Confessions of an Introvert
A COVID-19 Quarantine Journal
To future historians, the readers of this individual entry into the GMWP Collective Pandemic Journal Project, I offer two confessions to put my experience in context.
First, I am privileged. My wife and I have retained our jobs, in which I can work at home and she is in a secure office and has minimal contact with other potential carriers. In a very real sense, we are mostly immune from the economic and medical harm that others have and continue to suffer, two months into the shared US experience of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Likewise, I teach at a private school where small classes of engaged students continue to log on for online schooling: though I cannot speak for their mental health at this time, my students have the external conditions to continue to engage in their education. In any sense of the word, select, lucky, or affluent, I am truly privileged.
Second, I am an introvert. Though I am not entirely convinced introverts and extroverts are scientifically valid categories, I do check many of the boxes for recognizably introverted behavior: I prefer time alone, one-on-one conversations, and predictable routine.
And so, full confession: the pandemic has not been bad for me.
I cannot say it has been “good.” That’s too strong a word to describe making the best out of this situation and, looming over everything, even these times to read books I’ve been wanting to read, these online conversations with people I’ve been meaning to catch up with, and these moments of completing work tasks I’ve been wanting to get to for years, is the virus, bringing both general anxiety and specific concerns.
But the pandemic also created some good educational spaces for me, and I want to highlight the three ways, alone time, individual conversations, and structure, that quarantine schooling has worked well for me.
My school has tried to, appropriately, give our students a daily structure that strikes a balance between filling up their day versus not overwhelming them with too much work or screen time. Like the students, I find myself online for an hour, then off for an hour. Or two, or three. Or perhaps a full day in-between classes. When I end one in-person class at school and the next group comes inside, I can feel my energy levels deplete, but during this pandemic I can count on time to recharge between classes. Of course I miss the students, discussing big ideas during class or chatting with them out in the hallways, but for an introvert the school day is long. Though quarantining is, in of itself, a lonely condition, finding times to be alone during the school day and week has made for a calmer week.
So much of talk about school I hear from other people is about special moments, from the first day of classes greeting new students to teaching with your hair on fire, so that school seems to be popularly imagined as one long sequence of the teacher inspiring classrooms of young people: the dead poet’s society effect. Every year, I hear the same advice about getting to know your students before you teach them anything, advice with which I’ve long disagreed: only once they know they will learn how to think, read, and write in my classroom can I ask them to trust in me. And then, when I ask them to write about personal experiences, I find that those one-on-one conversations about a student’s piece of writing are the true highlights of teaching. Although online whole-class sessions are awkward on Zoom during this pandemic, I find that the reduced class schedule makes for more space for these more meaningful conversations and the reduced learning in class means that more students are asking for more individual guidance. Some students and teachers thrive in a crowded, energetic classroom, but the pandemic has created the space for more of the one-on-one conversations that I personally thrive on.
The predictable routine of class time two days a week (through a scheduling quirk, all my classes are on Mondays and Thursdays) and office hours and meetings one day a week (Wednesday) has given me two entire weekdays to reflect. I typically do and say very little in my classes, preferring to put the cognitive load of classwork onto my students. But that model requires lots of reflection: what do my students know, what have they yet to learn, what questions will prompt them, what activity will guide them. Only rarely do I need to use planning time to produce materials, such as copying a handout, and that is actually the least of my work: reading over student work, re-reading the seminar text, and researching learning strategies takes the most time and energy, both of which can be challenging to find during the school day. I find that I often put off deep, sustained reflection about school until summer, that any new practices must be developed during time-off and then locked in for the rest of the school year. But my school’s response to the pandemic has created a routine that allows me deeper reflection during the school week. Most school days are hectic: the time between classes fills with meetings, impromptu conversations, safety drills, covering for colleagues, and all the other daily interactions that make for a supportive community. Rather than skim through a bunch of essays in 30 minutes, I have the time to read over them; rather than jot down three thoughts about writing in the five minutes before class, I have the time to prepare a thoughtful lesson; rather than quickly fill in a planning box with what students should do, I have the time to think about what I want them to learn and how they might best learn.
I do not see teaching during a quarantine as the future of education, preferring to label these months as they truly are: emergency remote teaching. In the last decade, however, there have already been attempts to think about school from the perspective of quiet people, and, though I miss my students and my colleagues, there are aspects of this experience that I have, dare I confess, appreciated. And I wonder how many teachers and students have experienced some quiet, reflective time or a meaningful conversation with another person and hoped that they repeat these moments in the future?
When we return full-time to our buildings, we will all have vital work to restore the sense of a school community. But as we return, might our schedules adjust to better suit how some individuals learn and think: less class time and more individual consultation time, “work at home Wednesdays,” or planning days or weeks rather than planning periods? I miss my students and my classroom, and I wonder if, among the boisterous, exuberant moments of community that make schools a special place, I can also carve out the quiet moments of reflection I have experienced during this quarantine?
