In the past month teachers and students all over the world have made the transition from face-to-face to online learning. Of course, online learning has grown by leaps and bounds over the past few years, becoming much more common place than a “few” years ago when I was a college student. In my particular case, I am teaching four courses this semester – two sections of World Religions, one of Introduction to Philosophy, and then World Mythology. The first three were already online to begin with, so there were no changes to the format for me or my students. My mythology students, on the other hand, had to make a significant change to the way they were going to learn. The current situation with the global pandemic is truly unique, and I have worked to incorporate it within my teaching when appropriate.

For example, for my Intro to Philosophy course, I had prepared discussion prompts for the various philosophers we cover each week. I thought it would be relevant to ask my students to speculate on how people like Kant and Marx would have commented on our society’s response to the pandemic. Concerning personal freedom vs. collective responsibility, where does the “categorical imperative” take us when we look at stay-at-home orders and the ensuing protests? What kinds of evaluations can we make using a critique of the means of production and the inequitable suffering from the pandemic based on socio-economic class? The pandemic has been heartbreaking in so many ways, but I have to admit that for once I knew that my students would have some knowledge of an important event, and thus I felt comfortable asking for their opinion in an assignment. Similarly, when a colleague of mine put together a website cataloging how religious communities were responding to the pandemic, I shared this with my World Religions classes and asked them to comment. This didn’t produce much in terms of discussion on our weekly threads, but at least it is there for them to investigate, and I can plan on integrating it in my syllabus from the beginning of the semester next time around.

There are so many times where I want to make a connection between material I am covering in class and the students’ daily lives. After all, without an avenue to apply this knowledge and these critical thinking skills, what is it all for? To use a baseball analogy, sometimes I hit a virtual home run...while other times it is more of a foul ball, or even a straight up swing-and-a-miss. My friends and I talk about how our pop culture references suddenly don’t yield any response from the students, and then we have to think about other ways to make the same kind of point. Since I really want to engage with my students, I know that unless I meet them where they are – including in the realm of their popular culture references – that most of what I say will probably just pass by them. This is a lost opportunity. I have to strike a balance between playing to the ever increasing emphasis on the present cultural moment, and cultivating a more nuanced understanding of the past. Far more important than any content that I teach (well, except for my beloved Mughal dynasty - that they have to learn about!) are the skills that I aim to foster in my courses. Critical thinking, the ability to read, speak, and write with a bit more sensitivity, and encouraging them to question the world around them; this is the most important thing that I want for my students.