Community in the Time of COVID-19

Since I last posted, I have continued to explore online community engagement. On Sunday evening, I led a workshop online for the jGirls magazine community about gender and race in sports which I have been planning. I was nervous beforehand about running a conversation about this topic on zoom because I wasn’t sure how I would foster the comfortable and engaged communities like those in classrooms or in more familiar settings. However, it ended up being successful and I thought everyone seemed engaged contributing to the discussion. There were about ten people total online so helped to have more intimate group. I also started out with personal sharing as an ice breaker to get people comfortable, then shared my connection to the topic, to help everyone feel more connected to the topic and learn a bit about each other. I think this helped because it enabled the participants to have personal connections with each other and what we were talking about, even though we weren’t really in the same space. 

I also had a zoom meeting with my campers from last summer and my co-counselors (the campers are 7,8, and 9 years old). My co’s and I wanted to check in on them and give them a taste of camp in a time when it’s not totally clear if camp will happen this summer. While we were nervous about being able to have control on the meeting when they are young and have a lot of energy, they were super cute and were happy to be with each other and listen to their counselors again. They especially mentioned that they missed camp, and specifically the interactions they had with each other at camp. I think that these kinds of meetings with groups that don’t normally meet during the year help to form connections and bring a sense of normalcy to a time of social isolation.