We can build community in online classrooms, it just requires some tools, and some healing
People always say you can’t really build community in online classrooms but I just don’t think that’s true. You can build community online, it just requires more intentionality and pedagogical experimentation. It’s difficult, but it is possible, and it can be transformative.
As someone who teaches in higher education, I take a cue here from my colleagues in K-12 — especially colleagues of color. Instead of asking what students *lose* in online learning, many of these colleagues ask what pedagogical possibilities emerge in this new context. It’s not that we can’t build community in an online learning setting, it’s that we need to ask what generative possibilities emerge online that we can’t do in-person. There are tools at our disposal online that we simply don’t have in person, tools that can be transformative.
And I want to parse out — in the context of a pandemic — a collective lamentation from a pedagogical possibility. I think when many colleagues in higher education say that we can’t build community online, they are lamenting the ways in-person classrooms were ripped from us with no closure. And I want us to collectively mourn what happened to us as educators. Our modes of engagement with our students — and our way of engaging a core part of identity as teachers — was suddenly ripped out with no closure and no funeral when the pandemic started.
Put differently, when I hear colleagues say we can’t build community online — in this context — I also hear a mourning and lamentation of what has been lost. Collectively, I don’t know that we’ve mourned. But not only have many of us not mourned the loss of our in-person classrooms, many of us also haven’t been equipped with tools and training to teach effectively online.
So there’s both a lack of lament and relatedly a lack of healing alongside a lack of empowerment.
I think we need to ask what work needs to be done for us to heal from what we’ve lost when we lost our in-person classrooms. *And* we need to ask what generative possibilities emerge in an online environment that we didn’t have access to before.
I want us to heal and I want us to be empowered with new tools and perspectives for the sake of our students and ourselves. And I hold out hope that we can find healing and empowerment together—even virtually.
