New Normal: Sections

Teaching Through the Pandemic 

When COVID-19 stay-at-home orders emptied the nation’s classrooms, instructors from pre-K through Ph.D. programs launched Zoom rooms and summoned their creative juices to find innovative ways of reaching — and teaching — their students.

And with the return of in-person instruction, some of the teaching methods designed for online learning — and some valuable philosophies — have made their way into the classroom.

This school year, “we have a new appreciation for in-person teaching, learning and social connections,” notes Susan (Chin-Young Chang '95, MA '96) Salcido, Santa Barbara County Superintendent of Schools, “and a deeper understanding of the impacts of accessing and using technology for learning and interacting.” Teachers and administrators are increasingly flexible about every component of delivering education, recognizing that conditions and environments may change at a moment’s notice.

Aria Bauman '15, a science teacher at San Lorenzo Valley High School in Felton, knows that firsthand. He used Flipgrid, a software tool that enables students to produce videos to demonstrate their lab results, model scientific phenomena and show their mastery of concepts. It’s now part of his students’ in-person experience.

Megan Reed '17, a teacher at Harding University Partnership School in Santa Barbara, developed what she calls “reflective conversations” so her sixth grade students could ask tough questions on topics outside the bounds of their virtual classroom, form opinions and find their own individual voices. “When kids were in remote learning, many were spending a lot of time online,” she notes. “Kids are so curious about the world around them, and social media has given them access to mass quantities of news, trends and information.” They needed a place to process it all. They still do. When the pandemic hit, universities entered new teaching territory as well. UC Santa Barbara instructors had to connect with their students virtually — sometimes across time zones and even across date lines — and they found novel ways to do it.

After Helen Morales’s cats photo-bombed the lectures she recorded for her class of more than 700 Greek mythology students, the Argyropoulos Professor of Hellenic Studies made them honorary teaching assistants. And Kathy Foltz, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, set up online forums where her students could share tips for remote learning.

Many instructors altered the way they presented course material, choosing to post short lectures and videos and encourage small group projects instead of more traditional teaching and assessment methods. Chris Evelyn, a lecturer in ecology, evolution and marine biology who used to grade primarily on one midterm and one final, shifted the focus of his class to be on students working together to understand concepts and answer questions, and then evaluating their own work and that of their peers.

And as the university welcomes students back to campus and resumes in-person instruction, some of those newfound practices will carry over, no matter the format.

“We know that learning is a social activity,” says Linda Adler-Kassner, assistant dean of undergraduate education and director of UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Innovative Teaching, Research and Learning. “Faculty have learned a great deal about how to create opportunities for collaboration, whether asynchronous or synchronous, in classes of all sizes.”

But as teachers like Bauman and Reed have learned, in the age of COVID their work involves a lot more than strict education. Helping their students navigate the challenges of the pandemic, from face masks to quarantine to COVID testing, has become part of their job descriptions.

“It’s really challenging to be online for over a year of academic instruction,” says Reed. “The last ‘normal’ year my students had was in third grade. Those years are formative for social, emotional and intellectual maturity.” She supports her students by establishing routines, providing constant encouragement and working brain breaks into the school day to counter fatigue and stress. “And also, by acknowledging that this is hard,” she says. “I think it helps to hear that.”

For Bauman’s high school students, the pandemic — and now the return to a new version of in-person instruction — has taken an emotional and mental health toll. “I have more students than ever having to deal with severe anxiety and depression,” he notes. “There is also learning loss in all areas.” He is particularly concerned about the impact an academic year away from the classroom has had on social behavior and school culture.

Still, despite all the many challenges, the return to the classroom has been a happy event. “I am thrilled to be back in my lab classroom,” says Bauman. “No one goes into education because we want to sit in a room alone all day interacting with a screen.” The enthusiasm his students have shown at being back at school is a welcome surprise. “

Some really take the time now to express gratitude for things that we all took for granted previously, and it is beautiful to watch them appreciate the little things,” he says.

Reed, too, has been struck by her students’ resilience. “I know we have had days where we struggle,” she says, “but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the amount of joy that fills my classroom. These kids show up, work hard, laugh, sometimes cry, and persevere. It’s such an honor to be their teacher.”

The importance of resilience in tough times

In the year (or two) of breathing dangerously, our mental health has been tested in ways most of us never could have imagined. Isolation. Separation. Economic insecurity. Fear for the health and well-being of our loved ones — every single one of them — and for ourselves.

Our lives have been upended by the sheer magnitude of the pandemic itself.

Indeed, a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that of the nearly 800,000 adults who completed an online survey about their mental health, 42% reported symptoms of anxiety or depression.

Smaranda Lawrie MA ’20, Ph.D. ’21 understands that. As a graduate student and teaching assistant in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, she witnessed it firsthand as the COVID-19 pandemic began turning her students’ lives upside down. So, Lawrie helped organize the UCSB Resilience Summit and Certificate Program, a series of 13 lectures on “positive psychology” designed to instill the skills for maintaining good mental health and optimism. The lectures drew nearly 1,000 participants, who explored topics such as applying Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey” to finding one’s own inner hero, learning how to spot the silver lining around negative events, and understanding the how and why of mindful attention.

Lawrie, who is now on the faculty of Providence College in Rhode Island, says it’s important to remember that your mental health is not fixed or trapped by circumstance. “One of the things I really appreciated about the summit is that a lot of the people, myself included, talked a lot about change and how change is possible.”

Previously, it was assumed that brain flexibility was limited to younger people, and any change that occurred in later years was only negative, like dementia. “Now, all this research is starting to show that’s not true,” Lawrie says. “Change is possible throughout the entire lifetime. And a lot of that is our decision. It’s our choice. So, there are things we can do and things we shouldn’t do that help us live better.” Find what works for you and stick with it.

The Power of Bringing Mental Health into the Conversation

When Simone Biles pulled out of events at the Tokyo Olympics this past summer citing mental health concerns, she said she expected to be lambasted by critics. And while some people did call America’s greatest gymnast a “choker” and worse, something more profound happened: She was widely praised for having the courage to acknowledge she was struggling and needed to step away from competition. Like Naomi Osaka, who spoke about the emotional difficulties of being a tennis star, Biles did what few athletes and celebrities have done — she brought mental health out of the shadows.

Robin Nabi, a professor in the Department of Communication who has written extensively about the effects of social interactions on mental health, says the positive response to Biles and Osaka stemmed largely from our sense that we know and identify with them. Their struggles aren’t an abstraction.

“If it’s someone who’s familiar to us, or someone we think we’re similar to, then we think, ‘Hey, if she’s struggling and is willing to talk about it, then maybe I can, too. Maybe I can take a break and step back. Maybe I should try to find someone who can help me work through these issues,’” says Nabi.

Another benefit of these celebrity acknowledgements is that they can build into movements, she notes. #MeToo, with its spotlight on sexual abuse, is one example.

“There’s something about that particular time where all of a sudden people are willing to share their stories and then it’s everywhere,” Nabi says.

“And then your social change becomes possible. It’s not necessarily any one particular story, but the collection of stories.” That’s true for struggles related to the pandemic as well. The more people share their genuine feelings of angst, not only will they likely find support, but they contribute to the sense that this is a broader mental health issue that needs to be addressed as a more universal societal issue.

Bottlenecks in Supply and Demand

The COVID-19 pandemic wrought havoc on the economy, and the long, bumpy road to recovery is not without its twists, turns and detours.

But what distinguishes the current situation from previous experience, according to Professor Emeritus Benjamin Cohen, an expert in international political economy, is the fact that it’s due not to inadequate aggregate demand — the usual culprit — but rather to supply bottlenecks.

“Back in April my dishwasher broke down, but when I tried to buy a replacement, I was told not to expect delivery before October,” he notes as an example. “And just last week I got a call that delivery will be further delayed until January.”

For decades, firms have relied on extensive networks of suppliers, many of them offshore, to support strategies of “just-in-time” inventory management. “Now they realize how vulnerable they are to the sudden emergence of bottlenecks that can strangle production or stall delivery of needed items,” Cohen says. See, for example, what has happened to vehicle production — both cars and trucks — because of a sudden shortage of computer chips. Many corporations can be expected to shorten their supply chains and to “reshore,” bringing much of their offshore production back to the U.S. where it is less vulnerable to interruptions.

“The changes being created by the pandemic are ‘structural’ in the sense that they involve sustained changes of behavior by consumers and producers alike,” he says. “Structural adjustments take time — time to invest in new capital equipment and time for workers to acquire needed new skills. But the good news is that the adjustments are coming.”

Cohen says that while he doesn’t expect an economic recession, he has some concerns about the stock market. “Asset values have gotten way out ahead of reasonable profit expectations, and that includes not just stocks, but also real estate and the new-fangled cryptocurrencies.”

He worries that a “correction” is overdue in the housing market as well as in equities. Asset prices could drop by as much as 10 to 20%, he warns, adding that it could be triggered by the Federal Reserve when it finally begins to cut back on its support of the bond market and interest rates start to rise.

For the moment, Cohen says, the challenge is not recession but inflation. Spending pressures are pushing prices up, though the rise in prices has more to do with bottlenecks in the supply chain than with excessive demand. While at one point he expected the rate of inflation to taper off quite quickly — a matter of months, not years” — now it’s beginning to look more sustained. “Bottlenecks,” he notes, “have proved stickier then most of us had anticipated.”