by Gina Merys, Director, Reinert Center
Over the last few years, and especially during the course of this academic year, we have found ourselves in the continuous challenge of pursuing the incredible joys and triumphs of teaching and learning within a reality that is profoundly filled with trauma, loss, tragedy, anxiety, and sorrow. We grapple with being accommodating to our students in as many ways possible while also ensuring authentic learning is still achievable. We work with individual students to find ways they can pass our courses, while also maintaining rigor and equity. We strive to be fully present to those around us who are most overwhelmed by all the pressures of life while we, too, face a tsunami of demands on our own time, intellect, and compassion.
Yet, when I look out my window, I see a quintessential spring day in St. Louis: 35 degrees Fahrenheit and light snow, students in shorts, trees and garden beds busting with flowers. This year, spring, and the Lenten season is an especially poignant reminder that one change can make a big difference.
Teaching is always a difficult endeavor, this year it is immeasurably so. We are engaging in incredible feats of the mind and spirit. The Reinert Center offers a list of resources as a support in all that we are facing, some of these resources are new, some newly relevant, in hope that something here might be the one change that can make a difference.
If you would like to talk to someone on the Reinert Center team about making a small change in your teaching or a change for an individual student, please fill out this form for a confidential teaching consultation.
The Notebook 