I attended a workshop on how to plan my now-to-be-fully-online spring course. Here's a text someone recommended. It has dance imagery. I can't leave that without comment, can I? IOW, I disagree with the author--dance imagery can't be stretched too far. 1/
https://wordpress.kpu.ca/tlcommons/pivots-pirouettes-and-piques-gracefully-managing-the-anxieties-of-remote-teaching-and-learning/

To get ready for my spring course, I will need not just a pivot or pirouette or piqué. They won't fill the time. I can't turn just once or halfway and then hope for applause. I need a choreography.

Best to find some solid inspiration to hold onto. 2/

How about the choreography in this iconic Kate Bush production. In this scenario, I'm Kate Bush. Obviously. I might be frazzled about this project, but I still have aspirations to look as accomplished as Bush does in a contemporary dance performance. 3/

She's got the unruly, uncut quarantine hair. The simple-t-shirt-and-roomy-pants combo so many of us now live and work in. She makes unusual explanatory gestures, the way we find ourselves making them in front of cameras. She moves barefoot on the floor beneath her. 4/

I'm envisioning myself in her position, lifted up in my sometimes tragic-looking endeavour by educational technologists. They stand solidly behind me, move with me, do their best to appear collected, in control. They go along even with the more awkward lifts I may propose. 5/

In consultations and workshops, professionally trained educational technologists spin us instructors around and upside down as they show us all the possible options. They make our heads spin. Using their practiced muscle, they release us gently back onto the ground. 6/

Many times that will work. With good templates, it can look beautiful, even when executed by inexperienced dancers like us. But we're dizzy. And we have to keep running up that road, running up that hill. We will fall. Or, get stuck between crowded, indistinguishable options. 7/

If we only could make a deal with God, we would be running up that hill with no problems. That's not a deal we can make, however. There will be problems. We hope these problems are not tearing us and our students asunder. 8/

Oh come on, students.
Oh come on, darlings.
Let me steal this moment from you now.
Oh come on angels,
Come on come on darlings,
Let's exchange the experience oh. 9/

Bonus: old screenshots of my favourite lifts from the video. Choreography by Diane Grey. Bush's dance partner is Michael Hervieu.10/ https://twitter.com/Katja_Thieme/status/1182874385301962754?s=20

Dedicating this thread to longtime Bush lovers @MaryAnnSaundrs and @LailaMFerreira. 11/