Letting the World In: Pedagogy from Home in a Time of Crisis
Kerim Yasar, University of Southern California
During an online class early this semester, I heard a loud bang somewhere outside. Later, my spouse handed me a note informing me that one of our neighbors had shot and killed himself in the garage of our building.
We are used to teaching in spaces that buffer the outside world and reinforce our authority. Remote teaching, on the other hand, brings students into our homes in ways that can make us feel vulnerable and uncomfortable. Sometimes, as happened to me, our personal and communal lives flood into the space of teaching with a force that cannot be ignored.
Instead of fighting this—instead of pretending to be subjects without a center or context—how can we incorporate the contingencies, both personal and public, of this unpredictable and traumatizing time into our teaching?