Freedom~!!
Dec. 11th, 2020 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouse Last night was the last night of my Zoom class at the Loft! Whoo! Even if my Next Class goes, I don't have to go back to work until the end of January.
Hooray!
My experience teaching this class has certainly been... something else, as we say here in Minnesota. Even if you don't know a teacher or have a student in your life, I'm sure you've heard the complaints. Thing is? It is really true that teaching on Zoom is weird. Why that is, is kind of mystery.
It's ALWAYS difficult to get adult students to participate in discussion in class, but several times I felt like my students were using class as a substitute for a TV show. I'm not sure that's fair? Students often give teachers blank stares? Part of the difficulty with Zoom is that it's nearly impossible read the depth of that blankness, if that makes sense. Active, silent listening is much easier to tell in a classroom for some reason. Maybe it's full body language? Maybe it's simply the flatness of the screen somehow? I'm not sure, but people are harder to read when not physically present.
The extent to which I rely on those cues in the classroom to direct my teaching style was really driven home to me by this experience.
Weirdly, I think I connected better with my asynchronous class? Which is the OPPOSITE of what I would have expected. On the other hand, I feel like I worked way too hard to make that class as good as it was? So, I mean maybe the connection simply takes a lot of work?
Anyway, I'm looking forward to being more present here and in the rest of my life. With luck, I can get back to writing the lesbian space opera novella I'd started.....
Hooray!
My experience teaching this class has certainly been... something else, as we say here in Minnesota. Even if you don't know a teacher or have a student in your life, I'm sure you've heard the complaints. Thing is? It is really true that teaching on Zoom is weird. Why that is, is kind of mystery.
It's ALWAYS difficult to get adult students to participate in discussion in class, but several times I felt like my students were using class as a substitute for a TV show. I'm not sure that's fair? Students often give teachers blank stares? Part of the difficulty with Zoom is that it's nearly impossible read the depth of that blankness, if that makes sense. Active, silent listening is much easier to tell in a classroom for some reason. Maybe it's full body language? Maybe it's simply the flatness of the screen somehow? I'm not sure, but people are harder to read when not physically present.
The extent to which I rely on those cues in the classroom to direct my teaching style was really driven home to me by this experience.
Weirdly, I think I connected better with my asynchronous class? Which is the OPPOSITE of what I would have expected. On the other hand, I feel like I worked way too hard to make that class as good as it was? So, I mean maybe the connection simply takes a lot of work?
Anyway, I'm looking forward to being more present here and in the rest of my life. With luck, I can get back to writing the lesbian space opera novella I'd started.....
no subject
Date: 2020-12-11 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-11 10:53 pm (UTC)We taught "The Mermaid Astronaut," as a companion piece (antidote?) to Alyssa Wong's "The First Permutations of Lightning and Wildflowers." I love a lot of Wong's work, but that particular story always depresses me deeply. (I don't like how little agency Melanie has and I HATE how her only solution to that lack of agency is to take control of the one thing she can--control over life or death.) So, after talking about that, it was nice to turn to your story, which is, in many ways about the same thing (time travelling sisters, one of whom transitions to a new form,) but which is so much more hopeful... even joyful, because the transformation is freeing, it makes Essarala's life richer and she gets to HAVE that and even though the consequence is similar--the loss of a sister--Essarala's story is still, ultimately, not only the pain of transness (which Melanie carries too heavily in Wong's story, for my heart.)
Anyway, sorry for the fan grrling, but you made my class really interesting last night and I wanted to thank you!
no subject
Date: 2020-12-12 05:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-11 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-11 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-11 11:40 pm (UTC)P.