Yellowbelle Duaqui
MY NEW NORMAL AS A COLLEGE LECTURER Just like fellow teachers all over the Philippines and the world today, my new normal is sitting in front of my computer to conduct online classes. I’ve heard of newly coined phrases on social media like #zoomfail or #zoomfatigue and I know how that happens, and how that feels too, as I try to carry out my teaching duties each day. Doing remote teaching comes with challenges – from student resistance (sometimes even viewing teachers and schools as their antagonists in this pandemic) down to power outages and technical issues (i.e. poor Internet connection, costly Internet plan upgrades, among others). Most importantly, the socio-psychological and emotional impact of hearing people die of corona virus each day -- with some mortalities hitting very close to home – makes teaching difficult during a bleak period like this global pandemic. After all, teaching, just like singing or acting, is a performance. Doing it when your heart is too heavy with sadness, fear and anxiety can be too taxing. But we must soldier on. There are students who want to move forward with life by doing their
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coursework and to somehow take control of their academic lives in these uncertain times. Even teachers try to cope by working remotely in order to get some semblance of normalcy in their daily lives. As they juggle multiple tasks inside the home, both students and teachers feel a new level of stress they have never experienced before. The blurring of home and study/work boundaries has resulted to a psychological toll on working professionals who are also moms and dads with babies or toddlers at home. This is a situation that many people all over the world face nowadays, in addition to caring
for sick family members. Even with these daily difficulties, I know that I am lucky to be alive and to be able to keep my job in this pandemic. Many of our kababayans at home and all over the world have lost their jobs to mass layoffs due to the closure of their companies brought about by the global economic meltdown produced by the pandemic. Some of the worst-hit industries are the airline, hotel and recreation, banking and finance, and entertainment industries. Small- and medium-sized businesses are also closing shop, while some are forced to
JULY - AUGUST 2020
