A year in, professors reflect on trials, tribulations of teaching through a pandemic
As Colby enters its spring semester, it’s hard not to think about this time last year: everyone nervously watching the news as COVID-19 spread like wildfire from China to Italy to Spain and eventually, to the United States.
On March 13, 2020, after weeks of uncertainty, the College followed in the steps of other schools and universities across the country and closed its doors in favor of remote learning.
“Zoom” became a verb and students were left to complete their courses within the confines of their laptops— but how did the professors make this transition possible?
“It was surreal,” adjunct professor of English Erin Spampinato said in an interview with The Colby Echo. “At the time, I didn’t think the pandemic would go on this long. I thought it would go on longer than what they were saying. I thought maybe three months, but at that point, three months sounded like a lifetime to me.”
At the time, Spampinato was not employed by the College but was living in Brunswick with her husband who works at Bowdoin College.
“I remember feeling really bad for the students who were graduating,” Spampinato said. “In the beginning, before so many people had died, those were the things that seemed really sad. Now, these other huge griefs have kind of dwarfed that totally.”
Other professors who were on campus at the moment of shutdown echoed Spampinato’s feelings of sadness and uncertainty.
Assistant Professor of History Sarah Duff, a faculty-in-residence at Alfond Commons, recalled spending the weekend after the announcement helping students pack, many of them reluctant to leave.
“In those last few days before we closed, I thought a lot about the contexts to which students would be returning - that for me was the key challenge,” Duff said. “Understanding not only that I would be teaching students in different time zones and countries and often as a result with different levels of access to technology, but also students would be returning to jobs and families where they might not have a space to learn.”
Indeed, with over 250 international students at the College as well as students from almost every state, the switch to online learning seemed an impossible task, one Duff claims was made possible only by the unwavering support of Colby’s Information Technology Services (ITS).
“I have to pay tribute to ITS,” Duff said. “They’re the heroes. They were fantastic, they helped us with the technology - and not only did they help us with the technology but they helped us to rethink what teaching looked like. They, along with the Center for Teaching and Learning, ran a series of workshops over those two weeks that we had to prepare for online learning where faculty could come and ask all their questions about teaching online and strategies. They were amazing.”
Even with the support from the College and ITS, transitioning so quickly from in-person to remote learning was a daunting challenge.
“It’s just more work,” Spampinato said. “Teaching in-person, you get to know things implicitly, how to do things, but online you have to set things up, set up a forum or a conversation. It might take you five hours to plan an hour of class where before it only took two.”
Luckily, thanks to the College’s extensive (and expensive) testing plan, students and professors alike - including Duff and Spampinato - were able to return to campus for in-person classes this year.
At the same time, the regulations that keep students safe, such as social distancing and mask-wearing, have caused a major shift in classroom dynamics. If discussion spreads droplets and collaboration can only occur six feet apart, how do you foster a sense of community amongst students?
Visiting Professor of Painting Christie DeNizio, who only came to the College this fall, claimed it takes some serious creativity.
“Social contact is the way I was used to building community so the limiting of that has been really difficult,” DeNizio said in an interview with The Colby Echo. “I’ve had to come up with creative ways to break the barriers that are created by masks and social distancing to humanize my interactions with students, especially working in such a hands-on, physical medium. I’ve had to adapt by using different forms of critique and demonstration that are a level removed so it takes a lot more planning.”
Painting, along with other hands-on disciplines, presents a particular challenge for professors in ensuring their students safety. Visiting Professor of Economics Ben Scharadin shared similar feelings about his lab courses, saying that COVID-19 regulations have majorly impacted how he handles his classes.
“For example, this semester I’m teaching an upper-level course on poverty and food insecurity,” Scharadin explained. “We usually have a large civic engagement component where we work with the local food bank or other local organizations. We obviously aren’t able to do that so I’ve had to come up with different makeshift projects to replace that time.”
Not all the changes professors have made have been negative, though.
“Like most history professors, I teach reading-heavy classes,” Duff said. “Due to the stress of the pandemic I have reduced the number of writing assignments I give students and emphasized reading instead which I think is something easier to do when you’re stressed. As I have done that, I’ve noticed the quality of students’ writing has improved enormously, and it’s just because I’m helping students to manage their time a bit better.”
Indeed, many of the professors who spoke with The Colby Echo shared similar thoughts, claiming that the challenge of teaching through a pandemic has equipped them to both be better at teaching and better at empathizing with and understanding their students.
“[COVID-19] has made me far more attentive to the individual struggles of students in my classroom... and I hope far more responsive to them,” Duff said.
“I think, ultimately, the transition online was a good thing,” Spampinato echoed. “I’ve gotten so much better at meeting the accessibility needs of my students and even just being aware of them. I was a special education teacher before, so I was always aware, but it’s really been brought to the forefront now.”
“Major shifts, whether it be a pandemic or an economic depression or anything else, allow us to think differently and be more creative,” Scharadin said. “When everything’s going normally, we stay within our same paradigm. But when you are forced to change things, you can be more out of the box.”
Of course, in talking about the transformative nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems remiss to ignore that much of this change has been for the worse, leaving people jobless, hospitalized, and sadly, for over 500,000 Americans, dead. The impact of this global health emergency will be felt for years to come, including within the world of academia.
“I think everyone, at some level, is struggling and hurting right now,” Spampinato said. “But at some point, we’ll hopefully come out on the other side of it and will learn from it.”
~Sarah Warner `21
