I’m saying there is very little chance that this 61 year old will, not with an immune-compromised spouse. You think everyone’s going to have their masks on all the time class after class? I could teach more effectively online than playing mask patrol all day. And testing? unless you’re testing everyone every day, you will have students in the room who are positive.
You all talk blithely about “what to do when/if there’s another outbreak on the campus” and, ooh, we can quarantine the students. Meanwhile, I’m there in the overcrowded room with them (my classes will be 30% bigger next semester, to cut costs).
I can’t tell you that every instructor feels the same. But I can tell you a lot of them do.
@garland so what is your answer exactly? Families aren’t going to put up with remote learning for long. Maybe, maybe, some (most?) students will go ahead with that plan for one year max. Then what?
Look I don’t have all the answers. I think @tuckethannock had a good perspective at, I think #2797 post? (might have the number wrong, I think it was on page 149). Basically managing expectations. Because it’s a pandemic. I can’t fix it, I just think we can’t wish it away.
I can teach an excellent online writing class (its’ not my preference because I’ve taught f2f for 35 years), but I think we’d serve our students better by emphasizing grit, not grieving. And I GET the grieving; I just don’t think everyone can expect it to go back to normal for the next year.
So I think we need to get through it, and keep in mind what we want to preserve, for when it’s over.
Those who adapt will survive. Schools should need fewer professors if they are only teaching on line, so departments can be eliminated. While I do not doubt your online writing course is wonderful, @garland, the consumers are not willing to pay what you, and your employer, charge for it. Just a supply/demand imbalance.
Honestly asking…do you teach during flu season? Although Covid-19 seemingly has a higher fatality rate than flu, outcomes can also be very bad for immunocompromised people who get the flu…and even though we have a flu vaccine it is not uncommon to have a mismatch between vaccine and flu strain in any given year due to genetic drift.
Again, just asking…in what, if any, situation would you teach in person with SARS-CoV-2 circulating?
I believe it when you say you can teach a great class remotely, but it’s not you that is the judge of that quality, it’s the students.
A number of recent surveys suggest they are less than impressed with their remote classes this spring. OTOH I expect profs will be able to create a better remote class given more prep time.
But @garland, why do you think you are so likely to get infected from a student? Are you saying they put you more at risk than fellow professors, staff members, the cashier at the market, the gas pump? Students may be just as likely to get a virus from you as you are from them if they test negative upon returning to campus.
I get the sense that some people on this thread think students are reckless, don’t care about the possibility of spread, won’t take precautions. I disagree. And from what I see in my community and from news reports, quite often it’s the adults doing the risky behavior. Ie, not wearing masks, gathering in large groups for funerals, a 47 yr old man holding a big party in his small home, protesters with no masks handing out candy to kids, the shopper licking a clerk for asking him to wear a mask, business owners opening in defiance of local rules. It’s not necessarily the kids putting us at risk.
Y’all keep arguing. I made my point. I’m not going to justify it further. Just please drop the flu comparison. The hospital around the corner from me doesn’t need refrigerator trucks to hold all the bodies during flu season.
I will say, @roycroftmom , you can’t really scale up a writing class. It takes the same amount of time to respond to and discuss each students’ writing whether online or in person. My most effective teaching is often the comments on their papers.
@katliamom@garland True. Managing expectations is going to be important. But a lot of universities have not been clear or haven’t announced yet what school will look like in the fall. Can’t accept that fate until we know what it is. We know families in our neighborhood with incoming freshmen as their oldest child and they are still clueless about what fall could look like…and I don’t blame them. Many schools are trying really hard to put on a good face for now. I heard the president of UIUC today on the local news and he’s got kids coming back to campus, they are working on housing, some classes will likely be remote. Like what? Kids in housing there are almost all in doubles or triples. What’s the plan exactly as to where those kids will live? How will they eat? And, please, it’s already looking like most if not all classes will be remote. Just say that. How can a family who isn’t stalking CC know anything more than what the president of their son’s university is telling them?
I think we will all feel better when we know what our real choices are. I’m trying to manage expectations here and S19 is slowly realizing how things will likely go. D21, on the other hand, is in deep denial.
@wisteria100 – yes, it could go either way in a classroom. I don’t think students are particularly careless; but I think anyone might be, and it’s students that I’ll be sharing a small room with for 75 minutes a time, eight class meetings a week.
But it is so much easier to replace you online, @garland- we can probably hire several online instructors for the price of one current in-person instructor. We might even be able to hire a bunch of teaching assistants or grad students and offer small group instruction. It is true it won’t be the same as being in a classroom with you, but that is not an option anyway.
I don’t expect anyone to do anything different than what is allowed. I don’t know schools will be online or in person in the fall. I know what I hope, but it’s not my call. With everything I see and hear, I think schools will be online in the fall. But it’s just a guess.
All I can really say is that IF and only IF the states are open and schools are open and people are going to work, in whatever safety guideline, then people, whether a teacher, a college professor, a nurse, a manufacturing workers, an essential worker, whoever they are, cant just say sorry I am just not going to show up for work and expected to be employed.
Now schools and companies should do their best to accommodate their employees for certain special circumstances such as single mothers with no option of day care, high risk (existing condition or age), etc. And etc. it’s just just good long term policy to have such processes in place, and most do anyway, or leave it up to the discretion of the department to treat special requests. But in the absence of those, an average employee can’t just say “sorry i don’t want to get sick so I am not going to work” and expected to still be employed. I am sorry that my stance sounds harsh, but within the right context it is only fair.
A classroom is typically an indoor enclosed space where everyone is basically stationary for an hour or so (the instructor may be moving around a limited area). This is similar to eating inside a restaurant.
A grocery store is a high risk location, but at least you are moving most of the time and can avoid being close to others, and your time in proximity to any one person is much less than an hour, so your chance of getting an infectious dose from a contagious person is lower than if a contagious person is sitting in the classroom for an hour. A gasoline station is an outdoor location where people are further apart than in a grocery store. Paper towels are typically available so that you can grab the pump handle or press the pay-at-the-pump buttons with them.
An analogy: imagine if the people in each situation were smoking or vaping. Which situation would expose you to more secondhand smoke or vape (ignore the fire hazard at the gasoline station for the purpose of this analogy)?
I understand the frustration of not knowing. But schools don’t know many of these answers either.
They’re not trying to be contrary. They. Just. Don’t. Know. Yet. Because that decision has so many facets and such huge implications and can’t be made on currently available reliable information.
We’re called adjuncts, and you’re not likely to replace the in-person adjuncts more cheaply with online humans. Not sure why you think an online instructor is so much cheaper anyways?
Remember tenured and tenure track faculty are no longer a majority of teaching staff.
I just googled around, and some places show average adjunct salaries are comparable to Amazon warehouse workers. They are teaching in spite of the salaries, but could obviously get other jobs for the same pay. Most can get better paid jobs if they are willing to give up teaching.
Well, on-line instructors currently employed appear to get lower salaries than tenured professors at traditional colleges ( adjuncts barely get paid anywhere). So yes, if on-line stays for the long term, I fully expect colleges to hire cheaper workers for that job. Colleges will need to save money somewhere, and this is a good place to start. Regardless of how you value the service you provide online, the market values it less highly. While you might call such instructors adjuncts, some colleges use TA or grad students or indeed simply nontenure writing instructors for
That function.