Falling / Flying
Dan Frank, Guest Editor
Daniel Frank teaches multimedia and technical writing at UC Santa Barbara. Dan’s research interests include game-based pedagogy, virtual text-spaces, passionate affinity spaces, and connected learning. As a gamer and a performer, Dan is continually interested in helping students find their own passion as they learn to create, play, and communicate research, argumentation, and writing across genres.
When I was working through my PhD program, in every class session I had with my professor, Victor Vitanza, he would lean back in his chair, smile, and ask, infuriatingly, “What wants to be said?” And we would sit there in the silence, until someone put something forward, which would inspire someone else’s idea, which would then get us opening our books and unpacking this or that. What was to be taught about the passive construction of that question—not “what do you have to say” but “what wants to be said”—was that ideas come from more than single minds working to create. Ideas come out of shared spaces, are effected collaboratively, speaking to and from the moment.
I bring this all up because when COVID struck and all classes suddenly were halted and thrown to the digital, online winds, we teachers found ourselves in a singular time and space: messy, ad hoc, soaked through with confusion and panic. As I worked to find a way to translate my plans to online modes and figure out how to land the conclusion of this class with any form of cohesion and grace, I listened to the chorus of concern and questions from my students, I listened to my colleagues send out emails, making decisions, asking and answering questions, quickly compiling lists of ideas and resources. I knew from day one of all this that this was a moment that was going to be talked about. This was a moment that wanted to speak.
We had more than the rug pulled out from under us. We had the floor pulled out from under us, too. We were pulled out of our classroom space and forced to reckon with the extent to which our understanding of the teaching process was codified within the physical space of the four classroom walls. We fell, and found that we had to build our spaces all over again, while falling, starting from scratch. And in doing so, I think we were forced to be in a position to reevaluate our goals, priorities, methods, and values.
In considering a dislocated teaching, we had to take a step back and think again about, for perhaps the first time in a long time, what it means to teach and what we can bring to our students.
Our vision for this pedagogy supplement is to explore what wants to be said from this singular moment in our careers. We wanted this journal issue to lead with heart, to reflect on this exigent situation, and to showcase and celebrate the incredible work that teachers brought to this exigency as response. We wanted to create an issue that was accessible, useful, and inspiring, celebrating what is now past and guiding as we look forward. Please enjoy, and let us know what you think.
~ D