Teaching in Times of Covid: From ‘Landing the Plane’ to ‘Reaching for the Stars

This essay is about my professional and personal experiences in the historically-significant year of 2020, which was filled with lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, quarantines, and social isolation. As a Spanish literature professor whose research focuses on the 16^th- and 17^th-century Mediterranean, I rarely have the opportunity to write about contemporary events and social movements, yet the conclusions reached in this chapter eerily echo the lessons I, along with countless readers and critics, have found in the literary works of Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote who was held captive for five and half years in an Algerian prison. The same concepts of “patience”, “perseverance”, and “perspective” present throughout Cervantes’ writings also helped guide and sustain me during my quest to become a better professor and teacher to my students throughout the Coronavirus pandemic. This presentation is divided into four phases that correspond to my experiences during specific time periods and that can be summarized thusly: “Resist” (March-May), “Retool” (June-August 18^th), “Re-engage” (August 19^th-December), and “Re-envision” (2021-?).

Teaching in Times of Covid: From ‘Landing the Plane’ to ‘Reaching for the Stars Chapter