On Navigating Anxiety, Accountability, and Compassion: Teaching during a Pandemic

By Tatiana Diacova

Fall 2020 was my first quarter TAing at UC Davis and my first quarter doing so online. It definitely started  much worse than it seems to be ending: lots of anxiety, insecurity and worry in the first few weeks.  “What are the expectations?”, “Do I know Canvas enough to do my job?”, “Am I equipped to provide not  only academic but also emotional support to my students?”, “How do I conduct office hours if I have  never been to any myself?”. These are the questions that kept me up at night for quite a while.  

As the quarter progressed, I gained a bit more confidence and realized that Zoom office hours and exam  reviews are not as scary as my mind had me believe. I am also eternally grateful to the two groups I was  able to join – the Graduate Teaching Community and the TA Support Group at UC Davis. Both are  organized by graduate students for graduate students. I have learned a lot from meeting with these  groups but the most important thing for me personally was that they helped me realize that every other  TA at UC Davis was struggling with the same exact issues and insecurities as I was. That gave me the  confidence and made it OK not to be OK. But even after realizing this, I kept worrying about something  that I could not quite put my finger on, so I kept on digging into my own experiences as a student to find  out what it was. 

I am originally from a small country in Eastern Europe. I moved to California 12 years ago, which means  my elementary, middle and high school, as well as a few of college years were spent back home. There  are several unspoken rules students are expected to abide by there: no complaining about anything, no  questioning/contradicting the instructor, no asking for assignment deadline extensions, no voicing your  

struggles (as this is considered a sign of weakness and laziness), no asking for help, etc. And, as you have  probably already guessed, there were no office hours, no TAs or institutional support of any kind. So,  when I started college in California I was not prepared for all the wonderful support I had at my disposal as a student. Honestly, even now after 12 years of school here I do not utilize many resources that  would probably make my life much easier (even joining the TA Support Group was a big scary step for me) and now, as a TA, I had to be a provider of some of these resources myself.  

The mentality of the unspoken rules for students from back home was what I came with into the  California educational system and that is the mentality I was still partially carrying when the Fall quarter  started. I helped with a large course this quarter and I got to meet students who were directly affected  by wars around the world, had to become primary caregivers for their loved ones during the pandemic,  struggled with unexpected injuries, covid infection and ADHD. So, it was necessary for the instructor and  I to be compassionate, understanding and flexible to help students succeed even in these  unprecedented circumstances. However, my old mentality kept creeping up on me forcing me to ask the  question of where to draw the line between being flexible and holding students accountable. I realize  that this is something there is no training on and it will have to be a personal judgement, which I know  I’ll continue to struggle with. And as much as I want to change my mentality and as much as I recognize  how unhealthy the learning environment I came from was, I do want to keep just a small part of it with  me. I am certain that some of this mentality helped me to come back stronger from setbacks and played  a significant part in getting me to where I am today. I worry that by not enforcing parts of it just a little  bit on my students I am not preparing them for success and resilience in the real world… 

This intention might sound harsh and cold and maybe it is… That is why I am excited to embark on a  journey to find the best strategies I need to engage to be the best educator/mentor for my students  without compromising the fundamental role I think mentors and educators should play in a student’s  life.