{"id":1924,"date":"2021-08-03T09:00:33","date_gmt":"2021-08-03T08:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/itl\/?p=1924"},"modified":"2026-04-01T17:30:04","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T16:30:04","slug":"always-choose-connection-and-cook-wonderful-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/itl\/2021\/08\/03\/always-choose-connection-and-cook-wonderful-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching through the pandemic: always choose connection… and cook wonderful food!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Jenni<\/b>As we reach the end of the academic year, we’re going to be looking back at some of our experiences of teaching and living through the pandemic, bringing you the reflections of a few of our colleagues.\u00a0 In this post, Jenni Rose (Senior Lecturer in Accounting and one of the University\u2019s Teachers of the Year 2020) reflects on her journey through this time, including the best advice she received and\u00a0how\u00a0she tried to bring this into her practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The very best advice I was given at the beginning of the pandemic was\u00a0‘always choose connection’,\u00a0and\u00a0‘cook wonderful food’.\u00a0\u00a0Connection has always been very important to me – in fact being able to connect to academics, university staff and students was one of the driving reasons for my move from freelance teaching into academia. As for cooking wonderful food,\u00a0this was\u00a0a\u00a0driver for my time spent travelling and bringing all the delicious flavours back home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was hard at times\u00a0to\u00a0choose\u00a0connection, with an overflowing inbox, children demanding my attention for\u00a0homeschooling,\u00a0and trying to reassure anxious students, some stuck thousands of miles from home. Cooking wonderful food wasn’t all that easy\u00a0either\u00a0with the shops running out of flour and yeast!\u00a0<\/p>\n

As we moved into online teaching there seemed to be so many varying (and overwhelming) opinions about how to\u00a0teach well online –\u00a0the length of videos, what we were\u00a0and weren’t\u00a0allowed to do,\u00a0and what students wanted. I led a team from my department to pull together a\u00a0toolkit of guides<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0how to do things, from\u00a0screencasting\u00a0to\u00a0Piazza discussion boards\u00a0and\u00a0Zoom tips to group diaries.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The skills\u00a0to\u00a0use\u00a0new\u00a0technology had to be acquired by all and at a rapid pace, amongst the\u00a0backdrop\u00a0of an increasingly frightening worldwide situation.\u00a0 I had grand ideas of finally implementing the flipped classroom\u00a0more,\u00a0which I\u00a0had used in the past and\u00a0knew would benefit students (Bates,\u00a0Teaching\u00a0in a Digital Age 2015),\u00a0I had a raft of guest speakers who would record videos,\u00a0and I was eager to engage students on my courses using\u00a0Voicethreads,\u00a0Mentimeter\u00a0polls,\u00a0Piazza discussion boards and chat boxes.\u00a0I also recorded graduation videos, and a video acceptance of my\u00a0Distinguished Achievement\u00a0Teacher of the Year award<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a02020.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In time the connections became easier. My department had frequent and well-attended online coffee mornings,\u00a0Whatsapp\u00a0groups with colleagues and Skype groups with students sprung up and became very active, and I started to plan online teaching for September 2021. I got better at changing ingredients for cooking (learning that yoghurt can work\u00a0really well\u00a0as a yeast substitute in dough), and\u00a0I\u00a0started to teach the children to prepare food for\u00a0themselves. The best lockdown learning from my point of view is that they can now make a cup of tea with homemade biscuits\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then in\u00a0September so many students arrived! It was difficult to grasp the higher numbers as I didn’t have the drama of walking around a large lecture theatre, engaging students with\u00a0Curly\u00a0Wurlys\u00a0and those short corridor conversations with students and colleagues which turned out to be so vital to me for connection. I started to miss the connection to students as I made videos to my blank living room walls and talked to blank black squares on Zoom. The time\u00a0taken\u00a0to cook wonderful food was diminishing and exhaustion started to set in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I worked hard to\u00a0create engagement for\u00a0students,<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0to\u00a0structure\u00a0my courses\u00a0to help\u00a0students\u00a0manage their\u00a0time. I\u00a0enabled\u00a0students to\u00a0connect to\u00a0each other using\u00a0peer to peer assessment<\/a>, an\u00a0informal book club<\/a>\u00a0and group presentation projects. I talked to students about ideas on\u00a0how to connect<\/a>\u00a0and shared stories of\u00a0alumni mental health challenges<\/a>\u00a0and a current student\u2019s journey to Manchester from\u00a0being a Syrian Refugee<\/a>.\u00a0I also managed to crack the routine and booking of\u00a0online grocery shopping<\/a>\u00a0to make sure I had the right food in at the right time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now reflecting\u00a0on 16\u00a0months of lockdown I’m amazed by what has\u00a0changed\u00a0and\u00a0also\u00a0what hasn’t.\u00a0I’m so proud of my own and others\u2019\u00a0achievements in this time, even if it was just to keep going. Finally, I’d like to pass on the best advice I’ve heard, not just for the pandemic but for life:\u00a0always\u00a0choose connection\u2026.\u00a0and cook wonderful food!\u00a0<\/p>\n

To find out more about the blended tools Jenni has been using in her teaching and how her students have responded to these, read her post on\u00a0\u2018Top tips on saving time and helping students get work done!<\/a>\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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