Collaboration in a Pandemic

Keeping the mind occupied in productive ways is not easy especially when we are all reacting to trauma in different ways. Loss of jobs, loss of income, unstable housing situations, food insecurity, new care responsibilities, health concerns, and all of it taking place without being able to leave your home are overwhelming things when you deal with one of them. But experiencing many or all of them, well, that’s what this pandemic is doing.  

Familial roles are challenged, pushed, and stretched in new ways. I’m staying with my parents during this crisis while my partner is on the other side of the country with his parents. Meanwhile, our actual home base is in Beijing where we aren’t allowed to go. We have had to carve out some semblance of our own lives while living within the routines of others. One way I have done that is through collaboration projects both unrelated and somewhat related to my work as a global education consultant. 

It just hit me today that while I have worked remotely for years, and I have been a global collaborator for just as long, this pandemic has guided me to find new ways to collaborate that I wouldn’t have had time to otherwise. Here are a couple of the things I have been working on while trying to keep myself sane.

Curriculum Project

I was feeling pretty low and unsettled a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t working. I wasn’t doing much of anything but feeling sorry for myself, but then I got a message from a good friend. As she always tends to do at just the right moments in my life, Cheryl came to the rescue asking for some help with a project she was working on. Her task was to source and assemble lessons from educators about Mauna Kea. It was such a pleasure to work with her again, bouncing ideas off of each other, working to figure things out together, and lots of phone calls and text messages in the process. And by the end of a couple of short weeks, we had templates, alignments, and lessons ready to be uploaded to the nonprofit’s website. If you aren’t familiar with the Thirty Meter Telescope and the protests in Hawai’i surrounding the protection of this sacred mountain, I highly recommend you take a look at the resources we put together about the new documentary called Standing Above the Clouds here. 

You’ll have to register first, and if you aren’t affiliated with any of the groups or schools in Hawai’i, you can register where it says “Join the Hale Kā`ko`o.” There are lots of free resources beyond what we worked on.

Joining a Writing Group

I started writing a novel about five years ago. It was a cathartic experience, taking out all of my frustrations about education systems and putting them on the page in a format for middle years readers. I have since done five rounds of major edits, and I decided to pick it up again, hopefully for the last time for a sixth. Since I started writing during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) many Novembers ago, I thought it would be fitting to try to finish during Camp NaNoWriMo in April. So I joined a group of writers working on Middle Years writing projects, and I’m so glad I did. Not only did I find readers for my writing, but I also found a really supportive and diverse community I never would have found within my current networks. While I didn’t reach my goal of finishing my edits to send to agents and publishers, I did get pretty far.  

Academic Research

I am not an academic at all, but I was invited by a colleague to collaborate on a research paper looking at pedagogy during times of crisis. This collaboration is going to be a big stretch for me, being out of academia for over a decade. We had our first chat about a week ago on zoom (she’s in Japan), and I’m really looking forward to digging into some academic reading and looking at the topics I have spent so much time on over the past few years through a new lens. As my colleague told me during our conversation, “everyone can be an academic.” And in some ways, everyone should be an academic on some level right now, using critical thinking and reputable sources to inform action.

I wrote about an invitation to lead, and I suppose collaboration is similar. Sometimes, all it takes to get out of a rut or spark some motivation is talking to someone slightly outside your day to day work. When we are open to exploring new ideas and new ways of working, possibilities open up. Throughout this time at home, I have begun to unpack what “work” means to me and how that connects to a purpose. So far, I have come to the conclusion that It’s not a job; it’s not a project. It’s something much more. 

These last couple of months have been quite a roller coaster. Each day is emotionally different despite the weight of staying home. I have a long way to go on this jrney of mine to find what I’m meant to do in this life, but I’m hoping that this time to reflect, reevaluate and collaborate will be the respite I need to take my next steps.

Join the conversation

What have you been working on or thinking about while at home?

What collaborations have you participated in?