I’m wrapping up the last days of my in-person hybrid semester of law school teaching. I wanted to revisit some of the more dire claims made this summer.

Professor Dan Rodriguez described the plans as “nonsense,” “hubris,” and “folly.” He cites Professor Deborah Merritt who described plans to return to the university as “the Ptolemaic model of the universe.” Professor Tim Duane analogized the return to in-person education as “a large, dry forest after a devastating drought: a single spark or flying ember will readily spread a wildfire through this unburned woodland.” Professor Josh Blackman described them as “little more than Potemkin Villages,” anticipating that schools would “shift everything online” and face RICO actions from students.

It’s increasingly apparent these projections just weren’t true.

I taught one week in person, one week online to minimize first-year and upper-division student overlap in the building, and to use classroom space effectively. Some students opted for all online classes, as did some professors. All were accommodated.

I taught with a mask, and while students were spread around the room, the classroom environment was otherwise entirely ordinary.

I taught the end of the Spring 2020 term online, and I taught summer classes online, so I was eager to return to the classroom.

I didn’t realize how much I missed it. There’s a spontaneity that happens in the classroom, from student chatter among themselves to brief conversations before and after class. There’s a responsiveness and reaction to one another that’s missing from an online environment. I find the energy of moving about the room and using the chalkboard much better. I engage students in conversation more easily and readily than online, when I’m too easily tempted to shift into lecturing. It also meant that the relationships in the classroom more naturally translated to the online component in the other weeks.

Revisiting my August 2020 post on the topic, my reformatting worked (I think), and I was, indeed, cautious but eager. And I look forward to replicating it again this spring.

I close by noting that there were lots of nay-sayers (I highlight some above) last summer. Nay-saying would be an easily solution, to be sure. Online-only has attracted a lot of students, faculty, and institutions, and many seem to enjoy it reasonably well, or well enough, or well enough for Covid.

But, I think, it’s encouraging that in-person hybrid models were not as disastrous as others projected. There remains plenty of opportunity to think, based on an individualized institutional assessment, which models are best for which sets of students. I don’t think it’s a one-size-fits-all model. And I’m glad this in-person hybrid version of the model worked this fall.