From Hidden Brain Media, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

This is My Unsung Hero, stories where one person reached out to help another in a time

of need.

My Unsung Hero was my algebra...

...came over and asked how I was doing and if I needed help.

So whoever you are, thank you so much.

Today's story comes from Alexandra Middlewood.

She's a professor of political science at Wichita State University.

During the fall 2021 semester, Alexandra began hybrid teaching, some of her students in masks

in front of her, the others simultaneously on Zoom.

So wearing a mask for a 75-minute lecture while wearing a microphone, while trying to make sure that my students

who are on Zoom are engaged, my students who are in the classroom are engaged, while also trying

to, you know, navigate PowerPoint and my own lecture notes and writing key concepts on the board.

I don't know how I'm going to do this all semester. I don't know how I'm going to do this all semester. I don't know how I'm going to do this all semester.

I don't know how I'm going to try to navigate teaching to two classrooms, essentially.

One Monday morning, three weeks into the semester,

Alexandra was feeling especially overwhelmed.

So I was lecturing on the material. I had just finished

writing something on the whiteboard and I turned around and I looked up and I have this room full of

students. You know, most of them are, you know, maybe not as engaged as I would like.

And I notice there's this one student who is nodding along with what I'm saying and looking directly at me.

And not just nodding in a way to signal that he's paying attention, but nodding emphatically in a way, at least that it seemed to me that what I was trying to teach was resonating with him and his life experiences and that he was understanding these concepts.

...