Teaching and Playing, Travel Nostalgia, & Chess!

Hi Everybody, I hope this finds you and your loved ones safe and well.  Like Alyssa, I have also had four classes this spring semester — however, two have been in-person and on-campus, and the other two online.  Though teaching in-person with a mask has fostered some obvious challenges, I’ve been surprised and often encouraged by my students’ willingness to take safety guidelines seriously as well as their continued desire to learn in such challenging environments.  Though I began the semester teaching in two different classes within Brooks Hall on downtown campus, I was able to coordinate a room switch fairly quickly so that both my on-campus classes met back-to-back and in the same room (202).  It has also been helpful that it is such a large room, which has allowed for ample social spacing during the continued COVID context.

In response to ‘what we could/should expect from ourselves as teachers,’ I must admit, I’ve often felt  more than just a bit nihilistic and discouraged at times.  However, in my continuing quest to ignore my advancing years (51 in a few weeks!), I always make it a habit of mine to ask students what types of music they listen to, which I then try desperately to incorporate into either my teaching or my own private entertainment.  I was recently sent a link in an email from a student who had the audacity to ask if I “knew who Dave Grohl was”!  Denying my internal impulse to lecture him gratuitously on my self-supposed vast and encyclopedic musical knowledge, including more than likely inappropriate stories about adolescent angst and a CD of Nirvana in a car stereo, I hit the link instead.  It is a  31-minute long video entitled Play - in which Grohl talks about music, education, and of course ‘play’, and then goes on to record a 23-minute long instrumental of him playing 7 different instruments all at the same time.  You may check out the video if you choose (link in footnote), but I’d like to quote Grohl from the first 45 seconds or so of the video.  Says Grohl:

“To any musician, young or old, a beautiful studio full of instruments is like a playground.  To me, I’m like a kid in a candy store.  Most musicians are always chasing the next challenge, you never feel satisfied, and you never feel like you’ve completely mastered the instrument you’re playing.  It’s always going to be a puzzle, it’s always going to be a challenge.  It’s a beautiful mystery.  But once it gets its hooks into you, that’s when the obsession and the drive really kicks in.”

Without being overly simplistic, romantic, or naively comparative, that’s how I feel about teaching, or at least how I’d like to imagine myself feeling as we progress through the spring and begin to plan for the fall.  In other words, teaching during the age and anxiety of COVID demands excitement, passion, and very few excuses.  All audiences know when the musician/band/teacher is ‘in’ to what they’re doing, and it has an effect.

With regard to ‘new elements popping up’ within the context of online teaching that have definitely surprised me, less have been technical, and more have been contextual.  Especially within the last couple of weeks, I’ve found that my expected audience for my online classes has occasionally contained some surprises — everything from pets to (Grand)parents to partners — all creating and engendering some new pedagogic dynamics that nothing could have prepared me for, especially in the context of a class on religious topics.  I’m used to having the “classroom” to myself, so-to-speak, but now during this period of online teaching, the environments within which so many of my students finds themselves in is constantly changing, and thus creating some funny, beautiful, and at times confusing, tense, but always unexpected and challenging new scenarios.

I might not have realized, until reading Alyssa’s post, that I too might be going through some sort of ‘mourning’ - a nostalgic melancholy related to not hitting the road and traveling to far away places, with or without students, during traditional Spring Breaks.  A very quick glance at my Facebook Memories page, just for today alone (and the previous several days have been similarly full of memories!), produces a couple oldies but goodies:

Me (and the “Prince of the Lilies”) — Knossos, Crete, 2017

Me and Alyssa — Caesarea Maritima, Israel, 2018

Thus, dealing with such withdrawal, looking for distractions during an “uninterrupted semester,” has been difficult at times (though, I must say, I’m excited about the upcoming Fantasy Baseball season!), but also productive of growth and change.  I’m using some of the extra time to prepare for teaching Islam at WVU (both this Spring and next Fall) for the first time.  Having taught it many times in up-state NY at various schools and institutions, I have confidence, but it’s definitely been a while — thank the gods for the Very Short Introduction Series by Oxford!!

I think I talked in a response here, during the fall, about throwing some darts (often accompanied by cocktails), rather consistently with my partner, to get through the boredom and social isolation of lockdown at times over the last year.  Well, it’s happened again — after watching the amazing Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, we have now taken up chess!  Check out the official trailer below.  I realize that chess can seem…so…potentially…stuffy, and too intellectual, or something.  Yet, it’s been fun again (I hadn’t really played in almost 40 years, since a fierce competition with my best friend when I was around 10 yers old), competitive, infuriating, confusing, and silly — all useful for dealing with confining spring doldrums.

Alex

Teaching Associate Professor

Program for Religious Studies