{"id":16712,"date":"2021-01-29T17:05:21","date_gmt":"2021-01-30T00:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/?p=16712"},"modified":"2021-02-01T09:28:47","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T16:28:47","slug":"when-it-comes-to-covid-19-ccs-students-write-it-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/2021\/01\/when-it-comes-to-covid-19-ccs-students-write-it-best\/","title":{"rendered":"When It Comes to COVID-19, CC\u2019s Students Write It Best"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Oct. 22, the New York Times ran a story titled, \u201cTo Cover College Quarantines, We Turned to the Best: Student Journalists.\u201d In a follow-up story two weeks later one of the journalists they interviewed was Arielle Gordon \u201921<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Gordon and Miriam Brown \u201921<\/strong> founded The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project this summer, with the help of three faculty advisers and funding from a CC summer research grant. For those 10 weeks, the team published stories daily. Brown says it is now solely student-run, through The Catalyst student newspaper, and the two, with Isabel Hicks \u201922<\/strong> and Esteban Candelaria \u201921<\/strong>, have been providing original reporting, interviews, and infographics twice a week since the semester began through an email newsletter and website.<\/p>\n

When it came time for a Bulletin story addressing COVID-19 and its impact on campus, we turned to them for the most authentic CC coverage.<\/p>\n

Read on for a handful of these student-written stories (edited for style, but otherwise in their original form). And for more like them, subscribe to their newsletter at cccovidreportingproject.substack.com<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tent teaching has come to Colorado College. Is it here to stay?<\/h3>\n

For some, classes this semester have been more \u201cin-tents\u201d than they may have initially expected. (Spare us your groans. We couldn\u2019t help ourselves.)<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve been on campus recently, you\u2019ll notice some new decor: large white tents set up across campus as outdoor classrooms. After\u00a0scientists\u00a0raised concerns about how poor ventilation could impact Coronavirus transmission, Colorado College joined other higher-ed institutions embracing the outdoors in efforts to hold in-person classes. Amherst College in Massachusetts has\u00a0tents\u00a0on campus, and Rice University in Texas purchased five open-sided\u00a0circus tents\u00a0in addition to four other\u00a0tent-like\u00a0structures.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t like there was some kind of proclamation that came down: \u2018we shall have tents.\u2019 It was just this kind of thing like, \u2018what about tents?\u2019\u201d English Department Chair Steve Hayward, who also directs CC\u2019s\u00a0Journalism Institute, told The CC COVID- 19 Reporting Project. \u201cI think that there\u2019s a way in which that really appealed to a lot of people\u2019s safety concerns, but also to one\u2019s imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the spring, Hayward saw an article in\u00a0The Chronicle of Higher Education<\/em>\u00a0about how other institutions were embracing tent-ative classrooms. Then in July, when he was a correspondent for this newsletter, he helped us write a\u00a0brief\u00a0about more tent use. Though he didn\u2019t use a tent himself, Hayward helped solidify teaching in tents as an option for other professors. As chair of the English Department, he said he felt a responsibility to make sure that professors were able to teach the way they wanted to as safely as possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, some of the windows in Armstrong don\u2019t open. … They don\u2019t ever open,\u201d Hayward said. \u201cAnd I was thinking that if I had to teach in there, I\u2019d rather do it outside. It was part of what motivated my tent advocacy.\u201d Hayward added that Registrar Phil Apodaca \u201987<\/strong> and CC Facilities Services were the true players who made tent teaching happen.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photo by Jennifer Coombes<\/p><\/div>\n

Rain or shine: The block must go on\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

During a stroll around campus, you might wander past a couple different classes taking advantage of the outdoor learning. In a tent on the west side of Tutt Science Center, Director of Bluegrass Keith Reed has been giving individual music lessons and meeting with small student groups, including the CC Bluegrass Ensemble. At tables set up underneath the\u00a0Fishbowl, chemistry students practice problems on whiteboards with Professor of Chemistry Sally Meyer.<\/p>\n

According to Reed and Meyer, teaching outside certainly has its perks. Though Colorado weather can be notoriously temperamental, professors teaching outside Block 1 say the weather has been mostly cooperative.\u00a0<\/em>Plus, the\u2028 extra air circulation provides a way for students to meet face-to-face outside of stuffy classrooms.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s actually been nicer than inside because Facilities puts these whiteboards up every day for me,\u201d Meyer told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. \u201cWhen you\u2019re inside, [students] don\u2019t necessarily have a whiteboard next to their table.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Reed, the transition to teaching outdoors was relatively easy. Their instruments, including fiddles and banjos, are portable, and if students need to reference past work, they\u2019re able to play recordings from their phones. A bonus of practicing outdoors is that students seem to sing louder, Reed said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen students perform outdoors, they for whatever reason \u2026 sing louder, and they\u2019re not as timid,\u201d Reed told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.<\/p>\n

While the outdoor environment provided benefits for some musicians, some chemists faced a bit more difficulty. The day Meyer decided to try to do an experiment with her class, Mother Nature interfered.<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked at the weather and it was supposed to be beautiful, sunny,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cBut then there was so much smoke [from wildfires] that day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then wind caused its own problems, knocking over whiteboards so much that Lisa Hughes, who teaches in the English and Comparative Literature departments, said it almost became a game for students. In addition to wreaking havoc on whiteboards, loud wind also made hearing more difficult. Hughes worked with Accessibility Resources to get masks with a clear plastic piece over the mouth for her class to make it easier to read lips. The Audiovisual Department also gave her a headset and microphone to amplify her voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like I worked at Old Navy or something,\u201d Hughes told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. \u201cI kept saying into the microphone, \u2018We need more shirts in aisle seven.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Creating an equitable learning environment in a new space<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The timing of the Block 1 quarantines also presented a challenge for tent classes. Hughes\u2019 CC100 literature class only spent one week together in the tent, minus the two Loomis Hall residents who got quarantined within the first few days.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had what I thought was really one wonderful week in the tent,\u201d Hughes said. \u201cThen everybody else got quarantined anyhow, so we ended up going remote.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two students in locked-down Loomis struggled with not being able to physically be in the class as everyone else bonded in person. Hughes said one of the students told her that she felt like she was behind and couldn\u2019t ever catch up.<\/p>\n

The possibility of leaving some students behind has led a few professors to question the fairness of having in-person classes for some students while others have no choice but to take them online.<\/p>\n

Environmental Studies Associate Director Eric Perramond, who also teaches in the Southwest Studies Department, was originally set to teach in a tent for his Block 2 class, a first-year writing seminar about the Southwest. Concerns about equity ultimately changed his mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt did not seem fair to me since half of my class was on campus, and the other half of the first-years were sent home,\u201d Perramond wrote in an email. \u201cAs a firm believer in inclusive and equal education and pedagogy … I simply thought it important (and right, inclusive) to not create two separate learning experiences, for first-years remaining on campus versus those who were asked to go home because of COVID-19.\u201d<\/p>\n

To compromise, Perramond switched his class to\u00a0flex\u00a0delivery and offered in-person office hours with masks and social distancing once a week for his students still on campus.<\/p>\n

Hayward also noted that there are plenty of students who don\u2019t want to attend in-person classes right now, regardless of if they were in a tent. The college has to extend equity to students with anxieties about the pandemic too, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to put them first. \u2026 I want everyone to feel that they\u2019re in a safe, nurturing classroom space,\u201d Hayward said. \u201cAnd where we are right now, I don\u2019t think that the in-person instruction, from my perspective, is something that we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Original publication date: Oct. 14<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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