Teaching in a pandemic

Teaching “The World in Pandemic”

by Justin McDevitt, J.D., M.A. Asst. Director for Alumni Relations and Career Development Moreau College Initiative at Westville Correctional Facility and Instructor with Global Perspectives

Like so many other educational institutions, when Holy Cross College made the decision to move online in March due to the growing threat of COVID-19, most faculty had to accept that we would have to change the way we teach. Instead of standing at the head of their classes, we had to settle for the prospect of seeing our students’ faces on a screen for the next few months. I still remember the faces of my students the last time I saw them in person: worried, skeptical, resigned. Unlike most professors, however, I have not had the chance to see those faces since then. At all. It’s not because my class was canceled. It’s because my students are still in prison.

If you read the previous issue of Connections, you might remember that I’m part of an eff ort at Holy Cross called the Moreau College Initiative (MCI), a program that holds its classes at Westville Correctional Facility, about an hour west of South Bend. Our students at MCI are fully Holy Cross students and would hold their own in any classroom on the main campus. They are exceptionally bright and work incredibly hard, yet they naturally lose out on so much that makes the college experience memorable and impactful. Few have ever seen with their own eyes the main campus of the very college that will grant them their degree. Instead, faculty at Holy Cross College and the University of Notre Dame work to bring that education to them. Until we couldn’t.

Sadly, along with nursing homes and meat packing plants, the nation’s prisons and jails were among the most vulnerable places when the pandemic began to set in. And, since we aren’t able to off er the same level of technology that students have on main campus, our students in MCI have had to continue their college education without all the bells and whistles. Instead, they’ve been watching the lectures we record, leading discussions among themselves, completing the assignments they’ve been given, and corresponding with us through an approved account in the prison email system. All without leaving their unit. They’re doing their best under the circumstances, but I know we’d all like to return to “normal.”

Under normal circumstances, I always start my class by asking the same question: “What’s happened in the world since the last time we met?” They’d often talk about politics, the NFL season, some scientifi c breakthrough or tech advancement, or even the latest celebrity scandal. The news they watch on TV in the dorm is one of their only windows into the world outside the walls. In early March, though, there was only one thing on their mind. And, when

I last saw my students, I think they sensed what was coming with COVID-19 much better than I did. On my last day inside, one of my students looked out the window and quietly said, “If this thing gets in here...” His voice trailed off .

So, when things inevitably shut down – at the prison and at Holy Cross – I tried to think of how I could help them in any way I could. This is my fourth year teaching classes with MCI, and this work – and these students – have become increasingly special to me. In the end, I realized that, beyond praying for them, the only thing I can do is to off er them the best education I can in whatever form I’m able. And that gave me an idea.

In May, I was continually haunted by my memories of the students’ faces when we had talked about the coronavirus, and I wondered if the best thing I could give them wasn’t the knowledge to understand it – and to face it. And, so, as the semester drew to a close, I pitched my idea to our director. I would teach an interdisciplinary course that examined how society has confronted pandemics in the past and what we’ve learned – or haven’t learned – from them. She agreed, and “The World in Pandemic” was born.

My academic background is in law and political science, and those topics alone could fi ll a course like this. But I also wanted us to look at history, religion, economics, literature, science, and a whole host of related topics. The reality is that pandemics throughout human history have aff ected – and been aff ected by – all these areas, so I wanted the class to be as broad as possible to refl ect that. I also wanted to avoid simply teaching about historical pandemics and sifting through each one to see what they had to off er us. We would obviously look to the past, but I needed the class to feel like it was constantly moving forward and looking to the future. So, instead, I organized the course itself to follow the path of any given pandemic. The hope is that our students could use this version of a chronological approach to both understand their experience this far and to understand what comes next, both for them and the world.

To that end, we started with the basics of pandemic and infectious disease, including our own current knowledge of COVID-19. Then, we shifted to look for the root causes of infectious diseases and the pathways through which they can spread to pandemic level. In this part, we focused particular attention on the ways human behavior has actually contributed to the spread of disease, even as we’ve fought to conquer it. We then moved to studying responses to pandemics, both past and present, and spent time critically evaluating our own federal, state, and local responses to the current crisis. The students even held a debate over what could have been done better.

After the halfway point in the course, the students began to tackle a series of deeper questions, ones that often arise when we’ve done all we can do to respond to a pandemic and are simply waiting for it to pass: Where is God in this? What do we owe our neighbor? What’s a life worth? As the crisis recedes, we begin to take stock and look back on the ways our world is diff erent now and after previous pandemics, so our fi fth unit asks how pandemics change politics, the economy, culture, religion, and medicine. And, fi nally, when all is said and done, we try to understand what we’ve learned – or whether we’ve learned – from pandemics, and whether it will be enough to avoid another one in the future.

My hope has always been that our students would go from being passive bystanders at the mercy of the virus to becoming virtual experts who take control of their situation intellectually, if even for two hours at a time. So far, it seems to be working. The students seem to fi nd the material fascinating and engaging. How couldn’t they! They’ve had front row seats to both a new kind of class and the pandemic that inspired it. They’ve written papers about their early experience with the pandemic and about Albert Camus’s assertion in “The Plague” that pestilence itself is a sort of prison. And, most importantly, they’ve each kept a journal for answering prompts given them in the lessons and recording their own thoughts and observations throughout.

It should be no surprise that teaching in a prison is hard work. And teaching during a pandemic is a challenge at the best of times. But despite the eff ort and the challenges, I remain committed to my initial goal: to give our students the very best education I can. My hope is that, through the work they’ve put in and the knowledge they’ve gained, they’ll now at least have become the heroes of their own story. Or at least of this strange chapter – of the world in pandemic.