Can we have class outside? This question raises issues about the conditions in which we teach and learn, as well as about the power relations of the classroom. This Final Thought makes a case for surrendering to the question. Can we learn to love it? Can we learn, even, to begin asking it to the people who learn with us in our courses?

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This essay challenges two assumptions in commentary on teaching and learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) that the compassionate teaching strategies used to help students learn amid the pandemic inherently undercut academic standards and (2) that these teaching strategies weren’t previously needed, during the so-called “normal time” that preceded the pandemic. By contrast, this essay argues that educators have and will always teach students whose learning is disrupted by trauma, loss, and grief.

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What can birdwatching teach us about teaching? This essay recounts how, by learning to watch and identify birds, one educator developed more expansive senses of visual, experiential, and social teaching and learning.

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The use, purpose, and meaning of grades was among the troubled transitions of the spring quarter, 2020, at the University of Denver. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many universities decided, as DU did, to offer a pass / fail option. This troubled transition might prompt a deeper consideration of grades, in order to promote more meaningful, authentic, equitable, and just teaching and learning in college classrooms.

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