Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Feeling remote in a Zoom class


About half way through my second Zoomed German lesson, while someone was reading her essay aloud from from her 'shared screen', I absented myself from the virtual classroom. Took a bathroom break. Had a little walk around the house, still within hearing range of that confident German voice. Actually, I was pacing up and down, convincing myself not to drop out of class.

Weird really. I've loved learning that language for the past three years. Not that day.

There are five of us in this 'Intermediate German Continuing' class, which due to Covid has gone on line. The plan was that we'd 'share screen' - our own - and individually read our personal writing while the others followed along.. That's one of those clever things you can do on Zoom on a PC or Mac. But not on the iPad I was using. Feeling disadvantaged and just a tad left out, had a teeny, tiny sulk about that; a sulkette. No matter. My Zoomed face, in its Brady Bunch grid, wasn't revealing any emotion

At the start of the lesson, the first student couldn't work out how to 'share screen' on his Mac. We all watched patiently while he peered up close and personal into his computer screen. Ten minutes later the teacher was still calmly trying to help him. And we waited. Yes, I know. New learning medium. Covid. Crisis. Hundreds of thousands dying world wide. Donald Trump. Couldn't I have been a little more tolerant? Evidently not. The teacher in me would have moved it along and figured the problem out with the particular student later. Suppose it's not so easy in a virtual classroom though. Still, my face in its little square wasn't revealing my increasing irritation.

Confined like everyone else, I'd been hanging out for that two hour session. To spend the first ten or so minutes doing nothing was tedious. But it got worse. When the teacher finally displayed this student's sophisticated essay, I could barely understand it as he read with his to me, flawless accent. Seemed to be out of my league, advanced German. I took some comfort from everyone else saying, almost unanimously, that they'd only understood 'ein bisschen' - a little. My image on the screen didn't reveal my rising sense of inadequacy.

When I began learning German three years ago, we were all beginners. But gradually those beginners left for various reasons to be replaced by more advanced students. I'm the least experienced now, and despite recently gorging on three seasons of Babylon Berlin, that day, Deutsch was all a bit beyond me.

Floundering, hurting, I was back in the late 1960s in Year 9 mathematics struggling with quadratic equations, or some such. The oblivious teacher was at the front catering only for that row of mostly boys who liked maths; who seemed to get it. Think I managed a ten minute bathroom break during every one of that teacher's lessons. He always waved me off cheerfully. Memory suggests he didn't care. With 40 kids packed into the room, he seemed prepared to let some fall through the cracks. For the next couple of compulsory maths years, I treated maths with contempt. Barely passed. Hated every painful minute during which I was reminded of how stupid and lazy I was, not by the teachers, but by my own sense of failure and inadequacy.

I've no intention of dropping German. I love it too much. Recognising those primal feelings that betray me if I'm not careful, I got a grip and returned to the session. Of course, because I know now how to learn, I'll have done heaps of revision before my next class.

And a shout out to all those amazing teachers who've pulled off the most astounding feat during the last four weeks in getting all their classes on line. If you ever deserved a pay rise and some proper respect, it's now.

1 comment:

  1. Schön für dich! Bleibst du stark! Ich genieße Deutsch lernen, aber nur wenn ich kann es verstehen!

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