The Class Diary of the Pandemic. Comics of the Transformations of the 'Presence' in Brazilian Schools during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The Class Diary is a lecture tool for registering the daily routine and the presence of students. In 2020 and 2021, we ethnographically investigated the transformations brought about by the pandemic through the stories of those particularly affected in the educational context: teachers and students. These stories were collected and illustrated as a diary that anthropologically explores the experience of having new ways of 'presence' in the pandemic. Each story has their own particularities but together they are crossed by interconnected experiences and sensations. The fear of the present shares space with the hope of change in the future. We were interested in the transformations that arose in teacher-student relations - at that moment exclusively online ones - that resulted in a new mode of 'presence' of these subjects, and consequently, a new way of experiencing their senses and the establishment of relationships. By appropriating the notion of Class Diary for the record of daily presence, we explored these records and transformed them into illustrations to sensitively comprehend and express this new sense of 'presence' experienced by our interlocutors. A virtual and everyday presence. A way of experiencing different moments, previously physically present, but now in an online environment. The Class Diary is seen as a registration of stories, feelings, and the relationships between these subjects. But how to represent hope in the future, if the future was extremely uncertain to those facing that moment? Our challenge was to transform these stories into a comic book, without missing the point of view of our interlocutors and the miscellaneous senses that crossed them, seeking ways of expressing itáartistically.