Plague Journal, Day 48: Zoom party, Zoom shiva

Wednesday night: I attend a friend’s 50th birthday party via videoconference at the same time The Girlfriend sits shiva for a friend’s mother via videoconference. The experiences are simultaneously helpful and alienating, connecting and isolating: in short, deeply strange. 

My friend turning 50 is an artist, smart, fun, deeply engaged in the artistic and development communities where he’s lived, from San Francisco to lower Manhattan, the Central Valley to the Hudson Valley. The Zoom party highlights his array of connections, with guests from five or six time zones, including folks from Amsterdam logging in at 3 a.m.  

My friend has promoted his party on his social media feeds (“Pandemic in the Disco Zoom Boom Bam!!!”), and after a few technical snafus it launches. A DJ creates a mix in real time to which guests can link, so we’re all listening to the same music. My friend has set up four breakout rooms, each with its own host; he mixes and matches rooms and guests every 15 or so minutes, managing our virtual spaces. More than 60 guests log in, each wearing yellow to honor his favorite color. Love for him is palpable. 

I last about 45 minutes. Mostly I sit and watch. I bring my daughter’s stuffed yellow pig; at some point I make the pig dance to the DJ mix, to fill my Brady Bunch square with activity. As they mingle, a couple of people apply drag makeup; one keeps putting a finger over his camera; one covers his face in a yellow scarf. One woman cuddles a glitter ball; others hold pets. Some sit in front of backgrounds (the Golden Gate Bridge; maybe Hong Kong?), others white walls. Some are lit as if on a movie set, others barely visible. Some screens are blank; some show empty rooms (they’ve gone to the bathroom?). One is filled with a photo of a woman in a tank top and a pert moue.  

It’s odd to be at a party with no geographic center. I hear conversations about the Castro, Minneapolis, the East Village, Death Valley. Within the party’s “chat” function my Upstate Friend private messages me to say a guest told him a funny story about drag queens in my hometown; I message for details, but he’s apparently busy. He uses the storyteller’s name, but I can’t find her. Meanwhile I’m not chatting with the guests in my party room. 

At an actual party I’d pursue several conversational threads. For instance, two guests in early March left their home (in the Bay Area, I think) to travel to Death Valley; they’ve stayed on the road since, are camping (so it appears) in Auburn, Calif., north of Sacramento. What a quarantine story! But I have no chance to pursue, as the conversation shifts, then either they or I are moved to another virtual space.

At some point my Connecticut Friend (not attending this party) texts about Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday party, which we both watched last night but haven’t discussed. Now I have multiple windows open, and I’m not chatting with the guests in my party room. I think about a couple of emails I could return before bed. I jump back to the main room, wave to the host, wish him a happy birthday, log off. 

I ask The Girlfriend about her shiva: 

“My friend’s mother had been in a Long Island nursing home for four years. Her death, not officially from Covid-19, came suddenly. She was a very social person, in her previous life and at her facility: she organized groups, made lots of friends. She was completely with it mentally. In quarantine she had to be shut in her room for seven weeks with no visitors. She was getting care, but the situation was so abnormal. She lost energy, enthusiasm; it was too compromised a way to live. It sounds to me like she decided to die, as people do. Her decline was very quick. In the last 48 hours one child was allowed entry. She spoke to each of her four children, her 13 grandchildren, various sons- and daughters-in-law; that all took 14 hours. Then, on Monday, she died. 

“The funeral was on Tuesday. I attended. It was the way things on Zoom are, very powerful and very weak, mediated by technology and almost overwrought because of technology. The rabbi had to figure out how to use the system; a few old people had to learn how to turn their microphones off. The rabbi had to get family members into a breakout room to do private rituals — it was hard to figure all of that out. A lot of it was about being patient and understanding with this alienating technology. Unlike any funeral I’d ever attended, you could see the faces of all of the mourners, so it was less private. Typically visitors are in the background, in support; now we were all equal on the screen, which was weird, but also beautiful, to watch all the faces. 

“Then Wednesday evening my friend invited me as part of a group of eight of her college friends to sit shiva. It was the second time I’ve sat shiva in CoronaWorld. I’m not particularly religious, but I’m happy to oblige. Another college friend lost her mom to dementia, which had nothing to do with Covid-19, but CoronaWorld had begun so the shiva occurred online. It was very early in the crisis, and for me it marked the new normal. 

“Sitting shiva is an odd mix. I suppose it’s like a wake: the mood can be fun, funny, social, mournful, religious; parts are boisterous, parts are quiet. All that’s the same. My friend was with her wife and child, so she’s getting physical comfort. But not being able to hug someone who’s in grief — that deep embrace of a person in mourning helps people feel connected. And there was no food. Food and drink helps, in all kinds of ways. It acknowledges the needs of the body; it greases conversational wheels. 

“My friend’s wife is very shy, and Zoom made it so she had to speak, because that’s what you do. She might not have done it if we were all in the same room; we could have communicated by touch or body language. She initially said she didn’t want to, and then she did, and it was an important gesture on her part. 

“Like everything else in CoronaWorld, it all feels a little unreal. I know I went; I know it happened. But it feels like maybe it didn’t. And I don’t know what that means in relation to someone dying. Shiva, funerals, wakes: rituals help acknowledge that death is real. I don’t know if Zoom can help with that. Everything’s sped up. This took an hour. Hard human things demand time, but you can’t ask much time of people on that platform. Two of the guests had already been on Zoom work calls that day for about 14 hours. When we went to your friend’s mother’s funeral in January we spent a whole day; the day had different chapters. We moved from place to place: the church, the reception, their house afterward; each place had different rules, different behaviors; there was a variety of experience, opportunities to connect. We had to drive there and back. The event had a presence, a weight. All of that gets minimized, blurred. 

“On the other hand, I’m endlessly moved by people’s best efforts in these very modified and diminished forms. People work to surpass the limits of the technology, to provide comfort and love, to be expressive with words. We honestly shared with each other, and that felt moving and real and beautiful and intense. Then I had bad dreams about it, which I couldn’t remember in the morning.  And now it’s like it didn’t happen.

“I've focused a lot of my writing and teaching on YouTube since its beginning. And one of that project’s core ideas is that internet experiences are organized around blurring binaries that had previously seemed clear to us. (Whether they were actually distinct is another matter.) But the internet experience is about making binaries unclear. Fake/real. Expert/novice. Corporate/DIY. There’s a journalist who’s blogging; there’s a blogger who’s become a journalist. That you can experience both elements at the same time — that’s what the net is like. In the beginning we found that unsettling of binaries pleasurable: ooh, it’s cool, it’s funny, it’s contemporary. It’s unsettling but safe. 

“And in this era, marked in part by this presidency, that unmaking has stopped feeling pleasurable, because we understand that it’s dangerous and not entertaining. The thing I’m describing — about using Zoom to do all the things we used to do as humans — is putting a clear light on my current beliefs about the internet. We know that we as humans have lost many things to technology. In a different scenario, we’d have more control over making some of these decisions. Sometimes that lack of control is fun. But the loss of control should be in our control.” 

(New York state numbers on Wednesday: 299,691 diagnosed with Covid-19, up 1.1 percent; 377 dead, to a total of 18,105, up 2,1 percent. Overall U.S. deaths: 2,452, to a total of 54,938, up 4.7 percent.) 

Plague Journal, Day 47: "Needs improvement"

Tuesday: I wake at 6 a.m., for no reason. The morning is CoronaWorld quiet: a few birds twittering, no sirens — either their sound has been in steady decline for the past week or we’ve become inured. Maybe both. I’m in a foul mood, for no reason other than it’s CoronaWorld. 

Two problems creating short-term anxiety in our household have been resolved: 

1). I’ve been able to apply for extended unemployment insurance online, and the state Department of Labor has deposited into my account two weeks of checks, including the $600 federal bonus that more than doubles the benefit. That relieves my economic stress into the summer; I should even be able to replenish a bit of my savings.

2). The Girlfriend solved a homeowner’s insurance snafu that was threatening the sale of her southern California house, wrecking her sleep. Details are baroque, with plumbing problems at the root. (Pun intended; roots have infiltrated her pipes.) For a time her insurance company declined to renew her policy, which meant she’d likely need a last-ditch state insurance policy that would put a digitized red flag on her home, potentially scaring off buyers. An insurance broker she found online advised her to speak to her claims adjustor’s boss, or the boss’s boss; when she explained her situation, the boss responded like an empathetic human, approving a policy (albeit with raised rates) that means her home sale can proceed. When she ended her 30-plus minute call, she literally hopped with joy. 

Our bigger pictures remain cloudy. The Girlfriend still has to sell one home, buy another. Her public university is likely to undergo dramatic budget cuts, rumored to be as high as 25 percent; her tenured job is unlikely to be at risk, but her conditions of work will almost certainly change, along with those of thousands of other faculty and staff. 

The city’s Department of Education publicizes its revised grading policy: for middle schoolers, “Meets Standards (MT),” “Needs Improvement (N),” or “Course In Progress (NX).” (No students will fail.) 

“What about Exceeds Standards?” asks The Kid, a regular standard exceeder.

“‘Meets’ is as high as it gets, Rabbit. Sorry.” 

“That stinks.” 

How the policy will affect placement in public city high schools — a process more convoluted than applying to college, and for which 7th grade is typically the main barometer — remains uncertain. 

The Kid’s worried about summer camp. This would be her fourth year going to a two-week camp affiliated with her after-school writing program. She remains connected to camp friends in several states, including, during CoronaWorld, through a videoconference comedy writing class a parent has set up on the weekends. But camp, to which she looks forward the entire year, cannot be Zoomed. 

Meanwhile, her writing program sends a fundraising letter, its future in peril. 

Also in doubt: the city program designed to switch mid-career professionals into K-12 teaching, for which I’d been selected and was to start this summer. The program has sent three emails telling entrants it has no information, that our questions are valid but can’t be answered given the city’s uncertain budget picture. Will K-12 summer school — where we were to begin our training — even take place? Will classes by taught by videoconference? What about our university night classes? Our teaching evaluation sessions? The standardized tests we all must pass? The program’s social media page remains a swamp of anxiety, which I avoid. 

What will I do if the program is postponed? Canceled? I don’t know. 

The nation is rushing to reopen businesses, stop quarantines, get back to normal. Given the insufficiency or absence of programs to track and isolate the infected, the policy will have fatal consequences in state after state. The president is supportive, eager for an autumnal economic rebound — likely his only chance at re-election, and maybe of the GOP to hold the Senate. His party’s November plan: blame China; blame Democrats; ignore the president’s mishandling of the crisis (aside from his China ban, the insufficiency and porousness of which will also be ignored). 

A social media friend posts an analysis: April will likely see the most deaths from a single cause in U.S. history (60,000), save for October 1918, when 195,000 died from Spanish flu. Other social media friends are skeptical that Covid-19 exists, express anger at state governors imposing shutdowns, whom they view as authoritarian tyrants. I don’t know how to respond to their posts, which infuriate. I want to send them stories from the front lines, but because they’re published in mainstream media outlets they’d be dismissed. 

Other friends eager to end physical isolation throw around the term “herd immunity,” which in the case of Covid-19 would mean infecting 70 percent of the population, which would likely mean more than 20 million U.S. hospital cases, more than 1 million deaths. (That holds true only if you can’t catch Covid-19 twice, which no one yet knows.) 

With nothing productive to do I take an early morning walk. By habit I’ve been avoiding my walk to the Atlantic Yards subway stop, since Before CoronaWorld I of necessity traveled there so often; today I realize I haven’t taken the route in weeks. 

My barbershop is shuttered; on its block, two other barbershops/salons have “For Lease” signed in the windows. Can my barber hold on? From fourth through sixth grade, when I walked with The Kid before 7 a.m. to the subway to get to her school bus, he’d alway be there, hair under his rastacap, feet on a chair, half-watching news on a large screen TV that other times would be turned to soccer. Occasionally he’d be cutting an early customer’s hair. Either way, he’d wave. He has two kids in school, I remember. 

A few blocks away is the Center for Fiction, which opened last year; I bought a membership last spring at The Kid’s school PTA fundraiser. (The PTA budget for next year will be crushed.) We haven’t used the upstairs reading rooms often, but we’ve bought books from the ground floor store several times. The building is lovely; the rent must be high.

“It’s so pretty!” The Kid said last night when we passed the gleaming storefront. “I want to buy something!” 

“You and 90 percent of the rest of America,” I said. 

At moments things seem almost normal in one of the world’s great cities. A fair amount of traffic flows east on Flatbush Avenue, headed to the Manhattan Bridge. Downtown Brooklyn skyscrapers glisten in the early light. Construction workers, many of whom are coming back to work, trudge in their orange vests and helmets. Then you realize how many wear masks, how they have to line up outside McDonald’s for their crappy egg sandwiches and coffee. The homeless folks still sleep in the subway entrance The Kid and I use. But even though it’s after 7 a.m. on a weekday, no school children pour out on their way to Brooklyn Tech, Bishop Loughlin High. Signs in the windows often refer to pre-quarantine times, when the return of a chicken sandwich seemed like news. 

I come home, check my mailbox: empty. I used to at least get flyers from theatres, museums, arts organizations, realtors. Those have stopped. Just another CoronaWorld vacancy. 

(New York state numbers on Tuesday: 295,106 diagnosed with Covid-19, up 1.1 percent; 335 dead, to a total of 17,638, up 1.9 percent. Overall U.S. deaths: 1,865, to a total of 52,179, up 3.7 percent.) 

Plague Journal, Day 46: Regret, guilt, shame

“Dad, I’m sorry.” 

“I don’t really care.” 

“What do you mean? You’re supposed to care when I apologize!” 

“But I don’t. I just want you to take your ice cream dish from your room without me having to ask three times.” 

“But I’m sorry I didn’t do it!” 

“Yeah, and your apology means nothing if I keep having to ask you to do it. I don’t want apologies; I want you to change your behavior.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Arrrgh.” 

“But I am!” 

[Dad exits]

“Did you hear any of that? Us talking about her constant apologies?” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“It’s driving me crazy. Since she came over in CoronaWorld it’s been non-stop.” 

“Uh-huh. Let me ask you: Where do you think she learns it?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“You don’t recognize any pattern of behavior here?” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

“That’s right. You’ve never in our relationship apologized for things you have no reason to apologize for. We’ve never talked about the weird Catholic guilt you carry around. I’m glad you’ve been able to erase that from your mind.” 

“Well. I’m sorry.” 

“Exactly.” 

“Let me ask you something. Why aren’t you walking around with a big bag of guilt? Jews are supposed to be good at guilt, too.” 

“My brain’s not organized like that. It’s not like I never apologize.” 

“But it’s not an instinctual reflex.”

“It’s not.” 

“Yeah. I understand intellectually how a brain can be organized like that. But on some level — somatically, maybe — I don’t really get it. It’s not like I’ve never worked on my guilt. A half-dozen therapists. Twelve-step. And it’s not like I’ve made no progress. I understand it's cultural. Even though my parents left the church, they still thought like Catholics. But it feels hard wired. Pre-conscious.” 

* * *

Paul (Romans 5:12-14): “It was through one man [Adam] that guilt came into the world; and, since death came owing to guilt, death was handed on to all mankind by one man. (All alike were guilty men; there was guilt in the world before ever the law of Moses was given. Now it is only where there is a law to transgress that guilt is imputed, and yet we see death reigning in the world from Adam’s time to the time of Moses, over men who were not themselves guilty of transgressing a law, as Adam was.) In this, Adam was the type of him who was to come.”

 * * *

Augustine: “Man's nature, indeed, was created at first faultless and without any sin; but that nature of man in which every one is born from Adam, now wants the Physician, because it is not sound. All good qualities, no doubt, which it still possesses in its make, life, senses, intellect, it has of the Most High God, its Creator and Maker. But the flaw, which darkens and weakens all those natural goods, so that it has need of illumination and healing, it has not contracted from its blameless Creator--but from that original sin, which it committed by free will.”

* * *

Augustine: ”In carnal generation, original sin alone is contracted; but when we are born again of the Spirit, not only original sin but also willful sin is forgiven.”

* * *

Rabbi Amy Wallk Katz (Conservative): “In the Book of Genesis we read that ‘The devisings of man’s mind are evil from youth’ (Genesis 8:21). The rabbis, in effect, reinterpreted this notion by positing that human beings are born into this world neither carrying the burden of sin committed by our ancestors nor tainted by it. Rather, sin, het, is the result of being human. People are born with a potential, a yetzer. Our challenge in life is to channel our yetzer so that we make good choices and do good.”

* * *

Rabbi Gershon Winkler (Independent): “We love sin. Without it we could not transform, improve or ennoble ourselves. … The opportunity to make mistakes gives us the opportunity to repair them, in the process of which we learn, grow, and become more of who we are. Why do you think we were ‘set up’ in the Garden of Eden? Let’s face it—it was pure entrapment, clearly designed to get us in trouble, to open up the possibility of sin. The love of the father for the child who is constantly struggling to come home to him is far greater than for the child who is already at home. … One major difference between Judaism and Christianity is that Judaism does not perceive the journey back to God as so arduous and steep that it requires the aid of a redemptive savior. The journey to Canaan may have taken us 40 years, but the journey back to God is as close ‘as is your ear to your mouth’ (Talmud Yerushalmi, Berachot 13a).”

* * *

Rabbi Peter Schweitzer (Humanist): “Not all Jews think alike about these matters. The ‘textbook’ answer doesn’t work for the secular, cultural, or humanistic Jews who comprise half the Jewish population. For us, there is no commanding deity who has issued a set of commandments for us to uphold or neglect. Rather, mitzvot are the commandments we place upon ourselves. Sins and transgressions—which we regard as God-connected notions—are not a standard part of our vocabulary. We talk instead about wrongdoings, the errors of our ways, the missteps and bad choices we make. We don’t turn to a God for forgiveness or atonement. We need to look inside for that. And most important, we need to consider how we can change our ways for the good, knowing full well that we will fall short over and over.”

* * *

Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson: “What is [the alcoholic’s] basic trouble? . . . are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, our self-pity? Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.”

* * *

Bill Wilson: “Depart[ing] from the degree of perfection that God wishes for us here on earth . . . is the measure of our character defects, or if you like, our sins. . . . Must AA’s spend most of their waking hours drearily rehashing their sins of omission or commission? Hardly. The emphasis on inventory is heavy only because a great many of us have never really acquired the habit of accurate self-appraisal.”

* * *

Therapist Brené Brown: “I believe that there is a profound difference between shame and guilt. I believe that guilt is adaptive and helpful – it’s holding something we’ve done or failed to do up against our values and feeling psychological discomfort. 

“I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection. I don’t believe shame is helpful or productive. In fact, I think shame is much more likely to be the source of destructive, hurtful behavior than the solution or cure. I think the fear of disconnection can make us dangerous.”

* * *

Therapist Thomas Moore: “I make a distinction between guilt, and feeling guilty as a symptom for what is lacking or what we need. ‘Guiltiness’ can be a kind of phony guilt, a vague feeling of ‘I’m guilty’—but we don’t really know what we’ve done wrong. Perhaps we’ve broken a cultural rule that doesn’t mean much to us personally.

“ ... At the same time, there’s nothing bad about genuine guilt—we all need to feel responsible when we’ve done something wrong. One thing I learned from the Catholic Church is that a kind of liberation comes from the act of confession, which has a real genius to it. So I’d like to borrow from the Church and say that to be able to confess is a very good way of dealing with guilt. We all do things we wish we hadn’t. If we could confess them instead of hide them, it would help us to re-join our community, and to be straightforward in our dealings with other people.

“I try to be a confessing person and to acknowledge, in a very sober and simple way, that I’ve got these imperfections, and that I need to confess them regularly.”

* * *

“Dad, have you noticed?”

“Noticed what?” 

“That I’m not apologizing as much any more.”

“Really? I’m not sure I have.”

“Arrrgh. Then why am I even doing it?”

“Wait. It can be hard to notice the absence of a thing. If you’d filled a bag with bricks and then took them all out, I’d notice. But if you only took out one or two, I might not. You still apologize some.” 

“That’s true.” 

“Why do you think you’re apologizing less?” 

“My apologies annoy you.” 

“Any other reason?” 

“Momma doesn’t think it’s good to always apologize. She says it can be anti-feminist, like I’m apologizing for taking up space. But that’s not really what I’m doing.” 

“What do you think you’re doing?” 

“It’s like: When I was little and I watched a comedy, I didn’t usually understand the jokes. So I liked shows with laugh tracks, because even if I didn’t get the joke I’d know it was time to laugh. And I don’t think I’ve always had a good sense of social intelligence. I mean, I don’t always know if I’ve done something bad or hurt someone’s feelings. So if I thought I had, I’d apologize just in case. And then it became a reflex.” 

“So your apologies to me are sometimes a reflex?” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“Let me ask: Now do you like shows with laugh tracks?” 

“Oh my god. They’re the worst.” 

“So, if I can summarize your analogy …” 

“Dad, don’t give paternal lectures. You’re really bad at them.” 

(New York state numbers on Monday: 291,996 diagnosed with Covid-19, up 1.4 percent; 337 dead, to a total of 17,303, up 2 percent. Overall U.S. deaths: 1,275, to a total of 50,352, up 2.5 percent.) 

Plague Journal, Day 45: CoronaWorld oral history, high school teacher

Sunday: I talk to a friend, a teacher at one of New York City’s nine specialized public high schools designed to support academically or artistically excellent students, about how CoronaWorld has disrupted her semester. I edited our 45-minute talk for clarity. 

Me: Tell me about your job before CoronaWorld.

Teacher: I’m an English teacher; I’ve been teaching for close to 20 years, much of that focused on writing. This semester I’m teaching two sections of freshman composition; one section of our core senior writing class; and two sections of a class for juniors and seniors about writing to create change in the world. Those students can write in any genre or a hybrid genre in order to make change about issues they care about; we have units on graphic books, memoirs, op/eds, letters to political representatives, playwriting — it’s a fun class. In any given semester I teach 150 to 170 kids. This semester my load is low: in my five sections I have 142. 

Me: Describe what happened when you had to transition to CoronaWorld. 

Teacher: At first it was unclear that we would be shutting down at all. There was no planning. On Monday [March 9] everything was normal. By Wednesday, we were asking: Is New York City shutting its school system? By Thursday a lot of us teachers felt we needed to shut down. We started giving out books to students, but we didn’t know what we were planning for. On Friday I kept my own kids home, and a lot of parents did the same. I spent part of that day with a group of teachers trying to convince the mayor to shut the schools. 

The mayor officially closed the schools on Sunday [March 15]. Teachers were then supposed to come in for three days to get training in remote instruction, which in my opinion caused people’s deaths. Across the system, teachers took subways for three days to come to school when they didn’t need to. I stayed home. I have tenure, and I had sick days in the bank; I was docked three sick days, even though I was working 12 hours a day. But teachers who weren’t tenured or had no sick days to lose, they went in. 

There was no sense of what we should be doing. We were promised instruction on remote learning, but that was non-existent. Most of the instruction consisted of “Figure it out.” We had little help or advice. I know the [Department of Education] was overwhelmed, but no one had plans in place. The city educates 1.1 million students, and a lot don’t have technology at home. The DOE was flying blind, which I understand. But it was total discombobulation.

Our school has 3,200 kids and close to 200 faculty. That first week schools were closed, we had a couple of faculty email lists going constantly, one for the full faculty and one for 25 English teachers. We were on video chat, text messages. We had a lot of extremely committed, smart teachers helping each other figure out how to make this work. 

That first week we wanted to do something to let kids know we were still here, though we weren’t officially open. We sent messages to the students, and we started doing English Department “minutes.” Every day in class we have a student deliver minutes from the previous day and give a gift to the class, in the form of a poem or a quote or a talent. So the English Department moved minutes online, and kids responded to that and each other. I had already set up Google Classroom for my classes, so even though it wasn’t official we started to figure out how to make community in these online spaces. 

Then it was like, okay, now figure out how to teach online. We were getting to know Google Classroom, and Zoom was working pretty well. Then on a Friday at 10 p.m. [April 3], the DOE canceled spring break and the use of Zoom. They told us we all had to use Microsoft Teams. They closed Zoom because of security concerns. Each Zoom class had a number assigned to it, and hackers could generate algorithms, find the number, and pop in. If the hosts knew how, they could secure it, but the DOE didn’t trust that all teachers would be able to do that, and they worried about lawsuits.

In my experience, my department chair has been amazing, my faculty colleagues amazing, and the central DOE? Not particularly helpful. With online platforms, the teachers don’t get guidance; we figure stuff out on their own; and then the DOE figures out what we’re doing and says, No, don’t do that. 

Me: What has teaching been like? How have you been able to engage your students? 

Teacher: Let me first say: Teaching in a public school is a window into the ways that this pandemic has heightened extreme inequality among people who live in New York City.

At my school, 40 percent of students live below the poverty level. That means we can’t do live, synchronous learning, because we can’t ensure that everyone has access to the technology. [Almost one in three New York City households, 2.2 million people, lack broadband internet.] 

Eighty-five percent of our students are immigrants or first-generation Americans. A lot of the parents lost jobs or are working in low-wage industries, so they’re living with a lot of financial instability, stress, and anxiety. They’re sharing computers with parents and siblings; they can’t get online when you want them to. Then we have students who are sick with Covid-19, whose family members are sick, whose family members have died — uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents. Their lives are chaotic. 

So any synchronous lesson means only a subset will show up. My classroom cap is 34 students; I have one class of 30; and my freshman classes have 28. When I try live online “teaching” (put quotes around the word teaching), I get an average of 12 to 15 kids. So I record it and post in on Google Classroom for others to watch later.  

One important thing Zoom had was backgrounds, which kids could set up to allow privacy. When kids use a hangout without a background, some who show up won’t turn their cameras on, in part because they’re living in close quarters with family members and they don’t want to show everyone in class where they live. We usually want their mics muted, but some won’t turn mics on at all because they live in crowded, noisy apartments. 

A huge portion of time that used to be for teaching — for being in the classroom with live human beings, working through a piece of literature, focusing on a writing skill, communicating with each other about a piece of work — is now piecemeal and individual and asynchronous. And it has to be that way. Lessons have to be something that kids can access at any time or place. 

Photo by Pexel

Much of what I do now is logging engagement: Did I make contact today with each student? Did they comment, turn something in, show themselves online in some way? If you didn’t check in, I’ll go to the internal school system and look up your biographical info, see if any counselors or other teachers have reached out to you, try to figure out how to connect. It’s a huge amount of time. I’m up until midnight most nights, and so little of it is about teaching. 

My metaphor: I’m throwing 142 lines every day — throw out the lines, tug back, tug back, tug back. The kids who aren’t responding: Are they sick? Did they have someone die? Are they in deep depression? Or are they just feeling lazy and not checking email this week? The common ground we all had in the classroom is pulled from beneath our feet. 

Me: What kind of feedback are you getting from students about online learning? 

Teacher: A lot of freshmen say they’re having more difficulty understanding material, science and math especially. Some have said how much harder it is to comprehend lessons communicated on screen, rather than in interactions with teachers and other students. 

In my classes, we’ve covered a little bit of literature, but primarily I’m focusing on writing projects. It’s possible to have reasonable communication about writing online. They’re workshopping pieces in Google Docs; they’re meeting synchronously in small groups; and I can give feedback on Docs as well. But a few times, especially with my ninth graders, I had to make individual phone calls, because I was confident they weren’t understanding what I was writing. 

Me: Does this affect some students more than others? I’m thinking of students with different learning styles — visual, auditory, kinesthetic. 

Teacher: It probably does. But most of what I’m seeing concerns situations at home. Are they taking care of siblings, then doing school work in the middle of the night? A senior told me early on that her parents own a grocery store, and she had to fill in for workers calling in sick. Then her mom didn’t want her in the store, but she’s dealing every day with suppliers on phone — she has to translate for her mother, who’s Chinese. A lot of the kids have to translate for their parents. So I’ve made alternative assignments for kids who just can’t do schoolwork right now. 

Me: What about grading? 

Teacher: We have to provide feedback, but the DOE has not officially said what will happen with the grading system. Unofficially, we understand that K-8 will be Pass/Fail. But no one’s allowed to fail, so it will be Pass/Incomplete. In high school we’ll need to assign grades, but no one will fail, so we’ll also be using Incompletes. As with so many aspects, the DOE will be privileging kids with a stable home life and enough money to succeed. 

Grading is the last thing I’ve been prioritizing. Over the week that became a semi-spring break, our guidance counselors took on the work of engaging students, and it gave us part of a week to catch up and not assign new work. And I turned around nine sets of class work that I hadn’t had any time to look at, including things I’d assigned before [CoronaWorld]. 

The other thing to remember: teachers have families, too. I have three children in K-8. Two are old enough to handle work on their own. But my youngest is 7, and he needs me or my husband to sit with him to do his work. 

Me: What’s better about online learning? 

Teacher: Nothing. Nothing is better. Not at all. It’s terrible. The synergy that happens in a classroom — it’s not replicable online. Kids in class work together, discover things together, bounce ideas off each other; even if someone responds to an online comment, it feels like a completely different thing. And the social interactions that all of us are missing, students and adults, can’t be replicated this way. 

Our school has a monthly open mic event in the auditorium; students read work, sing, play music. On Friday the students held a Zoom open mic, and they invited some of the English teachers. The teachers all found it incredibly emotional. Seeing these kids, including a lot of seniors who won’t get to celebrate their graduation — seeing them sing to each other, write comments in the chat windows supporting each other — it was so moving. [Pause] Heartbreaking, actually. [Pause] They’re aware of so much that’s being lost. 

The students at our school come from all five boroughs; they speak something like 60 languages. Public school in New York City can be a great equalizer, allowing kids to thrive and achieve at levels they couldn’t on their own. You can’t replicate that without meeting in person. We have kids who stay in the building for after-school activities until they’re kicked out. They run their own theatre program, build their own sets. There’s a board game club. All of the sports. All of the social ways they connect. It’s really hard to see that taken away.

And a lot of kids are having issues at home. We have LGBTQ kids living with families that don’t understand or accept their identities; now that’s where they are all the time. For some of our wonderful, nerdy, nutty kids — they don’t get to be themselves at home. High school is a place where that can happen, and at my school it happens a lot. 

Me: Is your authority as a teacher altered in an online classroom? 

Teacher: I don’t think in those terms. My goal is to set up classroom systems as a scaffolding that will allow kids to figure things out with each other as much as possible, without me ping-ponging with them. It makes my voice less necessary. I’m privileged to teach kids for whom classroom management is not an issue. But everything is harder to do online, including that. 

On the technology side, it’s been complicated to figure out how to post things on Google Classroom that students can find and use. The details are boring. It took me days to figure out why students weren’t always seeing each other’s responses. I had to learn to cross-post things so everyone can see it. So much of my brain is taken up with shit like that instead of teaching, content. 

Me: What will be your reaction if you have to do this in the fall? 

Teacher: Oh, Jesus. [Pause] Starting classes online seems extraordinarily challenging, even more than doing it mid-semester. I’d already established relationships with all of my students. I make a big effort in the first two weeks to learn their names; in the first marking period I meet individually with everyone to go through their composition books, so they know that I know them. 

With brand new ninth graders? My god, the whole first month of ninth grade is: Here’s how you act and how you learn and how structures work in high school. I have no idea how any of that would work online. 

(New York state numbers on Sunday: 288,045 diagnosed with Covid-19, up 2.1 percent; 367 dead, to a total of 16,966, up 2.2 percent. Overall U.S. deaths: 1,168, to a total of 49,113, up 2.4 percent.) 

I'm establishing an oral history of the pandemic; previous interviews include with a public college professor, a public middle school student, and a private college dean.