Surviving, Learning, and Striving in the Times of Pandemic: Teaching With A Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of COVID-19 (JOTPY)

Cheryl Jiménez Frei,Shane Carlson

doi:10.1177/1550190620981031

Abstract

With the onset of COVID-19, spring 2020 proved difficult for teachers and students everywhere. But amid the challenges of online and hybrid education, incorporating A Journal of the Plague Year: a COVID-19 Archive (JOTPY) into classrooms provided students a unique and impactful learning experience, while also helping them process the anxieties and uncertainties of the pandemic. In this article, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (UWEC) Cheryl Jiménez Frei shares insights and best practices for teaching with JOTPY, and a model incorporating the archive across multidisciplinary courses to address archival silences. Beyond the university, JOTPY can be a valuable pedagogical tool for elementary, middle, and high-school teachers during the pandemic. To examine this, in the article’s second half, UWEC public history graduate student and high-school teacher for the Eau Claire Area School District Shane Carlson shares his reflections on contributing to the archive as a student, strategies bringing JOTPY into his own teaching, and the results of elementary teachers also doing so in rural Wisconsin.

Highlights

As is common with consequential historical moments, most of us likely have our COVID “flashbulb” memory: vividly recalling the moment we realized the risks of COVID-19, and how it would alter daily life in ways we never imagined
Many students did not have oral history experience, but running their first interview with family or friends was a good strategy to acclimate. The perspectives they collected paint a wide picture of COVID-19’s effects across communities in the Midwest: from farmers struggling with a pandemic-related breakdown in food supply chains, to interviewees frustrated by protests of safety measures
Students in a Spanish for Health Professions course will record, transcribe, and translate interviews with workers, while public history graduate students will process and digitally archive these materials for JOTPY. This multi-disciplinary project, directly inspired by incorporating JOTPY into our diverse classrooms and field work, provides innovative learning experiences across the humanities and sciences, and is one I hope may serve as a model for future projects documenting rural and often silenced voices, here at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (UWEC) and other universities in the Midwest

Summary

Introduction

As is common with consequential historical moments, most of us likely have our COVID “flashbulb” memory: vividly recalling the moment we realized the risks of COVID-19, and how it would alter daily life in ways we never imagined. After leaving campus for towns across Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and South Dakota, the students recorded oral histories and collected artifacts for JOTPY, documenting experiences of the pandemic in the rural Midwest (see Figures 1 and 2).

Results

Conclusion