Day 114, July 8, 2020

Cleaning House

Today's Soundtrack: Miles Davis Septet, North Sea Jazz Festival, 7/13/1985

As long as I can remember, my father was a morning person. He was always awake in the morning practicing violin, cooking breakfast, and sweeping the floor. Growing up, we had a white German shepherd named Bonnie. It was inevitable with a very large white dog that there was always the cloudy detritus of the previous day visible on the kitchen linoleum. Add two teenage boys to the mix and there was always something for my dad's broom to find as he wet the edge of a paper towel to stick it to the floor as he picked up the accumulated piles.

The Korean Community of Western Mass
donated masks to be given out to all GCC 
graduates at the drive by ceremony earlier
this summer.

In one of the signs of aging, or the advent of adulthood, or just another one of those cosmic forms of trickery, I have found that I too have become a morning person. Somehow, the same person who once struggled to tumble out of bed in time for the school bus and chose to walk instead (and chronically missed homeroom), now wakes before his alarm, reads the newspaper (on my phone), works on a poem, makes a smoothie (every other day), feeds the chickens, and yes, sweeps the floor collecting a day's worth of sand, pebbles, crumbs, Franklin fur, and wayward sugar ants. 

This is not to say I have a clean house, not clean in the way my mother maintains a house, but I am maintaining... refusing to allow entropy to overcome the living space. Working from home makes it an imperative, for better or worse. Before the pandemic, one could come home from work with takeout dinner, and mostly collapse into the pre-bed routine, too exhausted to do much else. But working from home, one needs to make time to maintain the household, otherwise terrible things start to happen. I joked to myself this morning as I cleaned the toilet, Physical Plant is not keeping up with the office! Ha. I'm sure they are still keeping their hands full on the mostly empty campus, though I imagine there's probably less of an imperative to wash every toilet every day.

Similar to the upkeep of the house, we also need to figure out what can do to keep our spirits up. This weekend, I had some slumps into what I used to call a funk. Surprisingly, I've been able to avoid slips into a funk for most of the pandemic. I suppose part of that has been keeping so busy that I haven't had time to allow myself to slip into a depression. Work has still been non-stop, and I have a long backlog of projects, musical, writing, yard work, house improvement, etc. And I do try to go on walks, or slip into the river when I can. And then there is this blog, which can take up an hour each evening after I'm done with work.

But I worry about the frenetic pace. So it was interesting to have some moments of doubt this weekend. Is this working? Am I getting what I need in my life to feel fulfilled? To thrive? And what does all this mean in the midst of a pandemic? How does one continue to be an activist? An activist educator? And not burn one's self out? And then, the question everyone asks now, how does one just exist in this moment? 

Reading the newspaper each morning is stupefying. Each day seems to bring even greater affronts to our sense of a benevolent democracy and move us deeper into a totalitarian democracy. The American experiment has become a bad dream. It would be easy to decide to tune out, to stop my subscription to the New York Times, and play Candy Crush instead. But, instead, I find myself retreating into a renewed sense of purpose. I have to turn to possibility and optimism, because to dwell too much on our national reality, would mean succumbing to the powers that wish for that to happen, for the nation to be lulled into submission, the inevitability of the capitalocentric finale of a nation. And I refuse to allow that to define my reality.

Instead, the reality is that despite threats to our collective sense of humanity, attempts to hinder our ability to serve international students, the utter disregard for the danger embodied in the spread of the pandemic in this nation, we are still doing the thing that gives us purpose. We are recommitting to the grand experiment of public higher education with even greater verve than ever before. We are putting into action a plan that has been several years in the making to better support our students of color and rectify the racism embodied in achievement gaps. We are rethinking how we support all students through a concerted focus on retention. More than any new initiative, becoming better at serving the students we already have will make our college stronger and our community stronger. We are looking beyond the short term challenges we will face in the coming months to the future of the college. We are building a future.

At least for now, this sustains me. It allows me to imagine a vacation where I get to step away and travel to see old friends, sit in restaurants and eat delicious food, and celebrate my parents' birthdays in person, because I imagine there is a future beyond this crisis, beyond this president, beyond this moment of division. 

Cheers,

Leo

My daughter gave me a garden seed kit for Christmas and look what has happened!

From Our Friends:

From ACE Engage:

[Plenary Webinar] DACA and Dreamers: A Conversation with Jose Antonio Vargas. Join ACE and Jose Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author of the best-seller Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, and a leading voice for the human rights of immigrants. Generously supported by Fidelity Investments. 

Ensuring Full Inclusion for Students with Disabilities. This guide, from the Institute for Educational Leadership, presents information and strategies to improve the successful participation of students with disabilities in higher education, and covers such topics as recruitment and admissions, accessibility, accommodations, and culture of inclusivity.

From the NYT:

Harvard and M.I.T. sued the Trump administration over a move to strip visas from foreign students whose courses have moved entirely online.

Wednesday, July 8, 2020 8:57 AM EST

The White House measure, announced on Monday, was seen as an effort to pressure universities into reopening their gates and abandoning the cautious approaches that many have announced they would adopt to reduce transmission of the coronavirus.

Read the latest

From Teaching Tolerance:

Intersectional Identities: Do Educators Empower or Oppress?

In this article, college student Maryam Asenuga reflects on her education as a Black, female, Muslim student. She explains how the choices her educators made shaped her understanding of herself and her role in the classroom. When addressing intersecting identities, Asenuga argues, educators can either contribute to students’ empowerment or their oppression: There is no such thing as neutrality when it comes to students’ identities.

From Kathy O'Bear:

Franklin and June Bug

Today's Online Teaching Tips:

From Pearson:

On July 13-14, leading educators will share insights on student experience, engagement, course design, discipline strategies, virtual labs, and other themes to enable the best possible back to school for Fall 2020.

REMOTE: The Connected Faculty Summit offers over 80 focused, short presentations with live Q&A that will:

• Support individual faculty members preparing for a complex back to school 
• Give examples of tools and techniques to make the most of online and hybrid teaching
• Share best practices by discipline — showcasing all GenEd courses and others, too

You’ll have access to the recorded sessions through the end of 2020. 

Save your spot

From Macmillan:

The Macmillan Learning Community provides the teaching resources you need and opportunities to learn from each other, creating a community you can count on. Check it out and see how you can get involved.