An Open Letter to my Students, from a Teacher in this Time of Distance
Welcome to Spring Semester 2020 Part Deux: Pandemic Edition!
Okay, first, Nobody Panic! Everything’s gonna be alright.
Here’s what you should know first:
I am a teacher. When I run down the list of things by which I identify myself, that’s one of the very first items on it. Apart from that I suppose I am, among other things, a 34-year-old woman from Texas who lives alone except for a cat called River. I’ve lived and worked and traveled many places and I love science fiction and tacos. I have a very odd relationship to my mental health, my memories, and my own inner monologue, and I really, really love books.
But let’s stay on task- I am a teacher. I coordinate the dance program and dance for musical theatre at a mid-sized state university in Ohio. I spend my time in dance studios and theatres working in the medium of human movement. When all of the faculty meetings, reports, and institutional business are said and done, I get to spend my time giving class and making dances, two of my favorite things in the world to do.
I am a teacher and I badly want to be good at it. To me, teaching is a calling; it is the thing in this world that I believe I am meant to do. I am at my best when I put my ego aside and devote my energy to fulfill the trust of my students. Their high expectations of me are a gift and their expectations of themselves are a dare. Challenge accepted- at least I hope it is.
Teaching is hard, y’all. The responsibility to and for your students is vast and important.
I spent the majority of one semester a few years ago teaching from a chair. I had torn my left Achilles tendon and didn’t walk for 8 weeks, much less demonstrate grande jetes to the Ballet 1 class. It was like trying to teach a foreign language without being allowed to speak it. It was like trying to teach math without the tools to write out an equation. At the time, it was the greatest challenge that I had been set as an educator. This is worse.
Let’s be honest, dance is not meant to be taught this way.
I open class daily by asking “How are your brains? How are your bodies?” The answer I receive to those two questions has a lot to do with how I make decisions over the subsequent hour. Are you fatigued or anxious? Are you distracted or present? Are you sore or injured? Are you feeling bold or are you full of fear? Without that information, I feel slightly unmoored. I know what I think you need; I don’t know what you think you need or, at a deeper level, what you feel unequal to. I don’t know whether today you need to be pushed or if today I must moderate my expectations.
I’m meant to be in the same space you’re in, rolling around on the same floor, tapping out the same rhythms, breathing the same air. I’m meant to be able to see the looks on your faces when I show the Dance History class Mary Wigman’s Witch Dance for the first time, or Richard Move as Martha Graham (guys, I was really looking forward to that). I am meant to feel what you feel as I give a movement exercise, and to provide feedback in the moment that is at once visual, verbal, and physical. Our shared experience is meant to be present and tactile!
It breaks my heart to be forced to let all of that go, however temporarily. So, what do you do when the thing you are called to do breaks your heart?
The only thing that’s not an option is to do nothing. So, here’s what we are going to do:
Mourn. Count the dead futures, like parallel worlds you’ll never visit. Imagine what might have happened there. Vivid Technicolor and casts of thousands. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Did you do it? Good, me too.
Because it’s true, and I’m not the first one to say it, what you’re feeling is a kind of grief. Allow yourself to mourn for the experiences you will not have this year and then encounter the new reality that now surrounds us. Don’t turn your back on it, don’t bury your head in the sand. Go through all 5 stages, pass Go, collect $1,200 (or don’t, and I am so sorry!), then decide to be present and accept it.
Notice how the world is responding. Look for kindness, look for empathy. Get mad when this reveals the absolute worst in people and believe that those people are in the minority. Notice all of the ways that we will hope the world changes when we go back to “normal.” Decide what changes you yourself will make.
Quantify your feelings. Put them into words. Or music, or movement. Maybe a vision board. Whatever. Whatever your language is, use it to make sense of what is going on. This situation is complex, scary, uncertain. The implications- social, political, economic, educational, interpersonal, scientific, religious…- are too far reaching to enumerate and far, far more personal than the term “global pandemic” would lead us to believe. So, quantify your feelings. Get them out and do it now, because you can’t analyze a toxin while it’s still in the wound.
Be mindless, and then stop. Binge that show, girl, you do it. Consume all 300+ episodes of whatever mindless fluff is making you feel safely distracted right now. Escapism has value. (I mean, if you really want me to reference my MFA research, I’d say that the sublimation of the human psyche through the transformative experience of temporarily accepting as reality things deeply desired and yet fundamentally untrue is no less than a vital and unifying act, though its limits must be respected.) Take the time that you need, but don’t let it consume you. When you’re ready, rejoin the world.
Don’t be bored, be clever. I don’t mean be busy; it’s shortsighted to think that busy means the same thing as worthy. We live in a culture of now-ness. Everything feels like it must be immediate, and I’m not just talking about the notion of “Instant Gratification.” I’m talking about the idea that our life is split into eras of pre- and post-accomplishment; there’s this myth that says, whatever the landmark, everything that comes before it is prologue, a purgatory of waiting, and those people who wait the least have the greatest value, and so we must, must! reach our destination now. It’s so easy to mistake the Before for lost time!
I say rather value the journey; no amount of time that you spend investing in the world around you is wasted, so invest. Take the opportunity now to seek out experiences that you otherwise wouldn’t have had. Create, but take your time. Let your sense of urgency arise only out of authentic curiosity and desire, not out of fear.
I use the phrase “honor your anatomy” when I teach. For a dancer, this means that we must accept the notion of correctness in the technique that we are striving to master, but if we don’t do it within the framework of the messy/perfect idiosyncrasies of our own unique forms, then we will never reach a place of full and authentic physical understanding. So, honor your anatomy. Honor your history and your intentions. Honor the immediacy of whatever it is that surrounds you right now. Honor your flaws. Take control of the things that you can, do the very best that you can, and let the rest go, because you can always do what you must.
Above all, don’t let this rob you of who you are. If you do, it’s like letting your life be hijacked. If you do, the person in your skin won’t love the things that you love or want the things that you want. Don’t let your goals, your desires, or your hopes be stolen. Maybe they’re on hold, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe you make room for other things in their place, and then when this is over you return to them and see them through a new lens. The last thing that I want you to feel is cut loose without a direction in this challenging season; the greatest thing that I want you to seek is a sense of empowerment, of self-respect, and of willingness to accept nothing less of yourselves than your best, even if you’re the only one watching.
Here’s what it took me all of about 19 hours of “Shelter in Place” to articulate. In social distancing, the only thing that I cannot be separated from is my own body. And how wonderful, because my body is the best tool that I have! It is my canvas for making art and for the art that I place upon it. It is the walking, talking home for my locus of self, wherever that is. It has strong arms for cooking a meal, and holding the cat, and building houses, and someday — again — embracing my family. At home in my own body, I cannot be separated from physical sensation, from cathartic action, from my ability to reach beyond myself, to fall and recover, to throw a tantrum if I wish or to sit absolutely still.
So be at home in your body, trust your instincts, and keep moving. Because as long as you cannot be separated from yourself, you are not lost, and you are not alone.
