We are Zoomed

As I dash down the hallway holding my laptop out of reach of sticky little fingers, I think how I used to spend the ten minutes between 1pm and the tutorial start time of 1:10pm casually chatting to students about their weekends and answering assessment questions. A Parent

This ‘normal’ tutorial life feels like a distant memory. Three weeks into a pandemic lockdown, and tutorials now resemble a Brady Bunch collage. That’s if I can convince them to please turn their videos on. Otherwise I’m teaching rows and columns of broken TV monitors, a muted brick wall of grey non-responses. We’re not doomed, we’re Zoomed.

I shut my spare bedroom door behind me, grateful my toddlers can’t reach the handle. My heart aches for childcare, blissful childcare. As I plug my laptop into the charger and position my webcam, I realise my headphones are missing. I have three minutes before the tutorial begins. I see my email ping to let me know there are students waiting in the Zoom room.

Do I have time to look for my headphones or should I just start without them? I take the risk and go back out into the chaos of the living room, sneaking past children who are watching their fifteenth episode of Paw Patrol since lunchtime. I scramble through my handbag looking for my headphones.

‘Mummy! I want another rice cracker!’

I spot a half-chewed rice cracker sitting on a pile of Lego. I lob it in the child’s direction.

‘Not that one! That one’s slobbered on! Mummy! Can you put Bluey on instead!?’

‘Mummy has a class! They’re waiting for me right now! You know where the rice crackers are!’

"My younger child starts swiping at the TV, wailing because I’ve turned off Paw Patrol. I can sense a meltdown about to begin. Mine, not hers.

I fumble with the remote trying to find Bluey on the ABC iView app. ‘Not that episode! The one where they go to the dump! The other one! The other one!’ My younger child starts swiping at the TV, wailing because I’ve turned off Paw Patrol. I can sense a meltdown about to begin. Mine, not hers.

I take a deep breath. There are people far worse off than me. There are people sick, or with health conditions who are scared to get sick. There are people dying. I still have a job. Many aren’t as lucky as me. I can work from home. Sort of. I take a deep breath.

‘There, Bluey is on. Now, Mummy has a class starting. I am going to shut the door and I don’t want any interruptions. If you’re good for the next 1 hour and 50 minutes, Daddy will bring you home a Kinder egg from the supermarket’.

Daddy works for an essential business so lucky Daddy has to go to work. Grandma can’t help as we can’t risk her getting sick.

The children weigh up the bribe and shrug in acceptance, eyes glued to the TV. I bolt back into my semi-soundproof sanctuary and notice the bed is unmade. I spend the last 10 seconds I have hurriedly tidying it while kicking some toys out of view of the camera. I untangle my headphones while plugging them into my laptop and opening the Zoom app.

My tired, anxious reflection stares back at me, giving me half a second to run my fingers through my unbrushed hair before my students see me entering the Zoom classroom. I paste a smile on my face which feels more like a grimace.

One of my students has children wandering around in the background. She starts talking but I can’t hear her. ‘Turn your microphone on!’ I laugh. She facepalms and apologises that her kids are distracting. I tell her not to worry. We all know what each other is going through. ‘The show must go on’, I say. And the show does go on.