Pivoting Online

Well. I sent my students an e-mail this morning letting them know we were pivoting to online today, because I don’t have the PCR results back, and I don’t want to risk this cold actually being COVID and my bringing it into our (fairly small and close quarters) classroom.

That is all well and good. But while I was feeling reasonably fine if congested this morning, I am feeling only borderline okay now (I blame two nights of broken sleep), and if I had to go in to campus to teach right now, I wouldn’t trust myself to drive, so I’d need to call in sick and just cancel class.

I can manage sitting at my desk and teaching on Zoom, though, which is less physically demanding.

And I find myself oddly torn — the teacher in me is glad that we won’t have to try to make up today’s material later in the semester, which is always stressful and never quite as good as you’d like.

And the disability advocate in me says yes, good, if Zoom allows people to work who wouldn’t be able to work in person, that’s an expansion of their ability to participate in the broader community. We should allow remote work whenever possible.

But the labor activist in me says, hm, it’s a little sneaky how this tech is making it possible for me to work, and I feel too guilty to cancel class when I *could* teach it on Zoom, when I maybe should be honoring the fact that people get sick, and employers and workplaces should be structured to take that into account…

Oh well. Off to teach.

(Photo of sock yarn I had hoped to cast on today, but which seems much too difficult for my brain and body to manage, included as an indicator of my current state of capability.)

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