Chapter 12: Pushing Boundaries and Balance: Finding Humanity in Pandemic Pedagogy

Teaching and learning since March 2020—a prolonged period of pandemic pedagogy—has been a case study in producing and performing beyond our resources and in holding each other up even as we feel like collapsing.

This collective perspective, collated from nine academic mothers (we understand the terms “mothers” and “mamas” as inclusive and encompassing to all who identify as mothers parenting a child including those who are non-cisgender, non-binary, or have gender identities other than cis-woman), takes account of the virtual pivot in response to COVID-19, which led to sweeping changes to pedagogical practices. This narrative centers on the abrupt collision between our work and personal lives—an intrusion felt by all—though perhaps most by faculty, staff, and students whose identities and lives are least represented by the systems that structure academia. We contend that the practices devised within this group, even if developed from an unexpected (and unwelcome) disruption, are critical to examine. Through the narratives presented below, we argue for a pedagogy rooted in radical feminist flexibility—”a flexibility that not only acknowledges the interrelational entanglement of professional and private life … [but also] holds space for empathy, kindness, and mutual support and facilitates working around simultaneously occurring scholarly and [personal] responsibilities” (Motherscholar Collective et al. 2021, 4). Without such pedagogy, higher education will never make good on its promise to deliver high quality education to all.