Writing the Pandemic: An Instructor's Reflections on a New Era in Education

Writing the Pandemic addresses the many challenges that writing instructors and students have faced since the arrival of COVID-19 and their ramifications for teaching and learning, including: Instructional Delivery - in-person, hybrid, and remote classes; Campus and Classroom Protocols - masking, distancing, and cleaning; Safety - quarantining, isolating, and reporting; and Justice - antiracism, political divides, and implications for education. The book is intended for an audience of first-year college composition teachers and other English and language arts instructors at the postsecondary and secondary levels who have experienced the seismic shifts in writing instruction and education more generally that have been necessitated by the pandemic. The author paints portraits of the pandemic experience that writing teachers and their students will relate to and offers practical learning material that can be used in writing courses. An original compilation of material on this theme, Writing the Pandemic includes reflections by a highly experienced writing instructor and his students together with ready-to-use assignments. It is written in a lively style by the author of English Composition Teacher's Guidebook, Tom Mulder, an award-winning instructor who teaches at Grand Rapids Community College in Michigan. With each chapter, the author offers selected notes blogged at intervals during critical incidents in the unfolding coronavirus as well as individual students' stories along with their photographs, both inside composition classrooms adapted for distanced learning and writing or working from home. He also presents questions for reflection and his own speculations about the future that are sure to stimulate readers' own thoughts about what has changed, and how much, as a result of the pandemic, and about what writing instruction will look like going forward.