Unapologetic Boundaries: Lessons Learned While Teaching During a Pandemic
Madonna Kemp; Heidi Blaisdell; Elizabeth McGhee Williams
Keywords: exhaustion, overwork, setting boundaries, parenting, compassion fatigue, instructor carework
Categories: Parenting and Possibility in Impossible Times; Teaching as Carework, Teaching as Dangerous Work; Academic Pressures (or Critiques of Neoliberal Horseshit Productivity Expectations, as suggested by Amy Vidali)
Textual Transcript of Audio Version
Heidi: As women and graduate students who were also juggling teaching and family commitments during the pandemic, we decided to collaborate on a piece that showed our similar carework. We didn’t realize the extent to which we had similar experiences until we began brainstorming on a shared document. In fact, we found that our narratives were repetitive—
Heidi [with Madonna echoing]: each had echoes of the others’ stories.
Madonna: We chose this approach because once we realized how similarly our stories were flowing—despite focusing on different details—we knew we were not alone. Alone is something many of us felt and experienced over the past four semesters. As instructors teaching in a physically empty room, as only children taking care of sick parents, as parents who had to portion off individual time to make working from home actually happen. . . without the physical presence of others, many of us felt entirely alone. But when we considered each other’s narratives, we realized that while we felt alone, we were walking the same paths.
Madonna [with Heidi echoing]: In light of this,
Heidi: we decided to imagine our stories as spliced together, as a single narrative told through all of our voices.
Heidi [with Elizabeth echoing]: “Unapologetic Boundaries: Lessons Learned While Teaching During a Pandemic”
Heidi [with Elizabeth and Madonna echoing]: “I’m sorry.”
Heidi: In pandemic teaching, this response became my habit. Students, I’m sorry the technology that I had planned to present to you today isn’t working. Professor, I’m sorry that I cannot meet this deadline. Husband, I’m sorry that I have so little energy to give you at the end of the day, after solving countless student issues. Son, I’m sorry that you have watched five hours over the AAP-recommended screen time. Daughter, I’m sorry that we need to move. Mother, I’m sorry that I can’t stay with you longer.
Heidi [with Elizabeth echoing]: Guilt permeated every aspect of my life and weighed me down with more than the Quarantine 15.
Elizabeth [with Heidi echoing]: One night. . .
Elizabeth: as I am lying in bed trying to unwind from the events of the day, my phone pings. It is almost 11:00pm on a Saturday, but I instinctively reach over to check the email.
Elizabeth [with Heidi and Madonna echoing]: It is Jeremiah,[1] responding to my earlier message,
Madonna: the one meant to show care, because I knew something was amiss.
Madonna [with Elizabeth and Heidi echoing]: “No, professor, I am not doing well this time.”
Madonna: In an effort to alleviate his stress, I want to inform him that he will be getting a two-week pass; he can report back to me in two weeks, and at that time we will figure out where he is. . .
Madonna [with Elizabeth echoing]: and what he needs to do to proceed.
Elizabeth [with Madonna echoing]: As I begin typing out my response,
Elizabeth: my loving husband of less than a year abruptly asks, “What are you doing?” “I’ve got to respond to this email,” I tell him, a bit annoyed as to why he would ask me that. Did I have to respond at 11:00pm on a Saturday, though? This is supposed to be our time together, in which we share the events of our day with one another. In that moment, I realize that, in getting wrapped up in this “new normal,” I had completely abandoned any personal boundaries I had set before the pandemic forced us into remote learning. I find myself once again feeling guilty for neglecting loved ones and my own mental health.
Elizabeth [with Heidi echoing]: “I’m sorry,”
Elizabeth: I tell him, for what feels like the hundredth time. I place my phone back on the nightstand,
Elizabeth [with Madonna and Heidi echoing]: but my mind is still filled with concern for Jeremiah.
Heidi [with Elizbeth echoing]: The next day, I took the two steps from my bed to my desk. . .
Heidi: and sat down to Zoom with Jeremiah. I found out that two of his loved ones had died within a week, and his employer was not allowing him to return home for their funerals because they did not have enough employees reporting to work. While I was empathetic, I struggled to fully focus on him. My three-year-old son was downstairs binge-watching Tumble Leaf and surrounded by other distractions (Legos, Kinetic Sand, Avengers action figures) should he lose interest in his show. I could just barely make out my husband’s words from his own Zoom meeting in the office next door.
Madonna [with Heidi echoing]: And I was emotionally distracted
Madonna: listening to my own daughter explaining to her professor, through her tears, why she had missed assignments. But Jeremiah refused the pass that I offered him. He felt like he was too far behind and needed to get caught up right then. So, I told him that he could choose a time—whatever day, whatever hour—and I would meet with him and walk him through revisions of past projects to bring up his grade. That meeting happened when I should have been checking on my mother, and he was at work, instead of a funeral he wanted dearly to attend, after he had to beg for extra break time. After meeting with this depressed and over-stressed student who refused the break he was offered, I realized that there were probably more of him out there. And there were. Next class, I asked students to share what they were struggling with in the class and what they felt they needed to succeed. At the top of all the Jeremiahs’ lists was an aching need for more social time and making friends and feeling socially supported.
Madonna [with Elizabeth echoing]: Through that session, I came to realize Jeremiah was not the exception that semester;
Madonna [with Heidi and Eizabeth echoing]: he was the rule.
Elizabeth: Of course, I also longed for support in my isolation. My “working from home” became my “living from work,” and both my mind and body had suffered because of it.
Elizabeth [with Madonna echoing]: I was stressed. I was overwhelmed.
Elizabeth: Like many women in the workforce, I was caring for everyone else but myself. It’s hard to pour from an empty glass,
Elizabeth [with Heidi echoing]: but that is exactly what I was doing. I didn’t know how to filter through all the needs around me.
Heidi: It felt like all my personal and professional commitments were all mixed together. Like I was trying to carry sand in my cupped hands—no matter how desperately I tried to keep something from slipping between my fingers,
Heidi [with Madonna echoing]: I could not carry it all.
Heidi [with Madonna and Elizabeth echoing]: In fact, I was Jeremiah. We were all Jeremiah.
Madonna: This became glaringly obvious for each of us when. . . my vision became blurry as I began making plans to live out of my car, put my mother in a nursing home for her care, watched my daughter cry daily as her fear of failing caused an ulcer to flare, wondered where the needed cash was going to come from. . .
Elizabeth: my students began sharing their fear and anxiety induced by the pandemic, and I felt unqualified to help because I, too, was struggling with similar fears; I noticed that my usually cheerful husband was starting to be affected by the stress that was continuously radiating from me; I couldn’t visit my immunocompromised mother but desperately longed to give her a hug. . .
Heidi: my husband and I noticed that our son’s play themes suddenly turned to being sick, ambulances, emergency rooms, and death—reflections of our own fears; when I found myself sobbing for a friend who had lost her father to Covid and having to recover myself for my Zoom class; when I realized I was pinballing between toddler and student needs. . .
Heidi [with Elizabeth echoing]: without end.
Elizabeth [with Heidi echoing]: And yet, I persisted.
Elizabeth: I learned how resourceful I could be. I learned how to adapt the hallmarks of my pedagogy, the bits and pieces that make me who I am as an instructor. I was Zooming, chatting, emailing with students—all while maintaining the grades in my own courses. And now that I have had time to catch my breath and reflect on my priority of caring for my students—for my Jeremiahs, I realized that I must extend that care to myself. And that care was not going to happen if I didn’t. . .
Elizabeth [with Madonna echoing]: stick to professional AND personal boundaries.
Madonna [with Elizabeth echoing]: As teachers, we are often told we need to be flexible with students and compassionate with students.
Madonna: But before the pandemic, there was not enough discussion about being flexible and compassionate with ourselves. The pandemic has forced a much-needed conversation about self-care. However, because of all our other responsibilities, we struggled to find space to practice it.
Madonna [with Elizabeth echoing]: The time has come to extend to ourselves the same courtesies that we extend to our students.
Madonna: This is how we practice self-care:
Madonna [with Heidi echoing]: by setting boundaries that create the space we need to take care of ourselves.
Heidi: We create emotional boundaries by connecting students with counselors, tutors, and other supports when they need them rather than trying to serve all these roles. We create temporal boundaries by allowing emails sent after the workday to go unopened and by reclaiming our weekend time. We create physical boundaries by designating the places where we will work, whether that is our office or the bedroom desk. . .
Heidi [with Madonna echoing]: or the coffee shop,
Madonna: so that we can walk away from work when the work day should end.
Elizabeth [with Madonna echoing]: Only then. . .
Elizabeth: can we fill our cup mentally, physically, and emotionally so that we can better help our students. . .
Elizabeth [with Heidi echoing]: by pouring from a full glass as opposed to an empty one.
Heidi [with Elizabeth and Madonna echoing]: In order to be better teachers,
Heidi [with Madonna echoing]: we NEED to take care of ourselves.
Elizabeth and Madonna [with Heidi emphasizing]: And we are not sorry for that.
Bio
Madonna Kemp is an English Instructor at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Chattanooga State Community College, as well as a Graduate Student Instructor and PhD Candidate in Rhetoric and Composition at Middle Tennessee State University.
Heidi Blaisdell is an Associate Professor of English and Writing Support at Nashville State Community College and a PhD Candidate in Rhetoric, Composition, and Pedagogy at Middle Tennessee State University.
Elizabeth McGhee Williams is a Graduate Student Instructor and PhD Candidate studying Rhetoric, Composition, and Pedagogy at Middle Tennessee State University, as well as a Program Assistant for General Education English at MTSU.