(Performing) Connection in the Classroom During COVID-19: An A/r/tographic Auto-Ethnodrama on Virtual Synchronous Education

• In Event: Reimagining Arts Integration Course Content and Instruction: A/r/tography in Search of Equity and Belonging

Abstract

This article utilizes autobiographic ethnodrama to inquire into and explore the challenges of cultivating connection in synchronous virtual education spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this piece, the author pulls upon her expertise as an artist-researcher-teacher to process, reflect upon, and script her personal experiences of university education and of the experiences of her undergraduate students, stylistically mirroring the performative and curated realities of synchronous, virtual education.

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Setting: Fall 2020. The school year, or some version of it, is getting ready to begin.

(Lights up on MORGAN, an artist-teacher-researcher, as she anxiously checks the watch secured on her wrist. She is seated in a well-worn desk chair in a home office space in a small town in the Midwest, where she recently relocated to begin her first year as a doctoral student in the Teacher Education department. However, making the move may not have mattered; the program is completely virtual due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. This year’s cohort of doctoral students at Zoom University, 21 students to be exact, are currently scattered across six countries and time zones, as well as various states. So, they are all together, apart, which makes cultivating connection challenging and all the more necessary. And if finding connection as a doctoral student in teacher education is challenging, MORGAN imagines, then it must be even more so for undergraduate students.

MORGAN checks her watch again and then quickly captures her computer mouse, navigating to the Zoom meeting login page for the first day of orientation. She takes a deep inhale.)

MORGAN
How on earth does a first-year doctoral student navigate being a student and teacher online during a global pandemic?

(MORGAN exhales.)

Let's see if we can find out.

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As both a doctoral student and teacher within the teacher education department at her university, the author observes her experiences of impacts of the global trauma of the pandemic on individuals’ needs and recognizes a need for nourishing safe connections and structuring social supports. In doing so, the author contributes to the conversation regarding the growing need for trauma-informed education spaces, and her belief that the arts are an integral component of equitable, student-centered spaces.

Author

• Brittany M. Brewer, Michigan State University