The Positive Effects of COVID-19
Well, did the title of this post grab your attention? Good! You might be asking, how in the hootenanny can ANYTHING positive come about from the coronavirus? I’’m glad you asked.
First of all, I’m not making light of this awful sickness; it has caused many around the world to become very ill, some resulting in death, much mental anguish, severe economic impacts and a general feeling of uncertainty. But sometimes when life hands you lemons, you just buckle down and make lemonade.
When the schools closed down initially, my residency programming came to a screeching halt; many people experienced the same thing with their jobs when we went into quarantine. I got to thinking about the students who were now at home learning through their devices; e-learning, distance learning. And if you didn’t know, I often serve as a substitute teacher in my district to fill in gaps when I’m not providing my residency programs. In fact I was a long term sub for a class of 5th grade students this past fall- I started out from day #1 with this class and was their full time classroom teacher for 2 months. During that time, South Carolina was testing out their “e-learning” system; and so I was involved early on in the beta testing of teaching a whole school day virtually. Who knew that several months later, these kids would be full time e-learning from home?
All this to say, I got to thinking how I might offer something to “my kids” in the way of cartooning or comics, some kind of fun instruction. I thought about my YouTube channel; which had been dormant for a couple of years. State arts councils were asking artists to think about how they could offer something online to brighten up the lonely days of students. So I launched “QuaranTOONS”, a daily (Mon-Fri) video series on my youtube channel where I’d simply instruct students on how to draw a specific character; nothing fancy technically speaking, just my iPhone mounted over my drawing table, me talking to the viewers about how to follow along, how to stay safe as they watched me draw (see previous blog post for more info). I’d even give shout outs to specific students from my class by first name; asking how they were doing. It grew into me “shouting out” to other students, teachers and elementary schools where I’d visited in previous years. I emailed those folks and told them I was mentioning their school and students in my videos. What happened as a result was unexpected. First of all, it was great to re-connect with educators I’ve worked with over the years! I began to receive emails from my viewers, (I used a dedicated email address for this purpose), telling me how much they enjoyed these videos. Teachers, moms, dads, homeschoolers and kids themselves emailed me; some sent artwork of the drawing they did as they followed along with me! This was amazing to me!!! I heard from viewers in other states, and then would draw cartoon characters in future videos featuring that state’s official mammal, bird, flower. I heard from viewers around the world- England, Paris, Australia, and a 13year-old boy in Malaysia who invited me to visit his school; he really wanted to meet me! What an unbelievable experience this turned into!
THIS is what I meant by the positive effects of COVID-19. Having the opportunity to connect with people from places I couldn’t have imagined I was reaching. Seeing artwork created by viewers and me getting to share that work on my channel. Discussing how other teachers and parents were dealing with this crazy situation in their own lives. I was blown away.
I’ve since gone to adding a new video just once a week, now that “school” is over. But I still cannot believe that with all of the negative effects that the coronavirus handed me, I was still able to make some pretty tasty lemonade.