Beyond Virtual Classrooms: Exploring Feelings in the Social World

In this column, I continue to focus on creating supportive relationships in the virtual classroom amid the pandemic and growing social unrest. As many schools continue to shift between hybrid and remote learning, I ask, how do we address our own and students’ emotional well-being to promote active learning during the pandemic? How can we as teachers help students cope with this chronic stressor, be it the COVID-19 pandemic or the racial inequality? I share my own personal experiences and argue that affect/feelings/emotions are embodied thoughts imbricated with social values and often involved in the preservation of social expectations and power relations. I suggest that educators recognize affect/feelings/emotions as a critical part of students’ embodied experiences, encourage students to attend to their surrounding world and live their life with heightened consciousness and reflectiveness. I end this column with a few curriculum ideas for readers to consider.