I Got to be My Own Little Local Dr. Fauci
Ms. Gordon is a biology instructor at a small university in Kentucky who teaches online biology courses for high school students seeking college credit. In the early stages of the pandemic, Ms. Gordon noticed that her students were becoming increasingly curious about COVID and wanted to spend class time discussing the virus.
At the beginning of the pandemic, when we didn’t know anything at all about it, I got a sense from my students that they began to question science. “What was this new bug? Am I going to catch it? Is it something that’s real? Is it something that’s fake?” A lot of them were asking me questions, and that grew more and more as 2020 went on. They didn’t want to talk about the textbook. They wanted to talk about the pandemic at that point.
Student curiosity persisted as Ms. Gordon began the course virology unit. Specifically, her students wanted to discuss the virus and its legitimacy as a health concern since there were so many reports of fake news. She quickly noticed that discussing ways of protecting against COVID, such as masking, became very politically charged.
When we got to the virus unit, they wanted specific information about COVID. They didn’t want to talk about SARS, MERS, anything else. They wanted to talk about COVID itself. The primary question was, “Is this all fake?” Because they were getting fake news, and they wanted to know if it was just something that was totally fake and didn’t apply to them. They weren’t going to get it. They never went anywhere. Nobody wanted to wear a mask where I am, period. It was a personal freedom. And suddenly it became a political issue rather than just a medical issue.
To address student concerns about fake news surrounding the pandemic, Ms. Gordon taught her students how to locate credible sources of information.
I did a lesson on Zoom on where to find credible sources. We went to the CDC, Hughes Health, Mayo Clinic, WebMD, Johns Hopkins, and pulled up those resources from their websites. And then I told them, “This is Fox News, this is CNN, and we don’t want to go there for our news. We want reliable sources. Go to the medical resources instead of the average everybody’s-news-day sort of thing.”
Despite her best efforts, tensions in her biology classes continued to rise throughout the rest of the semester. Ms. Gordon noted that she often found herself intervening in heated political debates about the effectiveness of masking.
I would have to sometimes separate the two factions—wear a mask, don’t wear a mask—because they would just get on each other. It would become a political discussion instead of a health question, and I would have to verbally separate them. They wanted to talk about COVID, or they wanted to talk about the politics of COVID, one of the two. Keeping them all in line and keeping them doing what they needed to do was difficult.
During the second year of the pandemic (2021–22) Ms. Gordon continued to discuss COVID and address student concerns about the virus using the same medical sites as the previous semester. She also supplemented her preceding instruction by giving students opportunities to explore COVID-related data and share their opinions about COVID-related topics.
[My sources were] straight from the medical profession because they don’t talk in scary language. They talk in facts. And if you just view the facts rather than the hype, then you can understand things better, and you don’t get your emotions pulled on. . . . Some research-based assignments, “Write me a two-page essay. Watch these videos that I’m getting from the Hughes Health Network,” and things like that. In discussions, “What are you thinking now? Has your wearing of masks changed over the course of this class? Why or why not?” That sort of thing.
Although COVID discussions during class were not always easy, Ms. Gordon indicated that they helped alleviate a lot of student stress and fear.
I’m pretty sure the majority of [my students] gained, a sense of, “This is a major pandemic, this is something that is serious and deadly, but if I follow proper protocols, I will be relatively safe.” And I think that our lessons helped alleviate some of the scare factor that was part of COVID in the early times. I think they got better at realizing what is fake news, what is correct news, which is a big part of it. . . . They stopped being so terribly afraid, and that’s because the numbers came down, there was a vaccine available, people were starting to come out, life started getting back to normal, in their opinion. I still have the unit in the virology chapter on COVID, but I’m also updating the course material, keeping it fresh, keeping it new, keeping it real, as they say, trying to get the most interesting resources that I can find.
Further, she explained that her COVID-focused instruction led some previously resistant students to take proactive measures, including wearing masks and getting the vaccine.
I hope that my lessons helped them not to be so afraid and to be proactive. A couple of my mask deniers went to wearing masks. Some of my anti-vaxxers went to, “Okay, fine, I’ll get the shot,” and they got their two shots.
Reflecting on teaching throughout the pandemic, Ms. Gordon feels that she was able to fulfill the role of a public health educator by presenting her students with facts and resources related to the virus, and in doing so, provided students with a sense of relief.
I helped to enlighten people who were panicking and scared to death by pulling together resources for them that they could understand and assimilate, gave them a calm voice with solid facts behind it to back it up, and didn’t play the politic game. I think, considering how many students I had, I reached a whole lot of people with, “This is what COVID is, this is how you can transmit it, here’s what you need to do to stay safe,” that sort of stuff. I got to be my own little local Dr. Fauci.
