Teaching During Covid-19

I received an email from my Chancellor on Wednesday, March 11, 2020, that due to the current Covid-19 epidemic, all face to face instructional classes would go fully online the week of March 23, 2020, which means I would have twelve days to prepare my students for this transition. This email was delivered at five o’clock that evening.

Just six hours later, as I was checking my email, around midnight, right before bed, as I always do each night, there was another email from the Chancellor, time stamped at 10:34p.m., stating that due to the urgency of the pandemic, the full transition to online learning would actually begin on March 16, 2020, one week earlier than the email sent, just five hours earlier. Since my classes meet on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and tonight was Wednesday, I would have exactly one class period to talk with my students and prepare them to transition online.

My students received the same emails, so they weren’t shocked when I delivered the news, two days later. The main issue was that this was our first week back from Spring Break, and Spring Break is always the mid-point in the semester schedule. I answered what questions I could, tried to alleviate whatever fears they had, and assured them that even though I wouldn’t be physically available for office hours or other face to face interaction, I would check my email several times daily, and I would not change…