Our series highlighting faculty, student and staff experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic
For faculty, students and academic staff around the world, the Covid-19 pandemic has created a moment of prolonged rupture and necessary re-evaluation during the transition to online teaching and learning. This moment raises questions about accessibility, grading, online pedagogy and how to approach instructional continuity during periods of sustained crisis. How has Barnard faculty approached this unprecedented period of transition? The CEP sat down with faculty members and teaching assistants to discuss their experiences, challenges and inspirations teaching in the time of pandemic.
The CEP welcomes your comments and feedback on this series. Please email us at pedagogy@barnard.edu
I’m teaching two classes this semester. One is a lecture and one is a seminar. The lecture is Women Gender and Sexuality in Latin America. The second is a class called Seeking Asylum: History, Politics and the Search for Justice at the US-Mexico Border which is a seminar following an engaged pedagogy model.
I'm teaching a large course this semester, Introductory Organic Chemistry, which has 150 students. For that first week we went online, I made some video recordings corresponding to our Wednesday and Friday classes and I posted those for those for the students. I already have a pretty extensive set of materials and problem-solving exercises that are online and I've continued to publish those on Canvas according to the usual schedule. And I did also have office hours that first week on Zoom, too.
I'm teaching one class this semester which is the Interpretation of Culture. It's a very large lecture class. I'm also the Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University and co-director of the Barbara Silver Horwitz ‘55 Scholars of Distinction Program and there's a course that goes along with that.
As a Barnard alumna and an alumna of Barnard’s anthropology department, it was this type of mentorship, close reading of my work and guided reading, that allowed me to develop a dissertation project of my own that brought me to fieldwork in public health inside two large hospital systems. I see that sort of mentorship developing in the department still. I chose to do my PhD at Columbia in order to continue to work with my Barnard senior thesis advisor, Nadia Abu el-Haj, who is now my PhD committee chair.
I am Co-Chair of the Environmental Science Department and so I end up with a course release and so this was the semester I'm only doing one course. I am teaching a First-Year Seminar and our seminar is called Sustainability. The idea of that class is that we read a wide range of environmentally-based texts. It’s a fun course for discussion. So, what happened is that we were halfway through the course and it all got blown up. And so, when this transition happened I was thinking to myself, "What could we do to sort of give the students a unique perspective?" That is what we are doing here: we are trying to all make a podcast about some aspect of the experience.
This semester I’m teaching First-Year Seminar and First-Year Writing, my class theme for both courses is “Women and Comedy.” I’ve been teaching first-years for nearly ten years, but this year was my first at Barnard and it has been a unique teaching experience for a few reasons. I’m a Barnard alumna myself. I came in as a transfer and spent most of my time on 4th floor Barnard Hall as an English major. That immediate connection is very powerful.
Our students are so amazing, they’re so ambitious...These are not circumstances that allow us to do our best job and we have to learn how to keep going even though we can’t, which is another kind of lesson, right? I definitely keep saying to people that we don’t know what we’re going to learn from this but it’s going to be amazing. And I think that’s true.
The whole thing about the camera was very interesting for me, and I think for the students. One of the things that we don’t notice as much when you’re in class is that there is a large range of socioeconomic class being represented in our classrooms. If you’re in class you don’t really notice because you’re all sitting in the same classroom - you’re all at Barnard and it’s fun. When you’re not in class and you’re videoing, you’re seeing the backgrounds of your other peers. Some people are on nice porches somewhere upstate and some people have to share apartments with their families and you can see that in the background. One of the things that I worried about is how does that psychologically affect your ability to learn.
I think especially if you live in New York, it has been obvious [the virus] has affected some people disproportionately. I found that my students and I have had good conversations around some of those issues. The lab project was also framed with an understanding of some of those issues. I hope that when we come out of this that we'll all be a little less glib about the cost to our society if we just continue to believe that income inequality is not a problem or unequal access to medical care is not a problem. We say want to raise the next generation of student leaders or women leaders, right? And hopefully, for my future scientists and doctors and nurses, this will affect how they work in the world.