Three Hundred Pages
By Barbara Clauer, Lansing, Michigan, U.S.
Three hundred pages. So far. That’s how many pages of e-mails I’ve received from and written to my students this semester, sitting in my home office where I keep pinning new inspirations to the “keep going” corkboard in front of me. A card that says “I love you more than coffee,” a Mary Oliver poem I wrote out long hand to feel the words, notes and poems from students past, a tiny, crocheted baby yoda in a mask. I imagine the weight of those 300 pages in hard copy, thudding on my desk crowded with to-do lists, multiple keyboards, two monitors, and endless futile attempts to impose order. In that thud, I feel the weight of my students’ anxiety and their hope, the weight of a surprise COVID diagnosis or other calamity befalling their family members, the weight of isolation or their own illness, the solid heft of their stubbornness and resilience in the face of this plodding pandemic, their contagious perseverance, our shared exhaustion. So much learning goes on in those e-mails: mine and theirs. What will we retain from this time? I’ve learned compassion is good pedagogy. In my writing teacher’s heart, I hope they’ve learned that reaching out with words, exploring ideas, and sharing their stories can be an act of courage. As a learning community, we had some rough days where I barely resisted an all-caps e-mail saying: JUST READ THE F*CKING DIRECTIONS I WROTE! and they maybe didn’t resist lashing out in frustration about the workload and dammit all the writing … in a Composition course. And we had some good days where I didn’t resist all caps: WHAT A GREAT IDEA! YES! KEEP FOLLOWING THAT QUESTION!” and they didn’t resist the vulnerability of sharing their emerging realizations in their writing, as well as their gratitude for my flexibility and empathy. Three hundred pages: our shared story of this semester that had a beginning – “this is going to be a rough semester,” a middle – “this IS a rough semester,” and, nearly, an end – “wow, that was a rough semester.” We’re limping to the end together, under the weight of global loss and change that we cannot ignore. Compassion is good pedagogy for us all.