I’m seeing more and more incredibly violating requirements for students to put themselves and their private environment (in some cases a 360° view) on display for the teacher and it’s horrifying.

The spreading expectation that all students are inherently untrustworthy and

1/

need their bodies and environments monitored to the tiniest degree in order to prove they’re not cheating is so incredibly harmful, not to mention ableist and classist.

It also proves they don’t care if the student is actually learning.

2/

It’s making me think back to my last few years at University when I took a lot of online classes.

All but one of them were completely online. The one exception required in-person tests.

None of them required me to be on-camera, ever.

None of them required me to prove I was

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alone or not moving my eyes off the screen.

I even took a few tests in a crowded cafe because I needed the background stimulation for my ADHD brain that day.

Many times I was forced to study in the cafe until it closed late at night bc my asshole neighbors would shake my

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my walls and ceiling with their live music.

What would teachers have done if I’d been forced to try and “learn” and test in that environment and couldn’t escape to a cafe because of a pandemic? Would they have failed me because there was excessive noise in my apartment +

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or bc I kept startling from the noise or instinctively looking at the ceiling?...

Anyway despite those neighbors and other life challenges, I learned more from those remote classes than I did from most of my in-person ones, in part because I was in control of my environment

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(and could keep it private), could make my own schedule, and because I could relax, knowing I wasn’t being watched by my professor or other students.

(I had to drop one in-person class because a male student wouldn’t leave me alone and the professor wouldn’t do anything. +

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I had to petition to take one more online class because I’d already reached the limit for my hybrid program. They approved me fortunately.)

I feel like maybe when this all started going down, administrators should’ve started looking at existing remote and hybrid programs to

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see what worked (or not), and learn about flexibility—some students would feel safe and/or *want* to share their environment while others wouldn’t, and it’s ok to give them a choice.

Maybe they should’ve also been seeking input from students who’ve successfully navigated

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those types of programs and students who’ve needed accessibility accommodations for studies, online or not.

Maybe they should remember that learning is hard enough when we’re *just* dealing with the “usual” life challenges and consider the extraordinary challenges of just

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existing during a pandemic—one that is personally affecting many students—let alone trying to *learn* during a pandemic, and teach with compassion and grace.

I don’t know; just a thought I had.

11/end