key: cord-0061140-mlzm50jk authors: Persky, Julia title: Higher Education and the Ethic of Care: Finding a Way Forward During a Global Pandemic date: 2021-03-24 journal: Cult Stud Crit Methodol DOI: 10.1177/15327086211002776 sha: 78884c5229b7f7de93000caad3a770fea21d1c4b doc_id: 61140 cord_uid: mlzm50jk At the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, before we had a chance to acclimate to our world turned upside-down, I was genuinely confounded by the inflexibility of some professors to help students. After all, we had been offered the grace of an extension on tenure-track requirements, and afforded the opportunity, and relative safety, of working from home. How was it possible then, to not understand that students, too, might need grace? And how could anyone be OK with choosing not to help? Far from traditional research questions, my wonderings provoked lively conversations with colleagues, and a lens through which to consider my own positionality and difficulties in dealing with the challenges posed by the pandemic. Framed by Nel Noddings’ Ethic of Care, and through poetic inquiry, this article presents a personal response to teaching in an Educator Preparation Program during a global pandemic. I can almost smell the sulfur and brimstone burning in the surrealistic hellscape that has been the year, 2020. Those first reports of the coronavirus in the United States feel like a lifetime ago, and only yesterday. It didn't take long for media outlets to question what a global pandemic would mean for Higher Education, for tenure-track faculty, for staff, for students who lived in campus housing, for sports, for academics. Moving the entire University online meant many days where even finding time to take a breath was a challenge. Once-a-month faculty meetings turned into weekly Zoom meetings, as we worked to keep our Educator Preparation Program coordinated and running smoothly, across multiple campus locations. On top of all the other disruptions and complications, we had student teachers in the field for clinical teaching required by the state, in addition to students enrolled in courses that required classroom observation hours. It took weeks to receive information from the Texas Education Agency as acceptable means of meeting state requirements shifted repeatedly. Even with an extra week of spring break, there was no way to anticipate, or prepare for, the challenges we would face in serving our students. By the time we resumed classes, many of our students were already faced with staggering, life-altering, consequences of the coronavirus, including job loss or furlough, work from home, homeschooling, daycare closures, and food scarcity. It was no surprise when emails requesting deadline extensions or assistance with assignments due to lack of internet access or technology began rolling in. I was surprised, however, when we began to receive emails from campus administration-President, Provost, Dean, Department Chair-requesting that we please be flexible with students, help them, support them any way possible. Weren't we already doing that? I wondered. Yet, over and over we received those emails, until finally it was addressed in one of our department faculty meetings. Apparently, there were some faculty members who were less inclined than others, to work with students in a flexible manner. I found this extremely frustrating; in part because it wasn't fair to students, and in part because it made more work for others, and we were all already stretched thin. During a phone conversation with a colleague, I expressed my dismay, explained that in some other department or program, maybe it was, to some degree, understandable-but in our department? "How is it OK?" I asked her. "How is it OK to not help?! To not care?! We're TEACHERS! Every single one of us are teachers. We're supposed to be the caregivers. How can we expect our 1002776C SCXXX10.1177/15327086211002776Cultural Studies ↔ Critical MethodologiesPersky At the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, before we had a chance to acclimate to our world turned upside-down, I was genuinely confounded by the inflexibility of some professors to help students. After all, we had been offered the grace of an extension on tenure-track requirements, and afforded the opportunity, and relative safety, of working from home. How was it possible then, to not understand that students, too, might need grace? And how could anyone be OK with choosing not to help? Far from traditional research questions, my wonderings provoked lively conversations with colleagues, and a lens through which to consider my own positionality and difficulties in dealing with the challenges posed by the pandemic. Framed by Nel Noddings' Ethic of Care, this article presents a personal response to teaching during a global pandemic. Noddings (2005) established the Ethic of Care as foundational to human morality. At its most basic, the care ethic is a needs-and response-based ethic, dependent upon a relationship between at least two people, the carer and the recipient of care, or cared-for. Unlike other ethics theories, the Ethic of Care rejects the principle of universality, as caring actions are based on the needs of a unique person within the context of unique circumstances. For this project, poetic inquiry served as method of analysis. Poetic inquiry made room for poems ". . . crafted as project analysis, and/or poems that are part of or constitute an entire research project" (Faulkner, 2016, p. 20) . Poetic inquiry lent itself well to this article due to poetry's evocative use of language that engages the cognitive and the sensory (Faulkner, 2016; Leavy, 2015; Richardson, 1997 ). Thus, I was able to adapt stories my students shared as representative of their experiences, but also, to simultaneously wind and unwind their stories with my own, as I too, grappled with interpreting and understanding (Brady, 2004) personal experiences related to teaching in a global pandemic, over the past year. When the decision was made to move most of our courses online for the fall, work commenced on the redesign of faceto-face courses for online instruction. For one course alone, six of us collaborated, throughout the summer, to make the course engaging, to ensure the assignments were of high quality, with rigor appropriate for the content, and to align activities with the Student Learning Outcomes. We critiqued and refined, and refined, and refined. And still, once the fall semester began, we were inundated with challenges. Our Educator Preparation Program (EPP) is offered on four campuses, the main campus, and three Extended University locations, so courses are aligned across campuses to ensure students receive the same standard of learning no matter which campus they attend. However, the four programs are located in areas with vastly different student demographics: two rural campuses, one suburban campus, and one urban campus. The students in each location have varying degrees of access to resources. Based on emails I received from a large number of students, I knew there would be no single path forward for us all-every student would need support in ways that met their unique circumstances, what worked for one would not work for all (Noddings, 2012) , and what worked on one campus would not work across all of our locations. In spite of all our planning, we were, in many ways, on our own. I would have to be involved with each student personally, ascertain their need and devise a plan with them, that enabled them to achieve success in their courses while also attending to the more immediate needs of home and family (Noddings, 2005 (Noddings, , 2012 . Although I tried, there was just no way I could have my students complete the assignments in the same ways as students at other locations, as the majority of them did not have reliable internet access, and many of them did not have personal devices other than their phones, on which to complete coursework. The challenges my students faced could not be mitigated via flashy new tech gizmos, or digital media, or technology at all, really. They were challenges that required critical thinking and problem solving, challenges that required personal investment of time, energy, and care (Noddings, 2012) , and there isn't an app for that. For my students, the choices and accommodations made to support them not only made a difference in how they experienced school (Nieto & Bode, 2008) , for some of them, it meant the difference in whether they continued their degree program or dropped out of school. The Ethic of Care meant finding a way for them to stay on track, finding ways to ensure, as much as possible, an equal opportunity of outcomes, it meant doing no harm academically (Noddings, 2012) . Please share - "My Godmother had COVID, and I've been out of town so I could be with her before she died." "My twins were exposed to COVID at their daycare. I'm home with them for the next two weeks. I'll do my best to keep up and let you know If I get sick." "My school, where I work, called me tonight, to tell me -I've been directly exposed to COVID, by a student in the class. I began this article with a personal reflection regarding my experience as a faculty member, in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, and the realization that there was no way to plan for many of the situations that have presented themselves over the course of the last year. Indeed, no amount of planning could have prepared us for the upheaval and trauma that many of our students, faculty, and staff have endured. As an academic advisor, field supervisor, and assistant professor, my path through the uncertainty and chaos has been the Ethic of Care (Noddings, 2012) . Engaging with students individually enabled me to provide meaningful and effective support based on each unique circumstance, and poetry provided the space to feel, and to cope with our collective pain. The Spring 2021 semester is upon us, and we are all weary. As COVID-19 continues to ravage the globe, and continued uncertainty looms on the horizon, my hope is we might each be reminded that we all need help sometimes, and lead with care. In defense of the sensual: Meaning construction in ethnography and poetics Poetry as method: Reporting research through verse Method meets art: Arts-based research practice Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education The challenge to care in schools: An alternative approach to education Philosophy of education Fields of play Thank you, Dr. Lincoln, for your unwavering encouragement and support. The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Julia Persky https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7102-4777 Julia Persky (PhD, Texas A&M University, 2018) is Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Texas A&M University-Commerce. Previously, she worked as an elementary school teacher in Texas public schools. Her research interests include qualitative research methodologies, diversity and equity in education, education for social justice, early childhood education, and curriculum theory.