Thank God for the Fallow Time!

By: David Bressoud @dbressoud

David Bressoud is DeWitt Wallace Professor of Mathematics at Macalester College and Director of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences

AAAS is running a series of five online discussions of Talking about Leaving Revisited. The next, on STEM Learning Experiences and Their Consequences, will be held on August 18. Details at seachange.aaas.org/events.

This past spring educators across the spectrum were hit by the sudden shutdown of schools, colleges, and universities. There was an enormous collective effort to meet the challenge of switching instruction to online formats. While the results were far from ideal, there is a general sense that people did the best they could within the constraints that were suddenly imposed.

This summer, in anticipation of the coming academic year, is very different. There is more time to prepare, but also tremendous uncertainty about what we are preparing for and how it will all play out. Summer is usually the time to relax, catch up, and recharge for the challenges ahead. No one is doing much relaxing this summer. Anxiety levels are high.

The good news is that we are not alone. Whatever problems and uncertainties you are facing, many others are sharing them. More importantly, all of the professional societies in the mathematical societies are gathering and sharing information on common challenges and ideas for dealing with them. This past May, at the spring meeting of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences, the presidents and executive directors shared their concerns and efforts. This column will describe some of the biggest issues facing our professions and a few ideas for dealing with them. A list of links to resources is included at the end of this column.

After discussing the challenges and opportunities that we face, I will conclude with Howard Thurman’s meditation on the fallow time, thoughts that seem particularly appropriate for the era in which we find ourselves.

Resources. Tight budgets were a fact of life in education before we entered the era of COVID-19. Many universities were struggling with declining enrollments and had already put a freeze on salaries and the replacement of tenure-line faculty. Resources for PreK-12 education were stretched and teacher salaries had not kept up with inflation. This fall we face the double blow of increased expenditures for technologies and protective measures and the need to cut budgets as taxes and revenue streams diminish.

Probably the most valuable resource that will be in short supply this fall is time, time to plan and prepare in an ever-shifting environment, time to meet the competing demands of family and profession. At the May CBMS meeting, both Lisa Fauci of SIAM and Ruth Haas of AWM stressed how these pressures fall especially on women who are seen as the primary care-givers of the family. Most colleges and universities are allowing, even encouraging, faculty to pause the tenure and promotion clock. More than this is needed. Given the conflicting demands of teaching, research, and family, departments need to convey the message that it is okay not to be “productive” right now.

Equity. This goes well beyond access to computers and the internet. As the previous paragraph indicated, there are vast disparities in the sorts of external pressures that both students and teachers are experiencing. One effect of the pandemic is that inequities that have always been present are now far more visible. We will have missed an enormous opportunity if we ignore the lessons of this time and try to go back to the status quo ante once the crisis is over.

There are other opportunities to improve equity within the present situation. Some students do well in an online environment where they can control the timing and pacing of their instruction, get immediate feedback on assignments, revisit videos, or work in a text-based environment. This fall will present students with a variety of experiences and options. Faculty should be refining their ability to operate in variety of modes, increasing future options. This will be especially important as departments expand supplemental support.

Assessment. One of the lessons from this past spring is that when high-stakes testing is attempted in an online environment, there is widespread cheating. There are a variety of technologies and services that promise to deal with this, but the message that came out of the May CBMS meeting is that we should grab this as an opportunity to rethink assessment.

We have known for a long time that students learn better when classes incorporate frequent low stakes assessments. In the current situation, these have the added advantage that there is less pressure to cheat, especially when these assessments are formative as well as summative. I have long advocated for down-playing final exams. This year should be forcing this position.

The CBMS presidents also see the present situation as an opportunity to examine the goals of our courses and rethink what assessments will most effectively measure progress toward those goals. How important is it for students to memorize information they can easily access via Google? What problem-solving skills do they need to develop that go beyond those that modern technology can do better and faster? Beyond assessment, this is an opportunity to engage in backward design of the entire curriculum.

Support and Reflection. This is a highly stressful time for everyone involved in education, made worse by the inability to gather in person. Now more than ever we should be seeking the kinds of connections to others that our professional societies and related organizations can supply, not just with links to resources but through chat rooms and informal Zoom meetings.

Above all, take the time to step back and think about what this era is revealing. I recently became aware of the following passage from Howard Thurman’s Deep Is the Hunger: Meditations for Apostles of Sensitiveness. Though written in 1948, it seems custom-made for our times.

Howard Thurman (1899–1981) was an author, philosopher, theologian, educator, and civil rights leader. He was a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“There is a fallow time for the spirit when the soil is barren because of sheer exhaustion … The general climate of social unrest, of national and international turmoil, the failing of kingdoms, the constant, muted suffering of hungry men and starving women and children … all these things may so paralyze normal responses to life that a blight settles over the spirit leaving all the fields of interest withered and parched. It is quite possible that spreading oneself so thin with too much going “to and fro” has yielded a fever of activity that saps all energy, even from one’s surplus store, and we must stop for the quiet replenishing of an empty cupboard. Perhaps too much anxiety, a too-hard trying, a searching strain to do by oneself what can never be done that way, has made one’s spirit seem like a water tap whose washer is worn out from too much pressure … Whatever may be the reasons, one has to deal with the fact. Face it! Then resolutely dig out dead roots, clear the ground, but don’t forget to make a humus pit against the time when some young or feeble plants will need stimulation from past flowering in your garden. Work out new designs by dreaming daring dreams and great and creative planning. The time is not wasted. The time of fallowness is a time of rest and restoration, of filling up and replenishing. It is a moment when the meaning of all things can be searched out, tracked down, and made to yield the secret of living. Thank God for the fallow time!”

For most of us, this is a fallow time of too much going to and fro that has sapped our energy. But it would be a tremendous waste of opportunity if the emergence from these dark days is nothing more than a return to what we knew and did before. May you all use this time to dig out the dead roots and prepare the soil.

Online Resources

These links as well as updates to them are available at the CBMS website: https://www.cbmsweb.org/covid-19/

Recommendations for conducting distance learning

Resources for teaching mathematics and statistics with distance learning

The Mathematics of the COVID-19 pandemic

Resources for rethinking assessment

Equity issues

Great Lakes Equity Center: COVID-19 Resource and Support page

Updates from CBMS societies and other organizations

Other Resources

Acknowledgment I want to thank the Rev. Craig Lemming for drawing my attention to the writings of Howard Thurman.

Reference

Thurman, H. (1951). Deep Is the Hunger: Meditations for Apostles of Sensitiveness. Revised Edition of 1948 original. New York: Harper & Bros.

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