The other day I pointed something out to my wife: on my keyring, I have a weird COVID holdover. Early in the pandemic lockdowns of 2020, one of my Amazon orders included this weird hook-like tool that I kept with my keys. It’s designed to help you open doors, and push ATM buttons, and otherwise avoid touching things that could be germ havens.
I haven’t actually used this doo-dad for opening a door in well over a year. But there was a time that I did use it regularly, even daily.
And now? It’s just become a normal part of my keys, to the point that I haven’t really thought about it anymore. (Well, until I noticed it the other day and commented on it to my wife…)
This has me thinking about other holdovers from pandemic life. Honestly, that season was so stressful, demoralizing, and overwhelming that I don’t always like to remember it. But I think it can be helpful—and even healthy—to take stock of where I am today in light of where I’ve been.
For instance, I definitely got out of the habit of shaking peoples’ hands while the pandemic was raging. And while I will certainly shake hands today, I find I rarely initiate; I wait for the other person to reach out to me first.
Another example: I’ve always enjoyed jigsaw puzzles, but during lockdown I started regularly having a puzzle underway. This has continued on more or less consistently up to the present. (Though I will say that I tend to do more puzzles when the weather is not as amenable to biking.) :-)
When it comes to my teaching practice, I see a few COVID holdovers as well. In the days of pandemic teaching, I designed courses to be flexible enough for students to catch up if they had to be out of class, and that’s something I’ve generally tried to keep in place. Today, when I teach online, I automatically record class meetings for those who might not be able to attend the meeting when it’s being held, so they can watch it after the fact. I still try to post as much of the reading and course material online as is practicable, even for fully face-to-face courses. I continue to post detailed assignment information online, even if I’m giving that information to students in class too.
I guess you could say that I got into a mindset of “students will miss class…or at least miss parts of class…how can I help them catch up/keep up?” and that has carried forward—basically trusting that students have good reasons to miss class, and not haranguing them about, but asking the question, “What can I do as their instructor to help them stay on track?” It’s not that I don’t expect students to show up for class; I absolutely expect them to be there, and to fully participate in the things we have to do in every class meeting. But I’ve just become more realistic about the fact that they are going to sometimes need to get caught up because of things they’ve missed. I’m sure I’ve been duped by students at least a few times about not showing up, but I’ve decided I’d rather trust my students than try to police their behavior all the time. That might be the privilege of teaching in higher ed though…if I were still teaching middle schoolers every day, I might have a different song to sing, though I think I would still rather start from a position of trust.
But all of this comes back to my silly key ring realization: I’m still holding on to this thing, and to what purpose? There are probably some COVID holdovers that I can let go of now. I’ve decided that I can take this doo-dad off of my keyring now, and stop keep carrying it with me everywhere I go.
But are there some things that are going to stick with me? As far as my teaching practice goes, yes. COVID shifted some things, and some of that has actually make a general positive difference in the way I conduct my craft—so I’m sticking with these changes.
How about you? Have you found any positive changes that you’re hanging on to?
Dave’s Faves
Here are three things I’m absolutely loving right now that I hope you might love too…
Dave’s Fave #1: Getting Published!
One of the very fun and gratifying “I get to do this!” things about being an academic is seeing things I’ve written in print. My friend Jake and I recently had a chapter published in a theory-into-practice book for K-12 teachers. The article is entitled “Creating Meaningful Learning Experiences With Button-Operated Robots in Early Childhood Settings.” Jake and I have a shared interest in educational robotics—I actually teach a course entitled “Educational Robotics”—and he is an early childhood specialist, so it was a lot of fun to collaborate with a friend in my field on writing this one.
You can access the whole book digitally for free here (downloadable as a pdf): What PreK-12 teachers Should Know About Educational Technology in 2023: A Research-to-Practice Anthology. It’s a big book! If you’re an educator, I suspect there will be something in here that you’d find interesting or valuable. And if you want to see the piece Jake and I wrote, scroll down to page 293. (Like I said, it’s a big book!)
Dave’s Fave #2: The Arcadian Wild
Continuing my theme of recommending indie-folk bands…I’m loving The Arcadian Wild lately. Their 2015 self-titled album is delightful: pensive lyrics, gorgeous harmonies, lovely instrumentation…just what you would hope for from an indie-folk trio, right? Check out “Rain Clouds” (the lead track from the album) and I bet you’ll listen to the whole thing…
I have the chance to hear them live in Sioux Falls this week, so maybe a few photos or video clips will show up on Instagram that might give you a further nudge to listen in. Give ‘em a whirl! :-)
Dave’s Fave #3: Oppenheimer
I don’t watch a ton of movies in the theater anymore, but my wife and I did go to see Oppenheimer on opening weekend. Wow. I would say this one is worth seeing on the big screen if you can. The scene of “testing the gadget” alone makes the theater experience worth it!
The film tells the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the nuclear physicist who led the Manhattan Project during World War II that developed the world’s first atomic bombs. He is a complex, complicated figure, and the film’s director, Christopher Nolan paints this picture very well. Oppenheimer (the man) is deeply flawed, but also brilliant, and the film portrays his pride/horror of creating The Bomb very well. The film was brilliantly cast—not a single miss in this list of all-stars—and the cinematography is beautiful/horrifying, which is perfect for this film. Fair content warning: the film is rated R for a reason (some sex scenes that I found absolutely gratuitous and unnecessary for moving the plot forward.) But overall, I loved this film—both the story, and the way it was told. If you are interested in physics, WWII history, complex characters with challenging relationships, there is something here for you, and I suspect you’ll enjoy this film too!
The Last Word!
There is a time to hold on to things, and a time to let things go. (Even the teacher in Ecclesiastes 3 includes “a time to keep and a time to throw away.”) The challenge can be discerning which is which! So my encouragement is to hold things up to a Philippians 4:8 sort of lens as a way of discerning:
“…brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
If it fits this criteria, it’s probably worth holding on to!
But there are times to just let things go as well. I vividly remember seeing a video of Snoop Dogg listening to that song from Frozen sometime during the spring of 2020, right in the craziest part of the COVID-times quarantining, and it was the levity my soul needed at that moment. Sometimes we really do need to make like Elsa (and Snoop, apparently) and “let it go.”