Note: I am using Zoom as a generic label for the virtual spaces we have celebrated, grieved, and worked through for the last two years. There are other virtual meetings spaces, just like there are other Xeroxes, Kleenexes, and Googles, but Zoom is the label we all understand.

As I head into my fifth semester of teaching remotely, if I have learned one thing about teaching in this moment, it’s that Zoom is never going away.

If I have learned two things, it’s that Zoom is never going away and Covid is never going away (but, honestly, I knew that already).

Zoom is a faster room.

Back in 2020, we panicked in the face of Covid and fled to Zoom, like peasants to the manor, for safety. With Zoom, we could continue to do what we had always done in the board room, the classroom, and every other room in the same, just more sterile, way.

Toward the end of 2021, with the right vaccinations and accessories, we managed to find a bit of shared physical space—classes resumed, a few of us headed back to the office/campus, and we tried to feel “normal” again.

Now, in the first days of 2022, 2021’s idea of “normal” has chased us back to 2020’s “panic” but this time pursued by Covid’s little brother, Omicron. (Normal is more ironic than panic, but I like the parallel.)

Why are we panicked again? Why do we not know what to do?

We have had two years to explore options and find solutions to what we knew was not an isolated event. Since March of 2020, we’ve had time to research and experiment, to discover, create, and embrace new definitions for pretty much everything: community, access, equity, work. We could have come up with a plan. But we haven’t because, as Rex Huppke writes in the Chicago Tribune, “we have been seeking normalcy rather than preparing.”

Rather than putting our energy into innovating and embracing options, we have spent the last two years trying to “go back.” Everyone’s quest for the new normal is really just everyone’s doubling-down on the old one.

The Old Normal no longer exists (but old thinking does)

Over the past week, I have had a number of conversations with friends, colleagues, my husband, and, unfortunately, strangers on Facebook, about the untapped potential of Zoom to change what is possible for us to do together.

Below is my Facebook exchange with BC (I anonymized his name but used his real and oh-so-appropriate initials) in response to the Chicago Tribune article about the Chicago Public Schools again shutting down, referenced above.

PD: This headline is correct—everyone is trying to “go back” rather than forward. It’s just plain lack of vision & creativity.

BC: Moving forward = restoring normal life.

PD: the challenge is that so much energy is being put into retrofitting to make the new old that no one is working with the new benefits of what we have. For example, rather than trying to make Zoom function like a classroom, we should be developing a new model of zoom-based learning space. But whatever…

BC: I taught middle school for twenty-five years. I feel strongly that teaching and learning are deeply social activities. I viewed teaching as [well-informed] performance art and thought one-on-one contact essential. (I taught in a small school.) Personally, I find myself incapable of paying attention in zoom meetings. So I am extremely dubious of distance learning.

PD: I’m not advocating distance learning—that’s going back—but a new model of creating learning spaces that involve zoom and other learning contexts/tools. We need something better than a faster horse.

BC: What you are suggesting has a name: Distance Learning.

See what I mean about BC?

Won’t someone please think of the children?

While people around me talk about applying the outdated rules for physical spaces to new virtual ones, others are acting like virtual spaces should have no rules, no parameters, no identities at all. It’s the Wild, Wild Cloud.

• Physical encumbrances—like weather and traffic—don’t prevent us from getting to Zoom, yet timeliness doesn’t matter—arriving late and leaving early are just fine.

• Zoom allows us to break down walls and create collaborative space across any distance—connecting people along the same hallway or on opposite sides of the world, but being present in that space is not necessary—cameras and microphones are optional.

• We have discovered interactions that are only possible in the space of Zoom but rather than creating names and containers for those new ways of being and doing, we attempt to force the voluptuous experience of the last two years into 2020’s pants—no matter how we squirm and struggle, those pants are not going to fit.

No wonder we have Zoom fatigue.

It’s not because we do too much in Zoom, it’s because we don’t do enough with Zoom. Our exhaustion stems from running in all directions, arms flailing, away from using the enhanced reality Zoom enables. It’s quite a workout (and, I’m telling you, we still are not going to fit into those pants).

Last week I attended a live yoga class with a teacher a time zone away, hosted a 6 am collaborative “greet the sun” event, and workshopped business ideas with three women in Wisconsin, London, and Costa Rica, respectively. Though the technology for all of these interactions was available years ago, the possibility of using it creatively was not. None of these opportunities would have been considered desirable or “normal” in the before time.

Did these events fatigue me? No. Because I see the magic in the wardrobe and in the extraordinary fact that all of these elisions of space and time become wonderfully normal in the space of Zoom.

When I was in my twenties, I traveled all over the world. And I used to love arriving home to Denver/Iowa City/Chicago and starting sentences with words like, “This morning when I was in London,…”. Through travel, I can compress time and distance in a way that makes a sentence that sounds like a mistake, a given.

Through Zoom, I can say I experienced London and Wisconsin and Costa Rica this morning, too. What is truly amazing is also truly common. And, unlike international travel, we all have access.

What is Zoom if not a Poem?

I define poetry as making the ordinary, extraordinary in startling and familiar ways. Poetry makes the bypassable everyday stop you in your tracks.

Zoom, like poetry, requires us to attend to the world beyond what we have already decided it should be. Both have the potential to create spaces that are indefatigable in their power to connect and create—but only if we allow it; only if we engage with Zoom and its potential.

But, if opening up an extraordinary space from the ordinary familiarity of your own home is too exhausting, you’re welcome to log in, turn off your camera, and go mute. It’s just Zoom.