When the Going gets Tough (in education), the Tough (educators) Get Going?
I’ll admit it, I live in academia. My full time job is to educate the engineers
of tomorrow. I really like this job, and
I think I do it well (although, I will be candid, I continue to be amazed at
many of my colleagues who are better than I).
This said, after 5 years in academia full time, I still don’t fully fit
in, and probably never will. There are
things like the constant need to relate to academic year vice summer in
discussions around salary and research grants or the idea that you give someone
up to 6 years to prove themselves, investing millions into them, and then you summarily
fire them when they don’t get tenure (instead of converting them over to
teaching faculty; recognizing that research isn’t the end-all, be-all for what makes
a good educator at post-secondary institutions). The whole business model and metrics around academic
research continues to drive me nuts (like it just doesn’t make sense to me that
you count success as high research expenditures,
vice any kind of measurement of research outcomes;
and to me those outcomes don’t have to always be monetary returns, but why isn’t
that a part of the picture). I also get
driven nuts over how many of us live in a bit of la la land when it comes to
entitlement, especially as it has come into stark relief amidst planning for
return to classes this fall.
Now, let me be clear, we have to take COVID-19 seriously and
we have to make preparations. We have to
account for individual risk factors and do what we can to mitigate those
enhanced risks that exist over the pre-COVID “normal” levels of risk in everyday
life. I am not talking about that. What I am talking about, however, is how
quickly, when we look to put mitigation measures in place, words like “untenable”
or “unrealistic” come out, in response to the inconveniences that come with
them. There are things that are indeed
untenable, unrealistic, and so forth (for instance the ability to control the behavior
of collegiate students at 2 am on Sunday morning of any given weekend such that
a surge spread of COVID might be controlled, not likely), but the reactions
actually aren’t to those things. The
reactions are too often in response to what amounts to rather trivial inconveniences
when you step back and look at them, thus making them poster children for
ridicule.
Before I cite some examples of this, let me fully disclose my
role in our (Clarkson University’s) fall semester in-person teaching planning.[i] Given my background in college and university
facilities,[ii] and that the Director of
Facilities and Services parted company early in the outset of the effects of
the COVID outbreak at Clarkson, I have voluntarily stepped in to help the facilities
response team in several aspects of the plan.
Namely I have been figuring out the occupancy limits in campus buildings,
first as it relates to code occupancy, then as is relates to the state guidelines
for social distancing. I also have a
team of students, working with a colleague of mine, that are doing socially
distanced classroom layouts for both fixed seat classrooms as well as temporary
classrooms, in places like the campus field house, as well as determining
campus path routing to minimize the chance of spread during pedestrian movements
on campus, inside our interlinked academic core. So on top of my other roles, I have stepped
in to help where my expertise can be of some hoped for value and been working in
concert with many team members to do as best we can within the guidance provided.
So that being disclosed, let me cite some examples of what I
am talking about as it relates to the level of privilege in academia in the
midst of our ongoing response. This
first example comes from an email I received about the draft plan for one-way
hallways in a major academic building on campus. The author writes, “One way traffic makes
sense in main circulating corridors. However,
on branch hallways, it results in some flow patterns that aren't tenable. In XX building, the faculty office halls
require faculty to go out into a stairwell, go downstairs and outside, then
come back in the front entrance. Even if
the stairs could be two-way, it would mean going up or down stairs every time a
faculty member needs to get somewhere.” “Two
principles have to be that people who need to use elevators can access them
without stairs, and outdoor walking is minimized (as much as I prefer outdoor
walking!).”
So let’s break this down, because you have to walk outside
or being required to use a stairwell for able bodied persons (the plan has a
blanket exemption for traffic plans for all those that have a mobility impairment),
the plan is not “tenable”? Further,
while I am getting numerous questions about the adequacy of fresh air ventilation
generally in buildings, the rubric should be that we give preference for indoor
mobility over outdoor? The email brought
up good points that allowed us to make some better modifications to the traffic
flow for this building, but as I also said in my reply, “what is tenable vice
desirable, from an objective point of view, are perhaps different.” As someone who literally slept under a
vehicle for 2 months in Baghdad in the summer of 2003, I am sorry, but really? The imposition of you, an able-bodied person,
having to alter your route and being inconvenienced with having to go up or
down a flight of stairs or routing outside for less than a minute or two (even
if it’s raining, snowing or sleeting), is really a fairly small sacrifice in
the big picture.
The second example I will cite is about a classroom set-up
situation. It comes from a fellow faulty
member that has been vociferous in their concerns about face-to-face instruction
in the fall, especially as it relates to ventilation, contact, and so forth. This person contacted me about a particular classroom
set-up. My colleague writes, “I am surprised that there are three seats in a row at one
table, but what really horrifies me is that there is one seat right on the
first seat at the table before the podium. That forces me to be behind the monitor for 90
mins, which is unrealistic.” So to break
this down, what is really “horrific” is that the faculty member will have to
stand in a particular location during their lectures for an hour an half class
in order to maintain social distancing. Not
to be too flippant, but apparently students have now become the enemy? Their conclusion was that the occupancy for
the room was too high, and should be lowered.[iii] So, in essence, I don’t want to have to
modify my delivery to be static, so we need to change the room to accommodate me.
I have cited these two examples because they really get at
the point I am trying to make. Look, all
of this sucks. It really does. I agree we should have made a much more
concerted evaluation of whether we should have even tried in-person instruction
in the fall, with all of its economic, social, and reputational aspects. That said, candidly, I think I would have probably
come up on the side of “giving it a try” for in-person education this fall.[iv] Without question one of the things I learned,
and learned well, from my service in the US Army, is that when you are in the “suck”
you need to make the best of it.
Wallowing and complaining about the fact that things suck, doesn’t help
you get out of it; rather it makes it “suck” more. Instead, get over yourself, stop being
selfish, and figure out how to mitigate the worst of it driving yourself out of
it as fast as possible. Afterwards, sure,
figure out how not to get stuck in the same “suck” again, but don’t fixate on it
when you are in the midst of it.[v] COVID-19 sucks; teaching in-person in the
midst of this pandemic has up-ticked the risk for sure. But we have to step back a bit and get a
grip, this isn’t the black plague nor is it going to be if we stay level headed.
Folks, let’s get real.
Is having to walk another 300 yards before or after going to the
bathroom really make life unbearable? Is
it really that bad that you will have to modify your pedagogical approach for
the coming semester to give the most students the best chance to learn? What we need to get past, as academics, is
that we are not the privileged children we think we are. Look Socrates went to trial and was put to
death. There has been and always will be
risk to our profession; one we need to accept, even, especially, when we are
called to be inconvenienced. This fall,
we need to expect and live into the undesirable (in all its forms, including
online education and more), it’ll make us better for it. And if you are so concerned, there are outs: instruct 100% virtually or look to pre-record
you lectures and “flip” the classroom so that your face to face engagement isn’t
you talking at your students but you dialoging with them through such mediums
as Zoom, discussion boards, or what not.
All of this is more work, but frankly, if we’ve been paying attention
(and I have), this is what we have been warned we will need to adjust to sooner
rather than later, not just as individual instructors but all of academia. So, words of wisdom from a soldier, live into
the “suck”, get past it, and in the end, you’ll be amazed at how much we benefit
from it, both individually as well as collectively.
[i]
For more, see the university response website:
https://www.clarkson.edu/future-ready
[iii]
With its secondary and tertiary effects of needing to move the class to another
room or similar, creating a domino effect.
[iv]
A slight counterfactual, in so much as I am absent the full analysis, and
believe data should drive decision making more than it does at the institution
at the present time; we are too often relying in on an intuitive instead of a
deliberate decision making process.
[v]
And, as my good battle buddy friend Sam Chisolm says, there is no need to train
at living in the “suck”.
