Looking For The Hidden Footprint of The Covid Pandemic In The Classroom

Author and professor Zadie Smith writes poignantly about life during the COVID-19 crisis in her new book of essays, “Intimations.” In one essay “A Hovering Young Man,” she encounters a young person working at her university.

Cy-the-IT-Guy accosts me (usually from behind) as I walk through the square, with his inimitable energy, slightly exophthalmic, puggish eyes, and irregularly coiled, unpredictable Afro, so like my own. The last time I saw him he was on a hoverboard. He appeared suddenly, speaking in his runaway manner, with as little preamble as he had manifested physically. If I didn’t look down he appeared to be levitating by my side, a twenty-first-century daemon, or a surveillance officer, sent from some NYU central authority to shadow me as I walked.

But in fact everything has a style — and the same amount of it, even if we value or interpret each iteration differently.

The style of Cy was youthful exuberance, it was a kind of giddy joy so irrepressible.

The enviable style of the young is little protection against catastrophe.

Long before this crisis they were living with little hope of institutional or structural support, contending with perilous futures, untenable debt, fear. When, in the classroom, they insist on their personal styles, in a manner all too easy to find obnoxious — and causing the predictable generational friction — I have to remind myself to remember this: their style is all they have. They are insisting on their existence in a vacuum.

A woman in her forties has lived long enough to see the dreams of childhood — hoverboards! — appear in the streets.

But the young man in his twenties is still in peak dreaming season: a thrilling time, an insecure time, even at the best of times. It should be a season full of possibility. Economic, romantic, technological, political, existential possibility. Yes, among all the various relativities to be considered, age is one that can’t be parsed. The style of Cy — the style of all young people — now radically interrupted.

What is it like to have always seen, in your mind’s eye, apocalypse in the streets of New York, and then one day walk out into those streets and find — just as it is in your personal hellscape — that they are now desolate, empty and silent?

This portrayal of the impact of the pandemic on young people and on the author herself has stayed with me as I have endeavored to teach such a group of young people in a Masters program in Organizational Psychology. You might say that it even haunts me.

I have searched in vain for the footprints of the Covid pandemic amongst this group. In the end, I have realized that there are indeed footprints, but they are hidden. Hidden from me and perhaps hidden from them as well.

The students can speak about the benefits or deficiencies of being on Zoom. There are frustrations voiced about going to visit family in other countries during breaks — figuring out airline logistics and quarantine rules in both coming and going destinations.

What there has not been are discussions about the impact of the Covid pandemic on their development as young adults. What there has not been are references that go beyond descriptions that any member of society could use such as: depression, momentary breakdowns.

Even as they strive for greater powers of understanding and articulation in a program such as the one they are in, there seems to be a dearth of language that relates their experience to the pandemic. After all, what do they have to compare it to. This is their first time at their given age, in this kind of a program, at this particular point in their life. They cannot say, “the last time I was twenty-three, things were much different.”

Even as a professor, it is difficult to know to what I can attribute specific phenomena in the classroom. Is it the usual lack of preparation, the usual balancing of multiple priorities, the usual grappling with identity issues at a new development point in their life? Or is it something much deeper, more amorphous?

Having read a good deal of literature on the overall impact of the pandemic and specifically its impact on the lives of younger people and become aware of issues such as depression and even suicidal ideation, it is possible to conclude that something is afoot. There is a cloud that is passing over the lives of young people.

Zadie Smith hints that something happened in the progression of development of young people. Professor of Psychology, Michael Mascolo, says that “development happens through our relationship with others and the world and that in this development, we are each other’s teachers.” What is the impact on this development of young people due to multiple quarantines, isolation and lack of opportunities for association in school and community? Are we seeing the footprints of this in today’s classroom?

It occurs to me that what is missing may be a specific language that can give voice to the unique situation that young people are in. Like the canary in the coal mine that can only tweet or die, today’s students can only issue some inchoate growl or lapse into depression or heightened anxiety. Just as the poor canary cannot say, “Excuse me, but I think there has been a sudden deterioration in the air in here,” they have neither the perspective nor eloquence to put into language their unique experience.

Such a language would help students process emotionally their current experience, e.g. grief, anger, anguish. (Smitsman, 2021)

I wonder if there could be such a language. There needs to be a way to put their experience into words and if no current words exist, then to develop the language that helps here.

Such a language would have to accomplish three things.

First

The language has to cover the predicament that young people find themselves in. What language can describe their current experience? Here I am speaking of the unique demands that life is placing on them perhaps unlike any previous experience. Maybe it is a language of metaphor, stories or pictures.

Second

The language has to cover their needs — individual and collective. What are they really asking for at this point in their life as they attempt to make their way under the cloud of Covid? What would be helpful? How can we assist them beyond having some general compassion and empathy which certainly will be of value?

Third

Lastly, is the ability and willingness for each person to speak in the new language. There also needs to be places to have the conversation in this new language — amongst themselves and with those of us who are responsible for teaching them.

Though this task may not be easy, it may help to uncover the hidden footprints of Covid in their student experience and in their life.

Are you aware of examples of useful languaging? Please let me know.

Footnote: Once we respond to this challenge, we can again turn our attention to the even greater footprint that exists in their life and, in fact, all of our lives which is the impact of climate change. That, however, is for another essay.