He sets forth toward class. NOT?

Even though I have taught online classes for two decades, from back when DSL was a huge deal as many others were struggling with dial-up modems, there is one aspect of the real world classes that my ego enjoys: For a few minutes every class meeting, I am in the front and center of students.

A diva with the spotlight on me.

A sage on a stage.

Of course it is the ego talking.  Especially when I go about my Rodney Dangerfield life!

But, that ego thing was only a small aspect of what I enjoyed about the real world classroom.  A small one, but an awesome added benefit.

The big and real reason is that it was only through the real world classrooms that I made meaningful connect with students.  In the online world, it is mostly transactional.  Sure, even in the real world plenty of students might have merely clocked in and out; but then there are those who make all the difference in the life of a teacher.

Thus, as it got to the final phase of the term, every term, the inner feeling got larger and larger that I might never see most of the students again in any of my classes.  And rarely ever even on campus.  Maybe forever in life.

As the author of this essay noted:

For a few months, we are front and center in our students’ lives—or so we hope. They are the focus of our courses, our assignments, our examinations, our office hours, our meditations in the car ride home. We encourage them. We try to fill the gaps in their education. In some cases, we try to resolve the unique challenges that they pose to us (as well as to themselves), psychologically as well as academically. We modify our lesson plans and rework our syllabi. ...
And then it all comes to an end. Students leave, move on, transfer, graduate, and, quite often, we never see or hear from them again. And we are OK with that.
For us, the process starts over, and we soon find ourselves caught up in new stories, while the previous ones remain largely unresolved. ... We fill in the blanks about them based upon what we know (or think we know), and tell ourselves that their stories ended the way that we hoped.

That level of an emotional investment and return does not happen in the online environment.

But then when I view teaching and learning that way, it becomes evident that I am thinking it is all about me.  Even though I know well that my profession is not one bit about me, but is about students.  It is darn difficult to let go of the ego!

The novel coronavirus has pushed us into a virtual world.  It is not clear when exactly we will return to how things were.  The "old prof" in the poem by Oregon's own William Stafford seems completely out of step with the reality:

Old Prof
By William Stafford
He wants to go north. His life has become
observations about what others
 have said, and he wants to go north. Up there
far enough you might hear the world, not
what people say. Maybe a road will discover
those reasons that the real travelers had.
Sometimes he looks at the map above
Moose Jaw and thinks about silence up there.
Late at night he opens an atlas
and follows the last road, then hovers
at a ghost town, letting the snow have whatever
it wants. Silence extends farther
and farther, till dawn finds the same page
and nothing has moved all night, except
that his head has bowed and rested on his arms.
Rousing to get started, he has his coffee.
He sets forth toward class. Instead of the north,
he lets an aspirin whisper through his veins.

There is no "sets forth toward class."  Not for a while, at least.  Maybe never after one more year?