Corona Chronicles 3.0: Learning to Live and Living to Lead in a Post-COVID reality

By DIO Press Inc

COVID 19 has shaped, altered, and impacted nearly every facet of the world as we knew it prior to the start of the pandemic. From what was once a new and novel virus, to the development of testing, policies, and vaccines, and through the altered social reality that characterizes the new normal we work to make sense of our COVID-era realities. Pr

• Language: English
• Publisher: DIO Press Inc
• Release date: Sep 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781645042860

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An Introduction Letter

July 2022

Dear Reader,

When we were children and learning to tell stories, many of us were taught to start in the beginning, find a logical sequence of important events, and then identify the conclusion. What is often taught to us as children become more difficult with the complexities involved in particular types of stories. Identifying a beginning, sequencing the middle, and wrapping up with a conclusion is no easy task for these volumes or the circumstances that bring us together as authors, educators, community members, activists, parents, and children.

Some contributors to this volume might tell you the story of COVID-19 started in March of 2020, when they may have experienced a profound shift in their lives. Others may tell you that their stories began in January or February 2020 when their local news highlighted global concerns. Those sharing such perspectives tend to center on a more Eurocentric and America-centric perspective. In contrast, those in Asia may describe a time, late in 2019, as the beginning of their stories. This perspective aligns with the year COVID-19 was named and de-centers a predominately white-influenced, so-called Western set of narratives. Still, other authors in this volume and worldwide may trace the story of COVID-19 even farther back.

How you mark the events and context of COVID-19 is ultimately up to each of you. Your perspective is likely influenced by how you experienced the pandemic and its complexities. Our aim will not be to tell you a singular and definitive narrative of COVID-19 or what it means to lead, process, hope, or commit in this time. Instead, we aim to stitch together a set of narratives that reflect myriad perspectives, understandings, and approaches to making sense of COVID-19 and its impact on communities, academics, educators, students, and families.

This volume represents the third effort to shape and share our understandings of COVID as a community of learners and thinkers. For each of us as editors and certainly the authors, we have all found opportunities to reflect on our own experiences. Our stories guided our process and opened the way to this third volume to continue the conversation and work toward new thinking about life as we navigate COVID times.

We were aware that many academics, activists, parents, children, and communities worldwide have something to say; we share narratives that speak to this moment. Throughout history, generations look back to the records that are left to make sense of a time that pre-dates their context. Our collective stories also help those in the future mark some insights about what this time meant. At the time of this writing, most undergraduate students have no actual memory or experience with 9-11, yet their lives are undoubtedly impacted by the events and consequences of 9-11. For the authors of this volume, the impacts of Vietnam, Korea, and World Wars are reduced to memories shared by others but do not constitute our experiences. In that sense, having multiple texts, videos, and other records should prove useful and informative to the next generation. This volume, like the volumes before, provides an opportunity for those who are experiencing COVID-19 in the moment an outlet to share, reflect, and be heard.

We recognized early on that stories alone were not necessarily enough. We set out to have a third volume that not only shared experiences but did so while simultaneously transcending story. We also aimed to share the processes that people leveraged, various leadership approaches, their commitments, and our hopes. We approached Michel Lokhurst at DIO Publishing who immediately saw the value of continuing this conversation into a third volume. Michel pushed us to gather submissions quickly and aggressively; the anticipated publication date was set for March 2022 to tie to the anniversary of how things changed in the US in March of 2020. COVID itself had different plans.

We have had a number of setbacks in putting this volume together: COVID struck several authors and editors, people found themselves fatigued and struggling to process what used to be routine publication efforts, and generally, the world has seen an uptick of concurrent events to COVID which press on our hearts and souls: the acts of aggression and war being leveraged on Ukraine by Russia, a Supreme Court in turmoil which has effectively ended women’s rights to choose, and a socio-political landscape marred by uncertainty. We are months behind where we wanted to be—but we are still here, and that is the point. While not delivered for March of 2022, we are happy that this volume has finally been finished and can be shared with a wider audience.

Like the other volumes before this one, we sent out a call for proposals to have chapters of 2000–4000 words that de-emphasized academic writing in some ways (we asked for little to no citationalia). Instead, we asked authors to speak from their hearts and minds, walking past the shadows of citations that too often preoccupy academics. In the end, we received well over 50 high-quality submissions. We ended up selecting 22 chapters that focus on various experiences with COVID and learning how to transcend what COVID has meant to us. We believe that these chapters will support readers in taking their next steps, help them navigate whatever their normal will be, and support them in moving forward.

Life is both different than 2020 when we first started dealing with COVID and also other than 2021 when the first volumes came out. The differences that we experience are, in some pretty concrete ways, new and unfamiliar, while moving on—or learning to live with the new realities feel, in other ways, remarkably familiar. We are sure these struggles resonate with anyone reading this text who is living through this moment.

The chapters in this volume come from academics, teachers, activists, parents, children, and community members. We worked diligently throughout the editing process to make the volume as sleek as possible. We often asked authors to reduce what they had written by up to 15% so that we could be as inclusive of as many perspectives as possible. We also tried to maintain that the chapters reflect the various styles and approaches of each author, and unlike some of our more academic book experiences, we had a wider range and tolerance for writing. We understand that these varied styles and contexts may make some readers uncomfortable while inviting a different set of folks who will resonate with the book in ways that would be difficult in traditional academic books.

This volume focuses on stories and narratives that meet up at the intersections of COVID-19, our professional and personal lives, as well as issues and ideas related to the past, present, and future brought to light by the extraordinary times we find ourselves in. We organized this volume into four major sections to help facilitate an organizational structure and ease readers ability to navigate the major focus of each section.

We know that our editorial choices in terms of organization are merely those: choices. In the end, almost every chapter touches on multiple identified sections, and there were likely thousands of choices we could have made in terms of naming and organizing the book sections. It would be callous to say that the sections are random or that our choices were not important. To be certain, we made decisions based on our thorough reading of all the chapters in both volumes and tried to take up the themes that we think resonate with most folks reading this book.

Section One is titled "On Struggle and Loss, and narrates the trials, triumphs, and trepidation of COVID in light of the last nearly two years and how this loss has impacted our lives and work in COVID times. Section Two is titled, On Adaption" and narrates the ways in which individuals, communities, and practices have adapted to altered realities and thinking about what is working and not working in these adaptations. The third section, "On Strength & Resiliency," narrates the emergence of strength and resilience in navigating COVID, contemplating what have been the sources, movements, and engagements that have helped provide rays of light in otherwise dark times. The fourth and final section, "On Moving Forward," narrates the pathways forward and how we move forward despite uncertainty. In other words, a focus on a new tomorrow.

In all, the chapters in this volume are written in a variety of styles—traditional to novel, thinking through a variety of contexts—from home to school, to community. They will resonate with readers in unique ways. We understand that some chapters will feel very familiar to some, while other chapters will challenge readers with new perspectives and ideas; that was the hope of this volume: to push us as readers to think through how we make sense of this time and move forward in productive ways. We see both volumes as a dialogue between the authors, the readers, and ourselves. We hope you take up these narratives and put them to use in your professional and personal engagements. In a context of great complexity, we expect the narratives in this volume to mark this time, help us understand the time in relationship to the past and present, and give us mechanisms to move forward.

In Solidarity,

Kenny, Chyllis, P. G., Sophie, and Marty

Chapter 1

How To Go From A Hero To A Villain In Just 23 Quick Months

Matt Albert

Hi.

I’m Matt.

Nice to meet you.

I’m a high school teacher.

Twenty-three months ago, I was a hero. My colleagues were heroes, too.

Twenty-three months later, I’m a villain. My colleagues are villains, too.

Why? Because you said so.

That’s right–YOU.

Parents, politicians, administrators, clergy, police, firefighters, judges, heck, all of society, all of YOU.¹

I have to tell you, I’m frankly impressed. You really had us going there. You actually made us think for a split second that we were valued in ways that went beyond the usual lip service. For just a smidge of time in March 2020, we actually thought we were more than peons to you. More than the scapegoats of intellectually dishonest political debates. More than what some of you call glorified babysitters. More than what some of you call the people with the easiest jobs in the world because they get three months off. More than what some of you call people who can’t do, so they teach.

And why did we feel that way? It’s simple. You started to sound like you were beginning to understand what we, as teachers, actually do in a classroom. Some of you actually started to acknowledge that we write lesson plans and grade outside of regular school hours. You noticed that we coach sports teams and academic clubs well into the afternoons and evenings. You even respected that we facilitate learning for 30+ temperamental humans seven periods a day for five days a week. Now here’s the big question:

Why did you stop?

Seriously? Why did you stop?

Why did you go back to demanding full control over what we teach your kids? Why did you believe the illogically framed problem of Critical Race Theory being taught in every classroom? Why did you start movements to ban books informing your kids of real-world issues they encounter now and not just as adults? Why did you berate school board members who were trying to mitigate the spread of a virus in rooms where humans are never more than 24 inches apart instead of the several feet that many of you in homes can pull off? But most importantly, why did you forget that there was an educated, qualified, trained adult in a classroom with your child every day who actually wanted to be there because it’s their personal calling? Why?

I realize that’s a lot of questions. If this situation was a normal conversation, I would have paused long ago to let you respond. That’s the respectful thing to do. But this setting isn’t a normal conversation. In this essay format, I control where the argument goes and use the tools of rhetoric to guide you as you read. In some ways, that reality actually benefits both of us. While my voice finally gets heard, you have to hear me out instead of cutting me off with your own predetermined conclusions. It’s good that you have to listen to me to the end, too. By hearing me out, you might realize I’m not interested in starting a war with parents over what happens in a classroom. Yes, but yes, but yes, I hear you cry. But why were you so mean at the beginning? You’ll turn off your audience. False, dear reader. False.

Unfortunately, if I led off with some conciliatory remarks and buttered you up about parents being stretched too thin during the pandemic, then you would’ve stopped listening to me because, at that point in your mind, you’re the hero of the story. And in your mind, since you’re the hero, your experience gets top priority over mine. However, you’d be forgetting that you already called someone else the hero of the story. Me. In March 2020. So, since I’m the hero, my story gets the edge. Yup. Them’s the rules. If you don’t like ‘em, come to my literature class and engage in a dialogue with me about the study of fiction and nonfiction. (Seriously, you should. Your kids enjoy it pretty much every day they step foot in my room because they know they’re studying material that matters. One of them even told me today they want to be an English teacher because they just get it after not seeing it for so many years. Pretty neat, huh? Your tax dollars pay me to do that and a whole lot more.)

Anyway, back to business. Do we need to go over what happened shortly after March 2020? I’m not sure it’s entirely necessary because you’re still feeling the effects of it 23 months later. You saw what happens when your kids don’t get to interact with other kids daily in real-time. You saw what happens when four kids in the same house try to use the web and keep getting kicked off of Zoom because your boss demanded you to be on call all day long at home. You saw the utter frustration your youngest ones experienced when they struggled to operate a computer because they’re only five and six years old (or younger)and haven’t succumbed to the faceless, voiceless, one-way conversations of social media applications yet. You’re still recovering from that. Trust me; we completely sympathize with you. 100%. You were not ready for that kind of stress, and you did your best because survival was key. You were being a parent as best you could (some of you with far fewer resources than others, but that’s a story for another day and time).

Here’s what was happening in our rooms while you were dealing with all of that at home. Every day, we came and stood in front of a webcam and taught to the ether. Sometimes, we could see your kids’ faces on our tiny tablets. At some point, that stopped because your kids pointed their cameras at their ceiling fans, got up from their chairs, and never came back until it was time to log in to the next class. When we tried to start a class discussion, we got silence in return. At best, maybe three kids would chime in throughout a 50-minute class period. Sometimes we tried to put your kids in breakout rooms with friends they talked with all of the time pre-pandemic. What happened when we went in to check those rooms? More silence. Do you know why? Because kids aren’t meant to talk to screens all day long. I know that, you know that—even 1996 Norm Macdonald playing Bob Dole knows that. Seeing as that approach didn’t work, we tried using a bunch of educational technology tools to increase engagement like Pear Deck, Nearpod, Kahoot, Prezi, Google Docs, Google Slides, Canva, Flipgrid, Poll Everywhere, and so many more. That got a few extra kids involved but still not nearly enough. If only the problems stopped there. They didn’t.

The school year mercifully ended, the government proclaimed a summer of normal for everyone who was vaccinated, and then the Delta variant did its best impression of your childless friend couple who always stays three hours past the end of every party and goes to bed at an hour you haven’t even come close to touching since before your first-born came along. That’s okay, you thought, Schools are going back to normal, and my kids are getting out of this house! And leave the house they did. Both you and I couldn’t have been happier. You were finally able to get some peace and quiet, and we were going to be able to do our jobs normally, even if it meant shouldering minor inconveniences like wearing a mask and spraying tables with disinfectant. It would all be worth it.

That moment, dear reader, is where something happened. You recognized things were normal again. And since things were normal again, it was time for you to go back to distrusting every single thing we did in our classrooms. Except this time, the distrust was nastier than normal. You couldn’t wait to jump down our throats the second we expected your kid to turn in assignments by a certain deadline or do some light reading in the evening. It didn’t stop there, though. When we emailed or called you looking for guidance about how to reach your child, who was completely unmotivated, you got angry that we even contacted you in the first place. You were so done with them that you wanted us to ameliorate your child’s mental health struggles and catch them up on the 1.5 years of lessons they had missed. You were not interested in developing a partnership with us to tackle the problem. That’s where you realized the problem wasn’t you, your kids, or the public school system itself, but the teachers. It had to be the teachers.

The kids aren’t learning! Blame the teachers!

My kid reads four grade levels below their peers after not reading anything for the past year at home! Blame the teachers!

The feedback on this essay asked for some revisions! How dare my kid’s creativity and style be restricted! Blame the teachers!

I hold my kid to high standards, expect A’s all the time, and they aren’t getting an A in AP Literature! Blame the teachers!

My kid chose to turn in nothing this semester, but at least they showed up and shouldn’t repeat the course! Blame the teachers!

Would you like me to stop? Fine. I’ll stop. Deep down, you know you either said or at least thought things just like the hypotheticals listed above. Somewhere along the way, you didn’t like that a trained professional used their expertise to make a professional decision. I get why you might be miffed at your kid not performing. We want all kids to succeed. But what gave you the right to make personal statements about all of us when you have no experience at all in the craft of classroom teaching? We don’t sit back and tell you when you should feed your kids dinner, when you should carpool with the neighbors, or when