July 2020

Monthly Archive

Jul 29, 2020

Time flying

Posted by Lorianne under Life in the time of Coronavirus | Tags: |
[10] Comments 

Flicker feather

During a normal summer, I procrastinate teaching prep until the end of August, when the start of the semester looms large. This summer, however, I don’t have that luxury. Preparing to teach during a pandemic means re-working everything from the ground up: classes that worked just fine in a normal classroom setting won’t work as well in a hybrid format, so I’m revisiting and revising all of my courses, trying to make them pandemic-proof.

I don’t know exactly what my hybrid classes will look like in the fall: until I get classroom assignments, I can’t visualize what it will look like to have students sitting in assigned seats six feet apart at desks that can’t be moved. What I do know, however, is that my classes will have to be flexible: accessible to students in class or at home, and able to continue when I or any of my students have to quarantine.

In the spring, my colleagues and I moved our in-person classes online without much lead time. Now, I have a summer to prepare my wholly-remote literature class and my hybrid writing classes. The latter classes are the bigger puzzle: I know how to teach wholly online, and I’ve taught one hybrid class where we spent in-class time doing small group work. But teaching in a socially distanced classroom where some students are in the room and others are remote is a whole other animal, and I’ve been spending more time than ever this summer meeting with teaching colleagues and attending professional development workshops, trying to figure it all out.

All of this helps explain why time is flying faster than ever this summer: already, it is almost August, which every teacher knows marks the Almost End of Summer. Although I’ve been religiously spending time in the mornings outside reading on the patio and have continued to write in my journal daily, blogging and more “serious” writing have fallen by the wayside. I know that once the semester starts, life will get busy, fast, and I’ve tried to cherish every moment of this summer’s working staycation.

 

Jul 19, 2020

Honed to notice

Posted by Lorianne under Birds | Tags: , |
[2] Comments 

Backyard cardinal

It’s a hot and sunny day, with clear skies, so J and I are hoping to see Comet NEOWISE tonight, either in our backyard, which is fringed with trees, or at the neighborhood Little League field, which provides a broad, less obstructed view.

In advance of sundown, I’ve gotten my binoculars out, and in doing so, I realize I can’t remember the last time I used them, which is a shame since they are a nice set of optics–Nikon Monarchs–with a pleasing heft in the hand.

Birding is something I used to enjoy, which is to say it is something I enjoyed when I made time for it. There is a hushed expectancy that birding inspires–you train yourself to be quiet and attentive, honed to notice anything that looks or sounds usual.

This watchful demeanor is something birding and meditation share–both require you to intentionally focus your attention. When I used to go on Brookline Bird Club bird walks at Mount Auburn Cemetery, I’d practice the art of selective attention, peeling back the layers of conversation among the birders around me to focus on the faint chirps and whistles in the background, like removing a song’s vocal track to focus on the bass line.

When you go birding, you aren’t necessarily looking for any particular bird–or at least, I’ve never had much luck looking for and then finding a specific species. Instead, you keep your eyes and ears open for anything that seems different from the norm–a sound that doesn’t match the ambient noise, or a movement that runs counter to the usual grain.

In this sense, birding is as much about looking for clues as it is about hunting down specific species–or at least, that is how it usually works for me. The most interesting things I find are usually the things that appear by accident or surprise, like an unexpected eruption of mushrooms after summer storms.

This is why looking for wildflowers underfoot is a great accompaniment for listening to birds overheard. While you occupy your fidgety mind with one thing, you create an expectant opening for something else to appear.