Social distancing is a pushy teaching partner. Its sudden demand that Cal State Fullerton faculty members embrace teaching courses entirely online has students and instructors stressed.
Restructuring classes, learning new technology, keeping up with grading, connecting with students in transition, and now, doing it all while working remotely has Titans asking one another “Are you taking care of yourself?”
Portia Jackson Preston, assistant professor of public health at Cal State Fullerton, immediately reached out to her network while she and other faculty members transitioned to the world of teaching online.
The expert and host of the fall TEDx Talk “The Missing Ingredient in Self-Care” interviewed health care and public health professionals and jumped on social media to help parents juggling responsibilities.
“These include increased demands to work (for frontline responders), having to work from home while managing their children’s care (who may or may not be doing schoolwork from home), or navigating a reduction in expected hours or the inability to work at all,” she said. “I could not, in good conscience, face my students in my classroom (well, online) on that Monday without acknowledging that they have higher priorities at the moment than my coursework.
On LinkedIn, Jackson Preston’s posts include an article on self-care resources for parents and caregivers of children, and a video Q&A with an epidemiologist and a community of parents. Her “10 Self-Care Tips for Unprecedented Times” is posted on the CSUF News Center.
“There are compounding secondary issues that arise when an entire society faces the realities of fighting a global pandemic,” Jackson Preston said. “This is unprecedented, and my students, most of whom are the first in their families to attend college, are doing their best to face this with the bravery, resilience and grit they have demonstrated all of their lives.”
Cal State Fullerton is looking for stories from our campus community about being a witness to history. Contact Senior Director of Digital Media Michael Mahi at mimahi@fullerton.edu.
