{"id":269,"date":"2021-04-01T22:20:41","date_gmt":"2021-04-01T22:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/teaching-academy\/?p=269"},"modified":"2021-04-01T22:38:33","modified_gmt":"2021-04-01T22:38:33","slug":"a-call-for-mostly-in-person-but-being-flexible-isnt-the-worst-thing-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/teaching-academy\/a-call-for-mostly-in-person-but-being-flexible-isnt-the-worst-thing-in-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"A Call for Mostly In-Person, but being Flexible Isn\u2019t the Worst Thing in the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nicole Walker<\/strong>
\nProfessor of English
\n<\/strong>President\u2019s Distinguished Teaching Fellow<\/h4>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Admittedly, we\u2019ve been asked to be flexible a lot this past year. Faculty have taken on additional courses, some were laid off, then, some were thankfully rehired, but often with higher workloads. Those faculty will probably never feel secure in their jobs again. We\u2019ve given up sabbaticals. Our salaries were cut, although those cuts were, thankfully, restored. If resilience was the theme word for 2020, then I hope the theme word for 2021 is restoration. Part of me feels like we\u2019ve seen the bare bones of the system. Now, it\u2019s our job to put the meat back on them. Muscle-up our university to where it can be nimble but strong, dynamic but stable.<\/p>\n

NAU Flex is hard. I\u2019ve taught in my mask to three masked students in class, each with their computers on. When I send them into break-out rooms with their fellow Zoom students, the three in-class compatriots\u2019 laptops zing with feedback. Inevitably, one student goes into the hallway so they can hear, which may or may not be Covid-approved. The students on Zoom have a hard time hearing me\u2014not because the microphone is bad but it turns out we hear with our eyes\u2014lip-reading might be our most underrated skill.<\/p>\n

IT has equipped our classrooms with such incredible cameras and microphones that students in the classroom are able to communicate with the students on Zoom. Imagine how effortless that will be without masks. Some, not all, of my experience this past year has made me love NAU Flex. I wonder how we might be able to utilize what we\u2019ve learned over the past year and broadcast our curriculum to those who may not be physically able to join us. Not only do I see this as a possible solution to offset some of the predicted enrollment loss, but a way to reach out to new populations.<\/p>\n

In my graduate course, I had two students who took the class from Phoenix and one from Lesotho, South Africa. Because of NAU Flex, they were able to attend every session, although never in person. These students were a brilliant addition to the nonfiction course, bringing their professional experience to bear on our discussions and their commitment to their success served as a model for other students. Thanks to the Breakout Room function in Zoom, students could meet with each other and answer a set of questions I\u2019d assigned in small, more private rooms where the quieter members found their voice (this was a smaller class so the computers didn\u2019t buzz with feedback). \u00a0I can imagine a scenario where five years from now, when, I hope, Covid is a distant memory, I\u2019ll still be able to expand my classroom to include those who can\u2019t physically join us.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the Din\u00e9 Institute, where I led a writing seminar last year, I found another bonus to NAU Flex. In April, the Creative Area imagined that we would have to cancel our visiting writers\u2014Manuel Mu\u00f1oz and Arthur Sze. But once we wrapped our heads around our Flexible lives, I realized I could host the readings via Zoom. Not only were the undergraduate creative writing students and our Masters of Fine Arts students able to attend, nearly half of the Din\u00e9 Institute was able to join us\u2014some from as far away as Window Rock and Chinle. I had never before had such a large audience, nor had so many members of the Navajo Nation able to participate. Few can drive four hours for an hour-long reading, but many people can Zoom in for that amount of time. The reading went even longer than usual because people had so many questions. I can imagine a future where we Zoom the readings we hold in-person to places far away. By then, too, perhaps we won\u2019t be suffering from Zoom fatigue as we are now, a year later.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to be Polly-Anneish about Zoom teaching and NAU Flex. It\u2019s not ideal for many courses and many students. There is something important about being physically together in a room to learn\u2014not only body language and physical presence\u2014but the ability to act things out, move around the room, turn the discussion over to the students are important pedagogical practices. As I remember when some faculty were first assigned via centralized scheduling to desks that didn\u2019t move or into art studios with no desks or lecture halls where there would be no lectures: one size does not fit all. Not everyone can embrace the Flex. But embracing Flexibility might afford us an opportunity to determine our futures as enrollment numbers and demographics change. If we are interested in investing in communities that may not be able to physically attend NAU, if we want to explore new ways of teaching, if we want to expand our mission beyond the Flagstaff campus, sometimes, Flexibility may be one way to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicole Walker Professor of English President\u2019s Distinguished Teaching Fellow \u00a0 Admittedly, we\u2019ve been asked to be flexible a lot this past year. Faculty have taken on additional courses, some were laid off, then, some were thankfully rehired, but often with higher workloads. Those faculty will probably never feel secure in their jobs again. We\u2019ve given […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-remote-teaching-remote-teaching","category-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/teaching-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/teaching-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/teaching-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/teaching-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/teaching-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/teaching-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":422,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/teaching-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions\/422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/teaching-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/teaching-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/teaching-academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}