Teaching Online short course intro

1. Hi.
My name’s John.
I teach in the Writing Program.
And I don’t usually look like a
Disney villain. . . .

2. But, like you, I spent 2020 mostly cooped up at
home, tethered to my laptop and phone. One
way I tried to avoid going stir crazy was by using
silly apps like ToonMe in the downtime between
doomscrolling and infinitely many Zoom
meetings.
I don’t know if I succeeded. (In not going crazy,
that is.)

3. It could have been worse,
though.
A lot worse.

4. Because being without a home is
way, way worse than being locked
down inside one.

5. And there were – and are – a
lot of people in Denver and
nationwide who were forced to
survive the pandemic while
unhoused.
Who were unhoused before
the pandemic started.
Who remain unhoused still –
and whose numbers are
growing – even now that the
pandemic seems to be abating.

6. The relationship between rate of
homelessness rate and the rate at
which a city gentrifies is . . . not
accidental.

7. Nor is the relationship
between housing injustice
and other forms of
injustice.

8. This is something I think about a lot. For eight
years, I was the faculty director of DU’s Social
Justice Living & Learning Community. And in
2008 I co-founded the DU Community Writing
Center. It’s like the Writing Center on campus,
except that we set up in some of the shelters
downtown.

9. But we couldn’t teach in the shelters in 2020; social
distancing requirements wouldn’t allow it.
That was the worst part of the pandemic for me.

10. However, thanks to some real smart
and forward-thinking friends in the
nonprofit world, I was able to
continue working (if not teaching) in
the homeless community during the
pandemic, by volunteering at a Safe
Outdoor Space. Safe Outdoor
Spaces are the city-sanctioned
encampments, built by the Colorado
Village Collaborative and others, so
that some of our unhoused
neighbors could have a place to
shelter during this godawful
pandemic year.

11. There were two sites: one in the parking
lot beside the Denver Community Church,
where I worked, with room for 40 women,
men, and families; and another beside the
First Baptist Church, with room for 30
women and trans folx. Each Space has
heated tents, bathrooms, showers,
electricity, internet access. Residents
received COVID testing each morning, and
again any time they left the camp. During
the five months these sites were open,
there were ZERO incidences of the virus.

12. Most residents of the DCC site came from an ad hoc
camp across the street, one of many that sprang up
during lockdown.

13. The Colorado Village Collaborative, who created these
Spaces, is the same group that founded the Women’s
Village at Clara Brown Commons, a tiny homes community
that opened earlier this year in the Cole neighborhood,
and also Beloved Community Village, the tiny homes
community that opened in Globeville in 2017.

14. Taking photos isn't allowed inside
the Safe Open Spaces, but even from
outside the DCC camp you can see
the Wells-Fargo “cash box” building
on the horizon; once inside, you can
see the twin steeples of the
Cathedral of the Immaculate
Conception, too. From the SOS sister
site at 14th and Grant, you can see
the Capitol dome.

15. That’s not an accident. It took a lot of searching and
false starts and squabbles with NIMBY neighbors to
settle on these locations, finally. But from the
ground you can’t NOT see the stark contrast
between these little tent villages and the towering
spires of church, state, and market looming above
them. The camps are themselves a protest against
the necessity of their own existence.

16. The idea for Beloved Community Village grew out of a tiny homes community
that Denver Homeless Out Loud built in Sustainability Park in 2015 — only to
see it dismantled by the city, then rebuilt by DHOL, then dismantled again. That
community was called Resurrection Village, harkening back to Resurrection
City, the tent camp that MLK’s Poor People’s campaign built in DC in 1968.
Many of the DHOL activists were involved in the Denver Catholic Worker
House, founded in Five Points only a few years after the Poor People’s
Campaign, inspired by the Catholic Worker house founded by Dorothy Day on
New York’s Lower East Side during the Great Depression.

17. Tragically, the Denver Catholic Worker House burned down
in 2016. But it’s since re-formed only a few blocks from its
original location.
All of which is to say that this impoverished, ephemeral,
transient community has, in fact, a long, deep, and very
rich history.

18. These first two SOSs
moved to new locations: a
parking lot at Regis and
one beside a Methodist
church by City Park.
I’ll be volunteering at
both this summer.

19. Oh, yeah — almost forgot: I’m taking this short course in order to try to design a
community-engaged WRIT class that takes place half in the field and half online. Space
and time are real challenges when you teach community-engaged writing courses. How do
you fit in time in the field AND classroom time AND time for writing when students are
also trekking back and forth from classroom to field site to dorm?
One possibility: Eliminate classroom time. Instead, divide the time between teaching on-
site and teaching asynchronously online.
This is one among several bursts of inspiration and/or bouts of stir-craziness I had during
lockdown. And I realized that to even think about it, I’d need first to — finally! — figure
out Canvas.