Community
Over the past few weeks we’ve had a chance to meet up with our departmental colleagues a few times, and although we’re not the most social bunch in normal times (especially not in comparison with PoliSci at the other end of the floor), it’s clear we miss each other enough to want to arrange every now and then a meeting for all that’s not about business.
Today we had a session on Zoom (because, where else?) from MCTL, our Center for Teaching and Learning. There was no particular agenda, and it was just good to see so many colleagues I hadn’t seen in more than four weeks. Some I hadn’t seen since before spring break at the end of February!
And although a dry analysis of the contents of our conversation would reveal that there wasn’t altogether that much news, it is clear to me that was not the point at all of this gathering. It was important to know we’re not alone, we’re still part of a community.
We’re all too aware that our students crave the community they left behind. But it’s too easy as teachers to forget we don’t teach alone: we talk with each other about teaching so often, without realizing. We share how a class went well, we moan for a moment about how we felt our effort was not appreciated, or at least did not appear to pay off. We celebrate when students “get it”. We show off our successes; we ask and offer advice when we feel there’s room for improvement. Often it’s only a minute here, a chat in the corridor there. And now we just sit at home and wonder why we feel alone.
We are not alone. We are isolated, and at the end of a long day full of Zoom meetings and other ways of staring at a screen, the last thing we want to do is stare some more at a screen. But it is the only way we now have to recapture some of that community. Covid19: the disease that unites us by forcing us to be separate.