Teacher, Scholar, Human: A Day in the Life of COVID-19

Authors

Samantha Allen Wright, William Penn UniversityFollow

Abstract

“Day in the Life of COVID-19” is a creative and academic piece exploring the personal, pedagogical, and theoretical implications of COVID-19 from my perspective as a scholar and a teacher. I specialize in 20th century American literature and the medical humanities, and much of my work focuses on how people record stories about epidemic illness—a topic which I never expected to be so relevant in my everyday life. As a professor, I work at a small liberal arts college in the rural Midwest. I currently teach hybrid classes (with students in-person and on Zoom), which presents a number of challenges and opportunities for pedagogical reflection. In this piece, I record an hour-by-hour account of what the average Monday looks like for me, including details of daily temperature checks, giving presentations on proper mask wearing to students, and trying to lesson plan in a way that reaches both in-person and remote learning students simultaneously. I also utilize my own scholarship into how people respond to epidemic disease as a way to reflect on the complex way history, public medicine, and pedagogy intersect in the classroom.

Recommended Citation

Allen Wright, Samantha (2021) "Teacher, Scholar, Human: A Day in the Life of COVID-19," Survive & Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine: Vol. 6: Iss. 1, Article 25.
Available at: https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/survive_thrive/vol6/iss1/25