Abstract
There’s no doubt that the pandemic has caused incredible turmoil in our everyday professional and personal routines. While it has posed and still poses daunting challenges, this great disruption represents a unique opportunity to shatter many of our ingrained academic routines and to embrace bold innovation. Necessity indeed is the mother of invention, and the pandemic has forced me to reconfigure courses which require field trips to museums in the greater Washington DC metro area. I now direct my students to pause and reflect upon these unprecedented times from the sanctuary of their homes. For the last two years, I have required my U.S. History students to work on an assignment that seeks to capture the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic through a reflective oral history interviewing process. My goal is to elicit my student’s “raw” impressions on this topic: have them write a reaction paper about a slice of life they know well and that resonates deeply. This assignment may include autobiographical reporting or interviews with family, friends, and/or loved ones, with the intent to bring students’ hearts and minds to bear on historical process and impact. Drawing from these interviews, I will explore my students’ vivid descriptions of their lives under siege during this pandemic-ridden times. They represent eloquent firsthand accounts of pain, sorrow, fear, resilience, and hope for the future. I also attempt to gauge the impact of COVID-19 on their academic performance.
Presenters
Jorge Hernandez FujigakiProfessor, History, Montgomery College and George Washington University, Maryland, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
STUDENTS, REFLECTIONS, COVID-19, IMPACT, PERSONAL, ACADEMIC, PERFORMANCE
