Author: Pearl Steinzor

For my final project I decided to follow my boyfriend, Johnny (34) around the gym at Planet Fitness in Marlboro, NJ.

While working as an EEG technician at St. Peter’s Hospital in New Brunswick, as well as being a part-time student at Middlesex County College to be a registered nurse, Johnny goes to the gym every morning, Monday through Friday before working from 3:00-11:00pm.

Despite being a first line healthcare worker and student, Johnny understands the importance of exercise in order to help balance out the mind and stay healthy.

Johnny has had two very serious injuries in the past ten years. The first, a car crash that almost took his life and left him unable to walk for months. The second incident was when his lung collapsed while working out at the gym. Although he has difficulty breathing from time to time and struggles with anxiety since his accident, he uses the gym as a way to push himself forward and stay motivated both physically and mentally.

While some people may be hesitant to go to the gym during a global pandemic, the facilities at Planet Fitness in Marlboro are routinely cleaned throughout the day, everyone is required to wear a mask and have their temperature read and capacity is limited to about 35 people.

Working at a hospital and facing his own health challenges each day, Johnny doesn’t let fears of coronavirus deter him from his goals.

Radio Script

HOST INTRO: The transition from traditional learning to virtual learning comes with its fair share of challenges and difficulties. Especially for classes that would seem almost impossible to conduct online. Reporter Pearl Steinzor sat down to talk to high school teacher and yoga instructor, Elaine Gardner, about what it’s been like teaching dance and yoga within the confinements of a screen. She also talks to university student, Inti Karshud about what it’s been like being taught ballet virtually, and what it’s like having to practice at home.

AMBI: Natural sound of Elaine teaching over Zoom

TRACK: Elaine Gardner has been teaching at Nichols School in Buffalo since 1986. She says that teaching such physical arts online has required some adaptation and creativity.

ACT: (GARDNER) Teaching has been okay, the students are very motivated, they enjoy doing the class. It’s just very difficult to get content covered, so it has to be much more experiential and also, you have to be much more flexible.

TRACK: At first, she was teaching a hybrid model but after an outbreak at Nichols School, teachers were forced to transition to fully online. While some people assume teaching remotely might be less work, Gardner says it’s actually the opposite.

ACT: (GARDNER) Everyone has a slightly different opinion as to the success and failure of this new hybrid form of teaching dance, acting, music, and visual art at the arts department at school. It is much more time consuming for the faculty to layout very detailed lesson plans and to include some students face-to-face, some students on Zoom, and to have a lot of email interaction with students.

TRACK: Even in her in-person classes, she had to fundamentally change the way she taught, due the contagious factors of the virus.

ACT: (GARDNER) The biggest frustration is not having the ability to really understand how engaged students are with the material, and also to just really have a lot of fun dancing, leaping, running, jumping. Because in covid, you’re not supposed to really sweat a lot and you’re not supposed to spread the breath molecules in the air. So, you have to really curtail the aerobic nature of dancing, or singing, or acting.

 TRACK: It’s also hard to keep her students motivated because there’s nothing to really train for or rehearse for at the moment.

ACT: (GARDNER) There’s no audience and no large crowds allowed to gather to see a performance. And that is a huge motivator for many people in the performing arts, is to have those performing experiences live.

TRACK: For those on the other side of the screen, things have not been easy either. Junior student, Inti Karshud is working towards her BFA as a Theater Performance major at the University at Buffalo. She is taking a ballet class, which she says comes with its fair share of obstacles.

ACT: (KARSHUD): The teacher is definitely a little bit insecure I can tell. She’s an MFA grad student at UB so she’s getting her master in dance right now. And I can tell she’s just as unsure about what she’s doing as the rest of us are.

TRACK: Even with planned adjustments by the instructor, not everything has worked out. Still, Inti does her best to show up to class and make it work

ACT: (KARSHUD) She like showed us this YouTube video of how we could make a bar for our room to dance at, but I don’t really have the means to do that, and she wanted us to get this like funky camera thing that you hook up to your computer that like widens the camera angle so she can see your whole body, but the only place I have to dance is in my small, small, small, apartment room which is… I don’t know I have a four-foot by four-foot space maybe.

TRACK: With a lack of space and a poor camera angle set up, Inti feels like she isn’t getting the full instruction she would’ve liked to have.

ACT: (KARSHUD) I don’t know, it’s just totally different from what it would’ve been if it has been in person. Like, I can’t necessarily say. Like if there’s something going on that’s wrong with the bottom half of my body, like she wouldn’t be able to notice at all. Just ‘cause she can’t see it. And I mean, I still get credit for showing up to class every day. I think my friends in class are honestly just as stressed out about it as I am.

TRACK: Without a doubt, it’s been difficult for both teachers and students to adjust to online performing arts classes, such as dance. As of now, Elaine continues her teaching from home, as a spike in cases have caused Nichols School to go completely online. Inti continues to receive credit for attendance for her ballet classes, making the most out of what she can get. For Baruch College, this is Pearl Steinzor.

 

 

 

For my second assignment, I want to interview my mother, who is a high school dance teacher and a yoga instructor. Since the pandemic, she has had to conduct her classes via zoom, which can be particularly challenging for the types of physical classes she teaches.

My radio story will not only include clips from my interview with her, but also a scripted piece on what it’s been like having online classes from a teacher’s perspective. I also want to involve sound segments of her instructing class through zoom. I will be taking an accompanying photo of her while she is teaching a class, which will most likely be a demonstration of movement or a yoga pose.

For my project, I would like to focus on New Brunswick, NJ. I actually just recently moved here less than a month ago. I think New Brunswick is very vibrant. Because it is part of Rutgers University’s campus, there are a lot of things to do: bars, restaurants, performing arts centers, student centers, greek life, libraries, residencies, etc.

Like many upcoming places, there is an apparent divide between the new, luxury apartments and the older buildings. I think it would be interesting to do my project not just on the differences between new and old, but also COVID-19’s impact for both sides.