Grading, and teaching during a pandemic

Really, the title of this blog should revert back to its old title, since all I'm talking about these days is teaching. I spend a fair amount of my time not teaching--but I'm not doing much of anything else, either.

So far, where I am, the novel corona virus hasn't had a huge impact. Where my students are, however, is an entirely different story. I truly simply cannot imagine what their lives are like--and a lot of them were struggling to keep on top of the class anyway.

Still, I haven't heard from most of them about their graded essays--though one of the ones who didn't revise and didn't fix plagiarism did get in touch with me. I'll meet with him tomorrow. And Working Dad continues to plagiarize his homework--where he understands the question at all, which he often doesn't. And yet he seems to understand the articles he reads, so I don't understand what's going on there, unless he's just so anxious about being "tested" that he freezes up.

One student has been taking quizzes but doing nothing else.

And speaking of the quizzes, I get the absolute weirdest answers to what I think are very clear and simple questions--partly, I think, because they can't believe the answer is so easy and obvious.

But I also think there's a real factor here of what happens to our ability to read and absorb when we're anxious--and especially to read and absorb what's on a screen when we're anxious. And I can't really advise them to calm down because, as I said, I really can't imagine what they're going through.

Nevertheless, I got about 1/3 of the way through all the stuff I need to grade--some of it way overdue--and my own mind short-circuited. So I'm calling a halt today. I won't get much, if anything, done tomorrow, either, as I have to meet online with Working Dad and I Don't Need to Revise student 1, and by the time I finish with that, I may well be too rattled to do a damned thing--except engage in the kind of soothing behavior so many are turning to in these house-bound times and cook something. Which wouldn't be altogether a bad thing.