Fall instructors in the US: get ready for your students to be dealing with major crises. A sampling of what my summer students have been going through (1/5):

- Losing housing
- Trying to find housing for unhoused family members
- Working extra hours/jobs to support family

- Working in unsafe conditions w/o PPE
- Taking care of family members/roommates with COVID
- Getting sick and fearing it's COVID
- Getting COVID
- Mourning deaths of friends/family/loved ones
- Tension/harassment/abuse at home
- Abusive partners/exes
- Threatened w/ deportation

These things have always been challenges for our students (if we take COVID as major illness). But the proportion of students dealing with them is MUCH greater than usual. And these are only the things students told me about directly. Who knows what was left undisclosed.

And this on TOP of remote learning difficulties. Examples from my students:

- Laptop breaks, trying to keep up with only a phone
- Only having one laptop shared among 2-4 people
- Unreliable internet
- Isolation impacting mental health
- Hard to manage time & adapt to platforms

Design/adjust your courses with this in mind. Be flexible to the Nth degree. Make accommodations the rule, not the exception. Lower your expectations.

Above all, be kind to your students and kind to yourselves.

I need to add: this situation won't just continue in Fall, it will worsen.

When schools open despite surging COVID cases, when millions get evicted, as economic impacts deepen, as benefits are cut, and when the election brings whatever it will bring... the worst is yet to come.

Instructors should do what we can with the power we have. But our institutions have much more power than we do as individuals. Let's remember who has the power to prevent these situations and protect their constituents. Let's remember who refuses to put people over profit.