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Teaching in the COVID-19 era is challenging under any circumstance. But Jay Van Bavel, associate professor of psychology at New York University, is a contender for having taught the most stressful remote class session. Van Bavel was escorting his two young children home from daycare this week, with 10 minutes to spare before the start of his class, when the elevator in his apartment building plunged and then stopped completely. The trio was trapped inside. Armed with just his cellphone, terrible reception and spotty Wi-Fi, Van Bavel emailed his 360 students to tell them he’d be late to the lecture on the conscious and unconscious mind.
Time passed, and help still hadn’t arrived. Van Bavel began to worry about how he’d be able to finish the lecture to prepare students for their upcoming midterm. So he decided to try to teach the class from his phone. He tried to log in to Zoom, which involved the painful process of downloading an app in a Wi-Fi vacuum. Van Bavel finally called in to the class instead and proceeded to teach without notes or slides for reference. After about 50 minutes, he and his emotionally spent children were freed. Van Bavel returned to "the classroom" as usual, or as usual as can be for 2020: his kitchen table. Read Van Bavel’s firsthand account of the wild ride here.
