothing. And I'm a firm belieber that the payoff is a hundred fold. I think it can support students, especially adult learners returning, first gen, previously under-served, under-represented students.

But it's worth a discussion amongst lecturers, adjuncts, women, Women of Color, queer faculty in your spaces about the pitfalls unique to your situation.

Some of the easiest parts of care are beyond faculty and rely on the institutions.

Decades ago I remember someone saying that the easiest way to show students you care was in your building. Were windows cleaned? Trash taken out? Bathrooms clean? Supplies always available? Floors mopped?

These seem like givens but I constantly see pictures online from students and faculty of leaks in ceilings, moldy spaces, no paper towels in restrooms, broken classroom furniture. I'm not even talking about asking for working technology, or smartboards, or anything fancy. I'm talking about simple environmental factors.

Especially now, with temperatures rising and new viruses and allergens and in some areas continuous wildfires, working air conditioning and heat and air filtration, clean air, is vital not only to our students' health but how well they can engage and participate.

Care can and should be built into design.

If you have a lot of adult learners, commuters, is there a place for them? Literally? Is there easy parking, night or weekend classes, housing for families? Signifcant online classes? Specific advisors to address their needs?

What about first generation students? Students who need access? Colleges should be able to provide laptops and notebooks to students that need them. Support and answers on "how to college." Spaces where they feel safe.

Classes should be accessible for all. ADA compliant at the least. Classrooms that all can navigate. Texts that can be read aloud. Materials written in fonts that help learning disabilities. Classrooms that use closed captions and microphones. Events with sign language interpreters. Shuttles that operate dependably on campus.

Campuses and classes should be built with the most accommodations in mind.

Care should be baked into everything.

Students should not have to feel as though they have to share or perform their personal lives, details, traumas, in order to be treated with basic decency.

Many campuses have on-site food banks, some may offer housing for the unhoused. What resources, how good the supports are though vary widely from place to place. Campuses should offer all students need. Housing and food should be free. For all students, including off-campus ones. PLUS the food bank. Housing should include options for families. Student health should be all-encompassing. Pharmacy, mental and physical health, vaccinations, meal planning. Computer laps AND laptop rentals. Clothes banks. 

Relevance of Coursework and Its Presentation

• "Coursework feels repetitive"
• "classes in which instructors read off of slides"
• "cheating as a defensible response"
• "When describing the context in which they cheated or not, students taked about whether they trusted the professor"
• "professor's job is merely to provide content"
• "in their lived experience, integrity has not been highly valued"

I hear a lot from first year students that they are frustrated having to take the "same" math, science, history, language classes "again." For students coming straight from high school they feel like they just TOOK algebra, chemistry, and do not understand why they have to take them again. 

General Education classes that first year feel repetitive to them. The issue from my perspective is that these classes should NOT feel repetitive. They should be the foundational introduction to a liberal arts education. They should both build on and challenge their previous educational experiences. They should actively ask students to reconsider and reexamine what they know and think they know in new lights. 

When I was in undergraduate I had an 8a art history class. I liked it. But a dark auditorium first thing in the morning after I'd often worked late, was often a challenge. I got As on all tests but failed it because of a strict attendance policy. I often share this with students as the beginning of my issues with attendance policies. Then and now it struck me as unfair. 

If I was in a class where the professor just read off of slides, I would have a hard time seeing why I needed to be there too. I'd look for a shortcut. And if you think you wouldn't, think about how well as a faculty member you're engaged in a faculty meeting or completing mandatory online HR training.

There's an old teaching adage that students respect what you inspect. 

If a course seems designed to not care, I understand why students might assume that professors might not care about cheating either.

Professors and teachers have said for years that the easiest way to stop plagiarism and cheating is in assignment design but it's also in how the assignment is baked into your class. In my classes if the end of module assignment is to create an informational text on a social issue, students choose their own issue. We have conversations in class about why they chose that, why they care about it. We have group discussions about what they learn from initial research and why it matters. They choose how to represent all this- flyers, models, posters, presentations. And I watch them work on these, craft them, in class. I see it come together. Then they conference with me, presenting the final product to me and answering questions about their choices. Because of the design and process, students can't cheat on this. But more importantly, they don't want to.

There are a thousand different ways to show students that your content matters, why it matters, and what they need. 

Trust your students. They are adults with full lives and capable of their own decisions. This doesn't mean a free for all, or that the role of the professor with both content knowledge and experience is not important. It is. But the infantilizing of students, referring to them as "kids" is a special blend of condescension and elitism. My content knowledge and experience teaching means I can guide students. But it is also what allows me to design classes with broad strokes and let them fill in the specifics. To change my live syllabus if they need more time, or if a better reading would fit them, or if I need to try something else because what I planned is not the best fit, or does not best serve the students in front of me.

Every class, every semester, has new folks. The last few years our lived reality radically changes each semester. Profesors should explore and experiment. Add new readings, a new artist, a new approach. Think more of your class as a living, changing, experiment and not as a locked in set of pieces that only go together one way.

During the pandemic "triage" teaching the first few months set an awful precedent that colleges, faculty, students, have not challenged since and it's doing a lot of damage. MY content knowledge on how to teach and WHAT to teach, is valuable. I went to school for a long time to learn it, I read and learned on my own to tweak and experiment what worked and didn't. But my greatest gift in the classroom is my ability to look and listen to my students and adapt. This is true of good teaching in a face to face or online classroom. At the beginning of the pandemic professors who had no training, or in some cases interest, were rushed to put their classes online and this often looked like just replicating what they were doing in their classrooms before. They recorded and uploaded lectures and PDFs.  They paced things the same and expected the same work.

But the ground shifted under our feet, the world tilted on its axis and we are all permanently changed.

Year five now in the ongoing pandemic and many professors are still teaching this same way. My incoming first year students this year spent the end of middle school and all of high school under pandemic conditions. Teachers and students constantly out. Classes merged for supervision but not necessarily focused on content or learning. Instability of classroom communities because of these interuptions means that students struggle with talking to each other, looking up from the tech devices they've been TOLD to, TRAINED to, constantly be on, and serve as woobies, their only connection in many cases to online friends and relationships, perhaps the only ones they have. Then there is the grief, the trauma, that no one has been given the time to deal with. On top of all this is the economic stress of rising prices due to corporate greed and struggling to help or support families that are themselves struggling under incredible weights of elder care, more people in the house due to no available housing or riding housing costs.

Content dump teaching is not teaching. Watching a ninety minute lecture is not teaching. Completing an assignment that is only ever marked turned in or not is not learning. Teaching and learning is a flexibility. It is a give and take. I understand why this approach has continued. It's easy. It builds on the egalitarian promise of MOOCs and places like Khan Academy- the democratization of education. It also builds a vast depository of information universities own and can use to teach AI with the ultimate end of replacing in person teaching. It's the ultimate end for the neoliberal university, tech bros, and billionaire "philanthropists" who insist on reinventing education even though they do not have a single clue how it works. 

It is, and will continue to be, the justification for cutting and not replacing full time faculty, for abusing contingent professors, and increasing exploitive work conditions.

Faculty and students need protection, and in some places unions are doing their work here. But not nearly enough.

Exploring and Experimenting

• "Rather than taking risks and exploring new subjects, students are laser-focused on maximizing GPAs and building résumés."
• student has "an exaggerated fear of failure"

There is a ton of research and ink on ungrading, the harmful impact of grades, and various experiments and how they work. I won't duplicate that work here but I will share how things work in my class.

The last few years as students conference with me, the last step if they email their final product with a reflection on the work, the process, and the feedback they received. I also had them write, based on all that, what grade they think the work earned and why. It was an alien concept to all, and some struggled (mostly folks who always got As, and defined identity by grades), but after the first module, it becomes (based on their end of semester reflections) one of their favorite parts of class.

While the syllabus language says I reserve right to argue against grade they argue for, I almost never do.

This all ends up tying into the above- students are more willing to experiement, do a hands on project, try a difficult subject or approach, because they know they will not be punished.

Hard core STEM students draw and make models. They cook meals. Projects and versions of unessays are common parts of my class. But so are writing assignments with specific audiences and purposes- PowerPoints for elementary students, or graphics for a nature trail, or an argument to a town for climate change recommendations. Part of this is because the structure of the class frees them to. But part of it too is because the last few years, I've actively rebelled against the "prepare for job" trend in English classes. My students learn software skills, and how to use programs, and think about design and layout, but the main focus is them learning what they think about a variety of things and then supporting and expressing those.

We look at art. We read articles about social issues. We read poems and essays and food blogs.

I'm vocal that the purpose of my classes and humanities classes in general is to make better humans.

Most students enjoy this and it engages them. It helps them see how the class matters to them, how they can transfer these skills to their other classes, to their lives.

This year, students still conference, and I do the check in surveys, but I've changed so when the university asks me to report progress report grades (are they at risk of failing or not), midterms (letter grades), and end of semester final grades (letter again) I ask the students to write a detailed reflection on their work, process, engagement in class, ideas, etc. and tell me what to post.

Students' Reality

• "spend so much time working to pay for college that they can't take advantage of all it has to offer"
• "faculty member spent the bulk of class time rehashing the readings because few students had done them in advance"
• Students don't read

For the most part, the structure of higher education assumes that every student they serve is 18, lives on campus, does not have to work, can afford supplies, has access to technology, and the privilege to navigate college and advocate for themselves.

None of this is true anymore. Students work, often full time jobs, and often may have to miss class to pick up shifts. Yet the class schedules and out-dated attendance policies don't reflect this. In 2024 the assumption that everyone has a computer is countered by so many students trying to complete their work on their cracked phones, often forbidden in class, so they sit in the parking lots of McDonald's to access their wi-fi. Huge swaths of the United States are internet deserts but programs, loading videos, online textbooks, often require high speed internet.

On campus resources of computer labs, libraries, dining halls, which might fill these gaps close and 5 or 6, locking out working students.

Students may be trying to follow a class on Zoom while at their desk at work.

Students may not have childcare that day.

Or maybe daycare or school is closed because of mass illness.

Students may not understand or have ever had the value of a dedicated working space.

Maybe no one taught them how to study.

Some may live an hour away and some weeks can't afford the gas.

Students get sick and often a full recovery takes over a week, but again, draconian attendance policies don't allow this. So students come back after a day or two getting others sick as well as ensuring they'll be out again the next week because they're not recovered. They email their professors photos of them in hospital beds right after surgery or giving birth, begging their professors not to penalize them. In a world where not everyone has health insurance, or maybe can't afford the copay, or can't sit in an urgent care for six hours to be seen, or is just too sick to get out of bed, requiring doctor's notes or documentation is beyond cruel.

There are lots of reasons ADULTS might need to miss class. MAKE class important, SHOW them that, then trust them to make the decisions they need to.

In the United States there is a toxic expectation of work that the pandemic has only made worse. If you're home sick you're expected to still attend the Zoom meeting, check email, complete work, produce. If you're exhausted from your regular week too bad because you still need to work nights and weekends. Returning to care, one of the easiest, best things you can do for your students is simply give them permission not to participate in this toxic feedback loop. Throw out the punitive attendance policy. Tell them to feel better and not worry about work when they email you they'll be out sick. Not only will sick students be more likely to stay home, which is better for everyone, but they'll BE better.

I am always surprised when administrations ask faculty some version of "what can we do to accomplish X?" involving the students. Why not ask the students? I'm pretty sure that students would prefer to have laptops and help than new marketing. Parking that was accessible and that they didn't have to pay for rather than performative events. Actual structural issues fixed rather than a new, branded, coat of paint put over them.

If you ask students what they need, or want, they'll often tell you, although sadly I've noticed in my check in surveys a lot don't believe there is help to be had. They've had "rigor" and "grit" pounded into them for so long that they answer "nothing" to offers of help or say "it's my fault" or "I should be able to do this." They internalize institutional failures. And we should push against these answers and point out the structural issues AND offer ways to help.

As an English teacher I WANT to spend my time talking about what we read- poems, essays, novels, plays, articles. I want to hear what students have to say and guide discussions and ask questions. I used to get so frustrated when I'd plan a whole class around discussion and then no one did the reading and I didn't know what to do. I did punitive reading quizzes. I canceled class, sent folks home. But at some point I asked myself why they WEREN'T doing the reading. And that changed everything. Because they had really good reasons. Some had no time. Some didn't have time management skills and the every other day schedule confused them. Some got lost. Some couldn't concentrate. Some had never been taught to read critically.

One of the consequences of Covid has been a lack of concentration, brain fog, memory issues, all of which compound all the reasons above that affect students being able to read for class. 

So now in my classes we read shorter pieces to start, I read stuff out loud, we talk about how to annotate and why. We talk about active reading and reading for different purposes. We talk about interacting with the text. As we move through the semester we read longer texts and I set aside classtime for them to do it, doing reading math in my head. If they don't finish they finish for homework. We have discussions first about what questions they have. I define words, they Google stuff, I answer things about "real" names and what is fiction.

In my upper level English classes I use a lot of the scaffolding skills when we start out, but I run all these classes as one night 3 hour seminars that are totally dependent on the students leading the conversation so they learn quickly.

In general, if I have not taught a student something, I don't assume they know it. I ask. And if they don't we go over it.

Systematic Issues

• "Mired in campus bureaucracy"
• Customer service, transactional relationship model where professors work for student and therefore must do what the student wants. The "I'm paying to pass, earn credit, graduate" expectation/perspective.
• "holding colleges accountable for students' rentention, graduation, and future earnings"

Bureaucracy should never be a barrier for students. If they need housing give it to them. If they're hungry feed them. Everybody knows the struggles students face and everybody knows what the answers are. Places choose not to implement them. The FAST Fund is a great example of what is possible. A student comes to you and needs gas to get to campus, so you walk to the ATM and you give it to them. Or they need to pay their cell phone bill or daycare or textbooks. You just trust them and give them what they need so that they can continue to be students.

There are some "rock star" educators who have advocated that students build the class syllabus, set the learning outcomes, design it all.As much as student choice is important to my classes, that approach has always bothered me, in much the same way content dump teaching does. Teaching is not me dumping information into students' heads but it's also not being absent from the teaching. I, as a teacher, am valuable because I can bake certain things into the design of the class, scaffold skills, schedule mini-lessons and opportunities for students to practice. I am valuable because of the feedback I give and how I support students and suggest ideas, readings, improvements. Students can choose topics and how they demonstrate knowledge and progress on those topics, but they don't have my education or experience. That doesn't mean their knowledge is not valuable, or that they have nothing to teach me. It just means that in the classroom while I'm not the dictator, I am the expert in teaching and learning. I do know best about some things. I change my classes every semester based on what I've learned from students, how better to serve them, to reflect new scholarship and approaches. I strive always to do what is best. A lot of that includes listening to student feedback. But learning is not and should not be transactional. Going back to the "make better humans" bit, we read and write and create art because it is what makes us human and connects us. THAT is what we get out of it, and enriches us, and that cannot be transactional.

If a professor, a major, a university, is not consistently passing students, graduating them, that is symptomatic of larger issues that I argue have more to do with care and all the other things I mention above than anything else. Give students a good foundation, support them with what they need, and they tend to do well.

But to hold individual programs, usually humanities, responsible for what comes after graduation is madness in this lived reality. Whole fields can disappear in the blink of the shelf-life of a new technology. New ones are created. The skills used in earning one degree may prove useful for a totally different field. Students may choose to not use their degree but take a 9-5 day job to prioritize family or community. Students may get ill, become disabled, move somewhere else with a lower cost of living. To expect universities to be responsible for all the elements that affect lives after graduation is ridiculous. As ridiculous as expecting schools to somehow fill the gaps created by poverty, lack of healthcare, support, food and housing insecurity, yet not actually address any of those issues.

Most of what I write about here are based on my experiences, what works in my laboratory of a classroom on a daily basis. But I think part of the answer here, to the issue of repetiveness specifically lies in larger changes. In k-12 education for decades now, the premise of pre-assessments to see where students are, what they know, what can be skipped, what needs focus, have been implemented one way or another. But these are not wholesale accepted in college. For certain GE classes, why aren't pre-assessments conducted? They would help students and faculty. There also needs to be a fairly radical redesign of GE. Most students need statistics and financial literacy more than algebra. Sustainability studies is a better science choice than upper level physics. More classes in global studies, geography, current events, ethics. Health and PE should be more about creating healthy adult habits that will serve them all their lives.

For majors that require upper level science, math, languages, pre-assessments can see where students should be put. Maybe these classes run on quarters so students can be moved up or down based on what they need to succeed. That the demonstration of knowledge maybe isn't a "C" or above in chemistry but a demonstration of specific skills on an assessment.

Coursework, especially at the GE level, might seem more relevant, less repetitive, be of more use, if it actually WAS the foundation for larger studies.

In my experience, all of these things has made my work infinitely easier. I spend less time on nonsense and policing and compliance and this freed up time allows me to walk around all of class and listen to students and offer feedback, have conversations. It allows me to email feedback to lots of student work.

The last few years I've been gathering supplies in my office in the hopes of us being back in our assigned building and me being able to teach in my own room. Now, I know in higher education this is not a thing. However, we are a small school and we have lots of classroom space. But also, I think some of what I'll describe below COULD scale up and be useful.

My classroom is set up in pods. I've done this for a very long time. One, I do it because it's a physical signal to students how class will be. The focus is not on me lecturing. It is on them, working and talking together. Especially with Covid, and students struggling with social interactions, this set up plus structured conversations, starters, ways to begin, and having students first answer what do you think about X and sharing before diving into content is really helpful.

Students learn in a print rich environment. This is true whether you're in middle school or college. Especially with the brain fog, trouble concentrating, and memory loss associated with Covid, this is helpful. The top of my boards have action verbs, I have giant Post-Its with anchor charts of steps to common acitivities. 

I think these are all things that could be scaled up. Reference charts and maps on walls. Famous mathematician, scientists, historians that represent queer, women, BIPOC scholars?

After I start class and have outline verbally what we're doing I write it on the board so they have it for reference. More and more students take a picture of it, not only so they can zoom in and reference it as they work, but once they're out of the classroom as well. I also hyperlink resources and instructions on the syllabus for students to reference again or if they're absent.

My greatest joy this semester is the classroom library. I've been hoarding these books in my office for years waiting to be able to do this, and spent a lot of money filling these shelves. I've also had friends send me books off my classroom library wishlist!

This semester I've piloted independent reading in my Tuesday, Thursday classes once a week. The first week I chose a bunch of books and spread them around the room on the desk pods. I had students do "book speed dating" where they walk around, look at the covers, read backs, pick a book, then sit down and read. Now once a week we start class with 20-30 minutes of reading. I read my own book during this time. 

Next semester I'm going to have all my composition classes do it.

We don't "do" anything with this reading. It's just for sheer pleasure. Some students have asked to take books home. I've recommended other books by same authors. I've also told them if they want a book and we don't have it let me know and I'll try and get it.

Twitter has been a blessing with this. A lot of the books in the library first appeared on my feed. 

I tried to have a mix. Some books I tried to get 4-5 copies of so if friends/groups wanted to read together they could. I try to have a variety of genres- so poetry and comics and fantasy and horror and fiction and non-fiction.

I try to have more Black authors.

I'm trying to build up the LGBTQIA+ authors.

While some students do ask to take books home for the most part these stay in the room so students put their names on Post-Its and use as bookmarsk to keep track or write down the page number their on in their notes.

They are totally riveted. Locked in. This more than anything belies the idea that students aren't reading for some rebellious reasons.

I talk to my students a lot about how writing is a process, thinking takes time, reading and research takes time, yet so rarely do college classes GIVE students that time. Or even acknowledge it. The assignment is just due. No recognition of the time and work that has to come before.

This is one of those things I think would work great scaled up. Maybe not the independent reading but what if classrooms all had classrom libraries? Copies of the textbook but also reference and pleasure books for that content? Books on famous queer, women, BIPOC scientists? Or copies of their notebooks? Or books about different aspects? Where students could SEE the context, the connections?

On our first check in survey some students put distractions and their phones as barriers to their learning so I made this basket. I also do "no tech" days where it all goes off and put away. I always tell them WHY we're doing this, as a break, to help notice how constant the tech is, but if someone uses to take notes or wants it, I don't police it. Almost all enjoy the no tech days.

I also show students how to turn off notifications, reorganize icons on phone screen, set timers, not check or respond to school email on phones, all as ways to help them time manage but also be less stressed. There is a lot about tech, its constant presence, and use and knowledge that I think gets assumed because they're all a "tech" generation. But I show them how to use the snipping tool. What shortcut keys are. How to read the WYSIWYG toolbar.

When I taught high school I remember so many humiliating stories teachers would, sadly, proudly tell of forcing students to trade in shoes to borrow a pencil or paper.

This shelf has wipes and notecards and travel Kleenex and paper and notebooks. The first coupld of weeks I had stacks of notebooks on the pods. I ordered 56 smaller kraft paper notebooks and this was one of those things I was not sure would work or be needed. But a lot of the students grabbed them and are using them.

This semester I also bough chargers. These have been a HUGE hit and so useful. I've thought about laptop chargers too as so many students forget them or the laptop battery runs down during class but there are so many different ones I'm not sure how.

I'm also on the board putting weekly tips and one of them definitely is- if you charge your laptop at night you're less likely to have it run out of juice during class.

Each pod has these bins, bowls, cups. There are pens, pencils, highlighters, markers, scissors, rulers, staplers. No student ever has to feel bad because they don't have something, or feel bad asking for something. It's there. If an assignment in class requires it I supply it.

Other classes require a ruler or markers or something and students ask me to borrow because they know they can.

There are also Dollar Tree squishy toys good for fidgeters. The ducks live in a bin and the other day students took them all out and chose ones to keep them company as they worked.

There are also coasters because it's hot and water and bottles and such sweat and get on the desks and that's a mess.

My classroom does not have clock. My students have told me they can't read analog clocks. Once a student told me quarter after was 25 minutes. I bought this because it was rainbow colored but I also like it because it's specifically a teaching clock.

Students have already commented on that they like it.

My classroom has an air filter that adminstration put in most rooms and some common spaces early in the pandemic. I bought an air filter/dehumidifier. The CO2 is mid 1200s after back to back full classes. I also keep the doors open. Our windows don't open.

I think a lot of these environmental things could be done in other places. I would specifically argue for them in GE classes. I think they help students bridge the gap especially that first semester. I had a student tell me that as soon as they walked in and looked around they stopped being so nervous and scared because the room felt good. 

Like care, "vibe" as the article mentioned can be used against faculty who are usually marginalized. 

It can be weaponized and it shouldn't be. But I also understand the frustration of students who wonder why X professor can't support or accommodate them. I think one solution would be to expect administration, the institution, the system, to create and support these environments. Then it's not an individual professor bearing the burden financially or mentally or emotionally.

I can honestly say that I think these types of moves, decisions, would do more to support students, make sure they stay in school, and finish that a fancy rec space or random technology.

And I wish the same systems that tell faculty they need to do more, retain students, meet goals, realized that the best way to do all of this is to support their faculty so that they can support their students. A lot of this is economic but easy to implement. Some is about teaching faculty the research behind why all this works. A lot is about creating an environment where you ask students, listen to the answers, and make changes accordingly.

Everything is hard and the pressures and weights we're all under seem to keep growing. But letting go of things, baking some things into structure serve to make it all a little easier for everyone. And grace costs me nothing.

Horror That Haunts Us: Nostalgia, Revisionism, and Trauma in Contemporary American Horror Film and Television: Editor Interview

 I am happt that the edited collection is now out and available!

We, and all the contributors, worked really hard the last four years on this. I'm so proud of all the work everyone did!

I always loved those movie press interviews where stars asked each other questions, so that's what Wickham and I did for the book! It was a lot of fun, so I hope you enjoy:

https://liverpooluniversitypress.blog/2024/06/14/horror-that-haunts-us-a-conversation-with-karra-shimabukuro-and-wickham-clayton/

Below, please see the table of contents below, great work here!

If anyone is interested in adopting this book for their classes, and would be interested, I'm happy to Zoom into classes to talk!

Let This Be Enough

I've been sick since graduation, the same whatever I've had all semester. I wake up with a headache, a sore throat, and I'm so exhausted getting out of bed is a chore. I end up sleeping all day, on top of 10-12 hours during the night. No cough. No wheezing. Just this.

It started this summer, but honestly was hard to tell that it wasn't recovering from an exhausting semester and/or regular depression. But this past semester things seemed different. Harder. More days than not I came straight home from teaching, meetings, the day, and barely made it inside before falling asleep on the couch for hours. Going to bed ridiculously early, sleeping 10-12 hours. Weekends, days off, breaks, usually spent doing more of same to varying degrees.

I was grateful I was able to manage it with my job, had the flexibility. And even so had a day I couldn't get out of bed I felt so bad and had to call in sick. More days than not taking 800mg of ibruprofren for headeache, pain. I focused on just getting through day, week, semester, to the next break. Most days I was fine for the time I had to teach. Some days I was amusing on my roll-ey chair around the classroom playing bumper cars as I went around helping students and answering questions.

Except for work, I don't go anywhere, grocery shop just once a week, mask, and try to not do it during busy times. I'm fully boosted. I'm lucky that classroom ceilings are pretty high, ventilation good if you keep the doors open, has a filter, and CO2 monitor generally shows it in the 700-800 range. I think especially this semester, I just figured that this was what life was with the whole world deciding Covid didn't exist. I was grateful I lived in a place with low numbers, with a job that allows me flexibility to be able to nap and recover in afternoons, that I had a choice to avoid crowds, not having to deal with busy offices, crowded elevators or public transportation. I make sure to buy new masks, rotate, either put in for the free Covid tests or buy my own. Mine have all been negative, but I worry about how accurate the Rapid Tests are, although they seem to work for others.

I fear Long Covid, not just because I know people with it but because I am on my own, and if I were to be disabled, or not be able to work for a long period, there is no one to help, take care of me, no safety net. It's a fairly short downward slide into not being able to pay bills, mortgage, and being homeless. 

The other context for all this is where I am. It's months to get a doctor's appointment. I felt bad enough part way through the semester to get an emergency appointment, but I had to fight for it. The phone nurse wanted me to go sit at urgent care for hours. When I finally got to the doctor the next day they fought with me about giving me a PCR test. Like several nurses and a doctor argued with me. I ended up being sent home after being told PCR and Strep were both negative, but to take medicine like it was Strep. There is no good access to tests, doctors, treatments, even four years after the start of the pandemic. Hell, most of the medical personel I've had to deal with the last four years don't even believe Covid is real, don't mask, don't get vaccinated. Part of the reason I've focused on rest, avoiding things, doing what I can is I figured that it was better than sitting for hours in Urgent Care, around non-masked folks, dealing with medical staff who don't believe in Covid.

Honestly, the years since I've moved here have not been great healthwise. I fell in the shower hurting myself and when I went to the doctor it was a couple months to a specialist appointment who scheduled an MRI which was another couple months away. Only to be told they didn't see anything, but go to physical therapy. Which helped some. But the expensive co-pays for the specialist, the thousands for MRI, the weekly expense of physical therapy, it all added up and took forever to pay off. Then seemingly as soon as I did I started having ankle issues. Repeat the process but add x-rays. This time there was an answer- torn ligaments from years ago, but the answer was also not bad enough to do anything, so be careful, wear a brace. The last few years I've also had more issues with my hands, stiff, hurt after doing things with them, loss of fine motor skills. Bad enough that I gave away my guitar and my bike. Part of this week has been soreness, pain in my right hand, stiffness in both, and a bit of a burning in the left. I worry about this getting worse. I am a teacher, a writer, a scholar. And as I type this I FEEL my joints. 

But this morning I woke up and a different thought occurred to me. A different context.

I am 47. In a couple of months I'll be 48. 

And my mom first started getting sick when she was 46. The first time I remember being aware that she was sick was my college undergraduate graduation in May 1998. Mom had ot leave early because she was tired. I moved to Atlanta then New York City after graduation so I was home for winter break sometimes, but not much else so I was not home to see what the next six years looked like although I talked to her every day on the phone. By 2004 I moved home to help and experienced first hand what Mom's day to day was.

Mom died by suicide in 2011 on Valentine's Day. She overdosed on her Oxycotin prescription. In hindsight a pain management doctor giving someone with life long addiction problems probably should not have been given 40mg pills plus break through medicine. But there was never a diagnosis for what she had. Living at least an hour away from doctors and specialists and hospitals meant that she waited months for appointments then often did not feel well enough to make the appointment. Some said it was Lupus. Another MS but she had no lesions. Parkinson's but no definitive evidence. Her mental status deteriorated along with sleeping all the time, muscle soreness, but when she had to have neck surgery and her meds were regulated there was an amazing couple of weeks where my mom was back. So it's hard to know what the mental stuff actually was. At the end she hated me for lots of reasons. She fell asleeep everywhere, and was angry when you woke her up. Sometimes it was worth the fight, sometimes not. In fact that's how she died. She was on the floor face into the couch and was not woken up. Hours later when someone went to wake her up she was dead. Nothing EMS or anyone could do. Was the OD instantaneous? Would waking her up have saved her? Don't know. I've gone over the autopsy report hundreds of times and there are no answers.

Mom's illness was a daily thing, but her death came as a shock. Despite all that was wrong, how miserable she was, all of her symptoms were being treated. So while she hated her life, and me, a lot, there was never any indication, not from a single doctor, that she just wouldn't live like this for a really, really, long time. Maybe that's why it was often more aggravating than tragic. Exhausting than sad. I know that twelve years later I've banged my head again that wall with absolutely no help. Hindsight is 20/20 and I wish I'd done better. I wish she wasn't so miserable. I wish I'd done more. I hate she died hating me. But I've come to realize that wanting doesn't do anything and at some point you just have to set some things down and keep going.

But this morning as my hand shook as I carried my coffee cup, spilling a trail from kitchen to living room, I thought of my mom's shaking hands. I thought of her when everything started, and she said the blanket I made her had magical powers and/or she'd been bitten by a tsetse fly and had sleeping sickness. That she just couldn't stay awake. And I worried that we never found out what she actually had. That her closed adoption in New Mexico meant no medical records.

I think, it does not matter. I think that with the state of the world, and the total collapse of healthcare, and the multiple apocalypses going on, that it really just doesn't matter. But I can't stop thinking about the fact that I'm more than a year older than her when she started showing signs of what ultimately was the end. She was 58 when she died, so I have some time until I reach the milestone of older than Mom ever was. But it's closer than it was. And I've already aged past one health milestone of hers. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Here's what I know. I have a home, two miraculous kittehs, a job. I am grateful for all this which is so much more than so many. I am grateful I have as much control over my day to day life as I do. I try to appreciate the life I have, the small jobs of unicorn pens and soft kittehs and beautiful sunrises. I'm going to try and rest, and take care of myself. The rest sort of all seems too big, too much, and so I'll keep doing what I can and let that be enough.

Out May 2024: Horror That Haunts Us Nostalgia, Revisionism and Trauma in Contemporary American Horror Film and Television

I am very proud to announce that the edited collection that Dr. Wickham Clayton and I have been working on for so long will be published this May.

https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.3828/9781802074628

The Long 16 Weeks

My education students are spending the last module of the semester creating teaching portfolios. They are choosing their grade level, unit topic's, planning their Understanding by Design sheets, creating module calendars, and then creating 2-3 specific lesson plans with all the resources and materials. This means that we've had lots of discussions about time management, the difference between semester and yearlong classes, block classes versus 50 minutes. How to chunk assignments, station rotations, choosing how you want to teach and what. Their first assignment was to research an educational issue. Then they researched the historical trend of an issue. Next, they wrote teaching philosophies. So the portfolio is the cumination of the semester.

It also means that I've spent a lot of this semester thinking about the pedagogical decisions we make, and how to make visible the invisible labor teachers do as well as how we (teachers) show our beliefs, what we value, every day we show up.

Last night I kept seeing posts on Twitter about the lack of student engagement, how none of the "evidence based strategies" seemed to work. It had me thinking about what evidence these people were looking at. Because the reality of the last few years has been the ebb and flow all at extremely high levels, of multiple apocalypses occuring all at once. These Twitter posts were interspersed amongst images, videos, horrific descriptions of genocide, dead children, climate disasters, flooding, police brutality, attacking education, criminializing protest and free speech. 

So what evidence, what examples, what reality, is influencing these teaching decisions?

It all got me thinking about what I've done this semester, the past few years, in my classes. I never teach the same class twice. Even if I'm teaching Composition I or II, I never teach it the same way. I change the themes, I change the assignments, the readings, the approaches. A lot of this is because the reality of me, y students, has radically changed every semester the last few years. Too, I have different students every semester. But while my students are not all 18 year olds, and not all live on campus, and not all can go to school and JUST focus on school, there are some things that have become the reality of most of my students these days.

I always say this when I advise students- that the idea most people have of what the life of a college student is like, is based on the concept that students can take 15 or more credits per semester (to graduate in four years) because they live on campus, only have school to focus on, no work, no family responsibilities, no commute, no money issues, no other concerns. Even my students who are 18, have come straight from high school, are working, commuting, coaching, involved in extra curricular activities, have family responsibilities which may or may not involve going home weekends, or spending off time helping family. 

The reality of most of my students now also includes acknowledging that most of them spent most of high school in the pandemic apocalypse. Their reality was unstable learning conditions, not always having a teacher, not always having a full class, learning as defined by screens, a serious feeling of disconnect, a sense of ennui, of not feeling as though anything will make a difference, the paradox of an acute sense that there is so much wrong with the world AND that the system is so rigged as to feel there is no way to counter any of it.

Even if I wasn't the kind of teacher who tweaked things every semester I would have had to due to MY lived reality in the four and a half years I've been here. One normal semester. But it was my first semester, so a steep learning curve. Followed by a semester where we all moved online in triage because of Covid. Then a semester of splitting classes, social distancing. Then one with accommodations, but mostly back. Then a year where some people were back totally normal and some weren't. Then a bizarro year where the pandemic still raged, where the world still had multiple apocalypses but the majority of the world pretends that everything is back to "normal." Now, we have, well, now. 

This semester I *think* I've found some things that work and WILL work for other classes, things I can forward, apply. So I thought I'd share.

In the past I've themed my classes- zombies, fairy tales, horror (intro, Black, feminist), social issues, history in media. These have been hit or miss. Some students like them, some don't, some don't love the topics or themes but how I run class works for them. So, this is my first lesson. I'm not going to continue to theme my classes. Instead, I've decided to just teach things I think are fun, that I think students should know, be exposed to. So I really like having students respond to different types of art, music, movies. I like having them learn about social issues and the world. I like them to learn how to read and use all kinds of different research. 

So this semester I divided our 16 week semester into four modules of four weeks each. But after the first module realized that students needed some more time, and extended the first two modules, cut the fourth, and extended by a lot, the third. I have Composition I this semester, so the modules were based around the major assignments due at the end. The first module they wrote a response paragraph. The second module they created an annotated bibliography. For this last module they're doing an analysis project- an essay, or poster, or brochure, presentation, diorama. The idea is that the skills from the first and second create the third. I liked this focus because just having a single paragraph for the first assignment meant that we were able to focus on craft and style and skill. As I explained to the students there was no real estate to mess around, every bit counted. I liked the focus they had, I liked the revision, the process. While annotated bibliographies are a completely made up genre, I tell students that the reason I do them is because I have them put the full citation (because I want them to learn how to do them), then a paragraph that summarizes the argument/information in the source (because I want them to learn how to do that, being specific enough), and then a paragraph where they tell me how they'll use the source (because I want them to think about this so that next time they look for sources they have this in mind). Then their last assignment is to analyze a single aspect. Now for each module we covered a "text" (movie, story, primary documents) in class, used it for practice assignments, and they could write their assignments on that OR they could choose their own. If they wanted to work on the same thing all semester they can. Or they can change their topic every module. Students choose their own topics and focus.

Each module follows the same routine- we spend a couple, three weeks going over the "in class" text, discussions, practice assignments. The last week of the module is set aside for conferences. Students choose what class day they want to come present/conference with me about their assignment,  they come up with it, I read it, ask questions, give feedback, they write the feedback down, go back to their seats, write an email reflection on the process, and email me the assignment. The week before the conference is always workshop week, a week for them to work on their assignment in class.

I've followed this routine for a while and it works well. Students can get one on one help, I am there and available, so they don't need to juggle outside class time for help. They get feedback on their practice assignments to apply to their module assignments, and feedback on module assignments that build on each other. 

What is new this semester that I really like, is the focus, the assignments, of each module. I like that Composition I first focuses on their response to something, then research, then applies both. For Composition II next semester I'm going to build on this, so they'll write a review, then a research report based on what audience needs to understand X, then a presentation that analyzes.

What has become different this semester is what I'm calling "turning into the skid." First- let me make it clear that for this to work you have to check your ego at the door, and be prepared to potentially be bored. I have decided that it's important for students to have time in class to work, ask questions, get help. So I build that time in. I walk around, sit with students, listen to what they're doing, and offer help. But mostly, I'm there in case they need me. This is not time to work, read, do anything, because you have to be available, you have to SHOW students you're there for them, always, but especially, because as students have fewer social skills because of the last few years, and may feel intimidated approaching a professor, it's important you show them. Some students will really appreciate the time. Some will stay home and work, especially during the last module since they will have the poster, cardboard box, whatever, at home. Some students will go to the library or computer lab since they don't have their own or have a tablet without full Word funcitonality, fine for class, less great for other things. Some students will work the whole time. Some will come late. Some won't come at all. Some, because they KNOW every module has these weeks, depend on them to have the flexibility the other parts of their lives don't have. 

I put on the board what we're doing today, tips, recommendations, steps, and what this leads to, and what is upcoming. So all students, late, come take picture, leave, there the whole time, can focus and work and know what's going on. It's clear, it's explicit, and supplements the syllabus where resources and materials are hyperlinked on the live Google syllabus and updated based on what students ask for, need.

I'd argue more teaching and learning happens during these weeks than the rest of the time. Because it's totally focused on them. It's based on conversations we've had, I've overheard, notes I've seen, practice assignments. 

I've done versions of this approach for a while but what is different is me. I've had to not get upset when students use the class as designed, use the flexibility. I need to not take it personally if students don't come, come late, come, take a picture of the board, then leave. If the time is there for them to use, if I build the time in to acknowledge and help deal with the reality of their lives, then I cannot be upset if they DO this. Getting upset, assuming my class, my time, if somehow worth more than other things, is just ego. The simple fact is most of my students in Composition I or II will not become English majors. Definately most will not become pre or early modern scholars. So what is the purpose of Composition I and II? What do I want my students to get out of my classes? I want them to get skills that they can transfer and use in all the other parts of their life. I want them to be introduced to things they might never encounter. I want them to have some fun asking questions, thinking about things, and learning what it IS they think and believe. I want them to have at least one experience where they are the focus, where the focus is more on process and learning and growth.

I've been playing with the role grades have in my class for over five years now, it's gone hand in hand with the workshopping and conferencing. I've honestly, not really liked all of the aspects of anything I've done. I've also learned that my approach in my composition classes can't be the same for my English major classes. I've found my composition students to be open, if suspicious, of different approaches to grading. Sometimes when they ask something, and I ask "how do grades work in our class?" they often can't answer, but, and this is the part I love best, they trust me, the class, how it all works, enough where it's not something they worry about.

This semester I think worked better than most, but the BEST thing is that the experience THIS semester led to a different approach for next semester that I'm really excited about. 

• Students will submit assignments on Blackboard, put their reflections in the submission box. The reflection will be about process.
• These assignments will either "Meet Guidelines" or "Doesn't Yet Meet Guidelines." No grades.
• I do check in surveys every four weeks, students do more formal reflections at progress reports (4 weeks) and midterms, and at the end of the semester. Adding to these, students will tell me, based on what they're done, learned, etc. whether or not they're at-risk or not at progress reports, what grade should be reported for midterms and final (since these are required).

These let me build on what I think is important and still comply with what I'm required to do. Part of the reason why I'm able to do all this is because I have the flexibility in my classes, not a whole lot is dictated, although I'd argue I've done this in a couple of different environments, and I think it IS something you can make work in different places. But honestly, the real reason I'm able to do all this is because of everything I've let go of. Policing, lots of policies, are gone. Essentially I'm done to "come to class unless you're sick, or have something else that's important, because you're adults and can make your own decisions" and "do the work although the due dates are suggestions, there's no penalty for late work, although at a certain point there's no learning done in just making up the work and there is a hard deadline for turning in work at the end of the semester." I've let go of dictating the conditions of what their learning looks like. Students choose their own topics, explore what they're interested in. They get as much, or as little, as they want or need out of class. Some really love it and challenge themselves. Some just want the passing GE grade. And me letting go of my ego has been a large part of this. It is not about me. As much as I thought I had this handled, not taking things personally has been harder than I would have thought given all the rest of the work I've done on all this.

Sixteen weeks is a long semester, even with a few longer weekends, and fall semester here does not have a lot of breaks. Another benefit to all of this is that it makes a 16 week semester work. It has enough time for students not to feel stressed, to have time and space to figure things out. It has enough time for students to not feel rushed. There is a balance here, space for them to figure out what does work for them, how to balance things, organize their lives, the larger things they need to learn to have good, healthy, adult lives.

The simple fact is that the world is awful. The outside forces are heavy and evil and make everything harder. While small moves are still the answer to making change, the institutional and structural failures of literally everything, and the disappointment in the failure of all previous generations and every possible person in power who should be making things better not worse, sometimes is a weight that crushes us all into the dirt. The apocalypses seem to be getting worse, not better. The horrors are like Tribbles, multiplying exponentially, daily. As much as the majority wants to pretend none of this is true, THIS is the reality our students are living with, this is the reality WE'RE living with. We're not going to wake up tomorrow and have this all better, it is not going away. So the evidence of our lives in right in front of us, unrolling 24 hours a day, on a never ending loop of horror and devastation, unable to escape. 

So if this is our reality, and it is, then I'm going to do what I can to help students figure out how to live these lives. I'm going to model for them behaviors and thinking out loud on HOW to live these lives. I'm going to try and make better humans.

Changes in the Classroom

The last few years have brough a lot of changes to the classroom, many of which are having lasting effects.

Massive amounts of schools and classes moved online in what many labelled "triage." Yet years later many schools have not moved past this triage stage. Teaching online is very different from teaching face to face. Perhaps the similest difference is in the prep. In face to face classes, many teachers/professors will rough out what they want to discuss or cover and then the bulk of the class is determined by the students, their interests, their discussions. Online classes are generally planned out, built, posted, as a whole. So the workload shifts to before the class starts.

Online teaching also requires different approaches to direct instruction, engagement, and feedback. In my opinion, online teaching is also, in many ways, knowing how to counter the bad pedagogy baked into learning management systems like an overreliance on due dates, arbitrary due dates, depending on activity streams and calendar reminders rather than working through a course. Arbitrary requirements for discussion boards. An overreliance on rubrics and grades rather than feedback and growth.

But several years into the pandemic, many online classes have compounded the issues of the initial triage. PDFs are just dumped in the course. Many rpofessors still are not comfortable posting assignments, readings, lessons, in a timely manner. Instructions are confusing.

Face to face classes have their own sets of issues. While Covid made some professors realize the ableism in their attendance polcicies, there are issues too with rarely attending class, and the sweet spot of stressing the importance of attending class with the grace of understanding things happen where students need to miss class is still illusive to many.

Likewise, I know many face to face teachers are also struggling with the balance between accessibility, making lessons, assignments, resources, available online, and the reality that students may not see the reason to come to class if everything is online.

All of this needs to be placed in the larger context of the loss of understanding of what the role of education is in 2023. Is education simply a set of content and skills to learn? Boxes to check? Have all classes become modern day correspondence classes where students work at their own pace, in their own place, where the teacher is superfluous after they create and post the content? Does education always have to be tied to career skills or jobs? Or is there still any place for education to be exposure to art, literature, learn new things, time to think about new things students have never considered? How are these two educations gendered? Classed? Who gets to determine who gets what education?

And where are our students in all this? 

Practically, the first year students in college in fall 2023 have spent their almost their entire high school experience under Covid conditions. This often means that their experience varies wildly depending on where they came from- were they in big cities with larger outbreaks and higher Covid deaths and sickness? Did their schools have a lot of instability as teachers were out, large numbers of classes were out, and more and more time was spent combining several classes under a teacher who may or may not be educated and trained in the class they're supervising? 

How much teaching and learning is going on when there is still a bus driver shortage, there are still students who ride buses who are missing the first part of their day?

How many students had access to computers and internet? How many teachers were trained in teaching online? How did everyone- teachers, students, staff, families, experience the beginning and ongoing aspects of the pandemic? What resources did they have for loss? Grief? Disability? How have families, students, faculty and staff been affected by massive systems clearly indicating that they did not care about their individual needs, wants, hurts? What is the effect on students who have seen jobs, money, the economy, prioritized over THEM?

Then there's the horrifying reality that so many have chosen misinformation over reality and that few if any public institutions are doing anything about it.

• Covid is airborne
• Many schools, workplaces, made no changes to systems to improve air quality or filtration 
• Vaccines work
• But vaccines only lower your chances of being hospitalized or dying
• They do NOT prevent you from getting, or spreading, Covid 
• You have to have access to vaccines for them to work
• Easy access is key
• People need access to tests, rapid ones at home, PCR tests at larger
• People need access to data to make decisions
• People need access to early treatments
• People need access to accurate information about best practices for recovery
• How most people think of social distancing does not reflect the reality that Covid is airborne
• Yes, avoiding indoor, crowded places, helps you mitigate risk
• But standing 6' away from someone does nothing
• Masks lower the amount of virus in the air, so makes places safer
• They keep you safer by blocking the majority of particles you breathe in
• They keep other people safer from you in case you have the virus

So these are the students in your classroom. They often have unresolved mental health issues, most commonly anxiety, depression, and suicide. Many lost someone to the pandemic. The last few years computers, phones, became students' only connection to the outside world so now these devices act as woobies, safety objects, for them. This also means that socializing, introducing self, talking in groups, are skills that students don't have, or have not used in a while. What about the students who have learning disabilities? What support did they have the last few years? What support are they getting now in college? What serves our students best? 

Perhaps the largest part of the challenge for educators, whether you're K-12 or higher education, is that so many of these factors are beyond our control. We cannot do anything about students' home environment, whether that's with their families or dorm rooms. We cannot do anything about access to mental and physical health resources. We cannot do anything about the growing hate in the outside world.

As of writing, most research seems to say that Long Covid affects one in five people who have had Covid and 25% of people with Long Covid have their lives significantly impacted. We know that every time someone gets Covid their chances of getting Long Covid goes up. We know that every time you get Covid it damages your systems, and we just don't have any idea how bad, or what the long terms effects are.

Science is still catching up with the effects of Long Covid. We know it effects the entire body. We know that people who were athletes, perfectly healthy, recovered, are still dropping dead of heart attacks and strokes. 

Yet schools are not requiring masks, or testing, or quarantines. Educators may have noticed that a lot of their students are sick, but it's all become anecdotal in the absence of any data or tracking.

Anecdotally, educators say across disciplines, states, grades, that they are seeing similar issues in their students. One study says that that overall these effects last 125 days. Most school years are 180 days for reference, and we don't yet know what continued exposure does.

• A hard time understanding directions, often needing them repeated and reinforced (written and oral)
• A hard time comprehending what they're reading
• Inability to focus, pay attention
• Issues in executive function
• Inability to process information, or slower processing speeds
• Problems prioritizing information
• Absenteeism is still high, so there are weeks of class missed, not just days
• Sleep disturbance, incomnis
• Delirium
• Loss of memory
• Mood changes
• Irritability
• Depression
• Exhaustion, chronic fatiruq

There's a lot of use of the term "learning loss" and very little recognition that it's not just due to a loss of "seat time" in school, it has to do with cognitive impairment due to repeated exposure to Covid. We simply do not know what the long term effects are on growing brains. The above study does argue that stress and anxiety make the above symptoms worse. As does asthma, allergies.

It's also important to note that these are the "mild" aftereffects of Covid, and are impacting educators too, our ability to teach, plan, be in class. 

If we make our whole class accessible, if we make our content accessible, ourselves as resources accessible, then everyone benefits. What does this look like in the larger context of labor issues? Unpaid emotional labor? How all of this is gendered and racial?

There is no one good answer and each eduator, each school, should be working together to determine what works best for their areas, their environments. Generally, it seems as though whatever the answer is, it is a combination of factors.

• School administration should communicate the most up to date information
• There should be access to information, testing, treatment for all
• Schools need to lessen the work load on faculty and staff
• Educators need to be educated on what accessibility looks like and what accommodations can address all of the above issues
•  Stop focusing on seat time, compliance, "loss" 
• Model accessibility and accommodations

Just some ideas of things that can start to help:

• Reconceive what you think learning looks like
• There is content students need to memorize, content for fields, jobs, classes, that you're expected to know
• There is content you need to know where to find, look up
• There are skills and content you need to be able to apply
• Reconceive what you think the demonstration of learning looks like
• Written documents are not the best, only assessment
• Students may be better at orally describing things, drawing items, or producing products or models
• Students may do better with annotating, responding to models, than creating their own
• Cut the amount of content you're covering
• Classes need to be built with the understanding that students will miss massive amounts of class- weeks at a time, and on either side of these absences, may not be fully comprehending
• Have explicit lessons about how to read, interact with, use, the content you're covering
• Provide online resources, materials, that replicate the information in class for reinforcement, but also so students can reference outside of class, use as reminders
• Provide templates for work, writing, projects, as well as how to read and respond to content
• Build patterns into your class- for doing work, responding, completing work, so students can learn the pattern then apply it
• Change how you present concepts. Introduce it, then revisit it, then ask students what they remember, then provide reinforcement through audio, video, written
• Use concepts and work as building blocks. Start with foundational items, them revisit, review, build on these
• Focus on skills, learning them, applying them (like critical thinking) over content

I am concerned about the health effects on children. I am concerned about the ripples in the pond of what happens when these students graduate, or don't, and try to enter the workforce. I worry about how totally and completely incapable society at large is for the scale of these issues. I worry about the burdens some are taking on, and the careless disregard for the effect on so many. I worry about whole generations of students who are internalizing all this loss, grief, anxiety.

While I think there are some general approaches that all educational environments could institute, and general education a lot of us could use, I do think that the best way forward is to start an ongoing conversation with faculty, students, communities. I think that educators need to have less on their plate, and more time to reflect on what will work best for them, their students, their classes.

I think even if we all started this tomorrow, it still would not be enough.

But I also know that we have to try.