Day 1 March 17, 2020

Day One

This is day one of working from home as a result of the COVID-19 virus pandemic that is sweeping the globe. I'm hoping to try focusing on positive and hopeful things, and provide resources as I find them. 

I started out my day building a fire in the wood stove to fight against the chill of a late winter/early spring snow. The fire started easy with wood from the last quarter of a cord we have left, nice and dry by this time of the season. I made breakfast and did my morning writing. I try and write a little poetry each morning before work, but today I was a little removed from the project I've been working on, and just wrote about this feeling of the start of something very different.

After phone conferences and video meetings, I was able to FaceTime with two of my kids, and took a little noon time walk down to the river behind my house with the dog. The landscape looks so different with the snow gone and the knotweed mostly knocked down. We found a battered bird feeder that some bear must have made off with, and Franklin found something wonderful to roll in, though I think I stopped him before he had too much fun.

I returned for the next round of meetings and responded to email. One thing I'm finding in a crisis situation, it is much easier to be responsive and focused on the tasks at hand. Everything else can get pushed aside... for now. Once we start having a little time to breathe, then all those other things will return to the table... but for now, I am enjoying being able to focus, respond to faculty, students, and other administrators as quickly as needed. I even highlighted my entire inbox and marked it as read. All those backlogged emails? Sorry, if I haven't responded by now, I'm going to have to come back to you another time. 

Just that act felt like a great release.

Between phone meetings, I created a Google spreadsheet for the neighborhood where people could put their name, address, contact information, and a request or a need. I then printed out a letter inviting people to send me an email to get on the spreadsheet and get access to it, and to feel free to call on us if they needed anything. On the next dog walk, Franklin and I delivered the letters to our neighbors.

I've been having a bit of shoulder pain, a knot behind my left shoulder blade, and the other day I found my son's shiatsu back massager. That is a little bit of bliss, but the straps are a little short, so I'm going to have to figure out a little customization for that.

My daughters, who have been social distancing and working and studying from home for longer than I in Tennesee and Providence talked about how they've gotten down to deep cleaning. I'm looking forward to getting to that stage of working from home. So far, I've mostly been planted in my work area, the end of the kitchen table with my back to the big picture window looking out into the backyard. It makes for a nice video conference backdrop (and no-one knows I haven't engaged in the deep cleaning phase of work from home yet). 

Beautiful Thing

One of the small tragedies of this pandemic has been the cancellation of my Changing Lives Through Literature reading group that is made up of probationers, probation officers, and judges from the superior and district courts. We had just finished reading Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, and Daniel Hales' Run Story, and were about to start Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. As part of that reading group, each week I asked all the participants to carry around a 3x5 card to record a beautiful moment that they witnessed. The idea is to help people learn how to be more observant about the world, to think like a writer and record what what they saw... so I'll try to find beautiful moments to share here too.

This one is a little tragic. The college has beautiful long hallways of windows looking down several stories into courtyards, but of course that means that occasionally a bird strikes the building and leaves its imprint on the glass.

This one left such a perfect print, it was beautiful as it was tragic. It reminded me of a cousin who for a period of time was making t-shirts made with prints from inked fish. They too, were beautiful and troubling. I can't help but think of this as a captured spirit in the glass, an act of flight and freedom... ultimately. 

I promise to try to find more optimistic beautiful things.

Resources for Teaching Online

If you are a faculty member reading this blog hoping to find some helpful tips for the mad rush to move courses online... here are a few things specific to GCC. But I have also seen some wonderful communities evolving on social media where faculty from across the world are banding together to figure out how to put classes online that they never imagined moving into the modality. It is inspiring.

GCC uses Moodle and those sections are created for all classes automatically (you probably have one, even if you haven't used it). But for specific Moodle needs you can look at these links. 

There are a couple of video conferencing tools that people are using, particularly Zoom and Google Meet. You can find more information about those tools and links here.

There is also a page dedicated to facilitating online discussion and you can find that here.

OpenStax, the folks who bring you OER (Open Educational Resources) are having a webinar on moving to teaching online on Thursday, Mar. 19th and you can find more information here. Thanks to Shannon Compton for that tip.

These are all a basic resources to get you started, but as I find more, I'll add to the list. Feel free to send me suggestions.

I guess that is it for now. Signing off at the end of Day One. 

See you tomorrow.

Leo