Dr. Carmen's Corner

Spanish Chef José Andrés appears in the cover of the latest issue of  Time  for his efforts to help feed those in need (first after Hurricane Maria and now through the COVID-19 pandemic). Next to his picture, the headline "Apart. Not Alone" has been stuck in my head for capturing with three simple words the way I've been feeling through the beginning of our remote teaching journey. I'm very lucky that my first week went really well: 100% attendance and 0% technical issues. Students were happy to get back to class, get some sense of normalcy, see each other, work, and break their new routine for a while. Because of my own personal circumstance, my classes are a hybrid of synchronous and asynchronous teaching, which seems to make them comfortable, as they can work in some of the content at their own pace but also have direct contact and practice with me and the rest of their classmates. It was a little odd that things went so well and felt so “normal”, consider

Since writing has always been therapeutic for me, and I sure feel like I could use some therapy these days, I've decided to start a blog. This is mostly for myself, but seeing the amount of resources that people are sharing with this whole "going remote business", I thought I would leave it public in case someone would consider these posts useful in some way, even if it's just through being reminded that many others are having similar feelings, challenges, etc. during this odd situation. I'm not completely new to teaching online. I taught a hybrid Spanish class as a graduate student at UNC and a remote Medical Spanish course at A.T. Still University (Missouri) after I moved to Winston-Salem. However, the situation we are going through these days is a very different animal. Materials are having to be adapted quickly; decisions about the syllabi, assessment, and more are being made by instructors, coordinators, and administration; and then there's policy chan