Professors deserve an A+ for their work during the pandemic
By Lorelei Olivas
The minute class ends, there is a scramble. Everyone rushes to put their books away, there’s a dash for the door, and it feels like weight has been lifted. Class is over, time to relax. With everything becoming virtual, where is that sense of relief now?
Being in person means that class ends at a certain point. The classroom provides that boundary; when you leave it, class is over. Online learning doesn’t set those kinds of boundaries. It’s up to students to get their work done on their time, and professors have to constantly check their emails to be accessible.
“I’m always on. I always have to be available. This job seems to be omnipresent in a way that it wasn’t before,” said Dr. Shane Underwood, an English professor at PCC.
In March of 2020, COVID-19 began spreading all across the world, inciting panic, as well as mass buying of toilet paper. Throughout the country, mass shutdowns took place, closing almost everything, including schools. While many students were excited about this supposed 2-week break, it extended to over a year, and many people are wondering when life, including schools, will return to some sense of normalcy.
The closure of schools was a sudden change not just for students, but for teachers and professors as well. While some college courses were already taught online, many professors who used to teach in-person had to quickly adjust to the new reality.
“I was pretty lucky that I had already been going through training to teach online classes,” said Professor Deirdre Wills, who teaches art history courses at PCC. “I had kind of a head start.”
Other professors were not so lucky. Because the pandemic happened so suddenly, students and professors alike were thrown into online learning, and it was sink or swim.
“Our response to the pandemic, going online was a mishmash of ideas and obviously very quick,” said Underwood. “There was a big learning curve to all of these new technologies.”
In addition to their own problems, professors cannot always help students who are struggling. In person, a professor could simply ask a student what things they need help with. Online, if a student doesn’t respond to any emails, there’s not much a professor can do to help. And as if online classes weren’t enough, there is the added pressure of living in a pandemic.
“You have students who have housing issues, or unemployment has caused the landlords to force them out of housing,” said Wills. “I’ve had students many times ask for an extension on assignments because they have to move, or because they have a relative who is unwell.”
Polls conducted by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation discovered that students have struggled with being online in the pandemic, with ⅓ of students across the country thinking about discontinuing college. The lack of connection between classmates and their professors can make it a lot harder for students to stay engaged, and many become overwhelmed.
Despite the struggles students do face, many still believe that professors have done the best they can with a badly dealt hand.
“I certainly believe that professors handled the move online during the pandemic well,” said David Getzen, a student at PCC. “All the professors I’ve studied under have managed to adapt and improvise incredibly.”
Most students are thankful towards their professors for going out of their way to be understanding of circumstances and problems life throws their way.
Students’ preferences lean strongly towards going back to campus. In his classes, Underwood takes polls, asking his students whether they want to return or not. Most students answer that they would like to come back to campus.
With vaccines becoming more widely available, the worst of the pandemic in the United States seems to be coming to an end. Many elementary, middle, and high schools have already returned to in-person learning, with shorter days and weeks. Now, eyes are turning to colleges to see what will happen in the fall.
“We are permitted to have 50% occupancy of our classrooms, but other spaces can be as high as full occupancy, so long as physical distancing is present,” said Alexander Boekelheide, the Special Assistant to the President of PCC. “The final answer of whether we will be able to return in that fashion won’t be known until later this summer.”
Other than this, PCC has not announced any concrete plans to students about returning to campus in the fall, although there is talk among the administration and professors about what classes will be back on campus. However, the lack of a clear plan makes it difficult for professors to plan.
“What is the framework or plan for a return? How do we get back? How do we re-emerge as PCC? That’s very important to me,” Underwood said.
Despite all of these difficulties of being online in the midst of a pandemic, positivity still manages to emerge. Professors have learned new technologies and been able to add new material to their classes. Not everything has been bad.
“Whether in college or in profession, I think we’ve all acclimated, we’ve all learned to pursue knowledge and connection in more inventive ways,” said Wills.
Professors have learned from each other more than ever, and new ways of teaching have sprung up.
“I’ve really seen people with experience teaching online previously, those folks have really shown up as mentors, so I think it allowed people to take on different roles,” Underwood said. “It’s opened up potential ways of learning from my colleagues.”
With the future still uncertain, one thing is clear: Professors have stepped up for their students in the midst of the pandemic.
