In our second installment of student and faculty stories under quarantine, we interviewed Austin Johnson,assistant professor and director of GSOE’s school psychology program.

Where are you sheltering in place? At my house near Mount Rubidoux, a few miles away from UCR.

What has been the most challenging, or biggest change, to your daily life over the past few weeks? We had our second child at the end of February, so figuring out how to work, co-parent a newborn again, and keep a three-year-old happy has been probably one of the most challenging periods in my family’s life. I feel very fortunate that I’m on paternity leave this quarter, so my teaching responsibilities have been released. Since I’m program director for our school psychology program, I still have meetings to attend, students to support, spreadsheets to obsess over, and emails to write, but I’m grateful that I don’t have to teach at the same time. Understanding what it means to be a constantly-together unit of four people with different needs all happening at different times is really a unique, sometimes deeply rewarding, sometimes completely punishing situation. 

Have you found any particularly helpful resources or discoveries during the past few weeks that you would like to share? It’s so hard, because I think every family is going to find their own method for making this way of living work for them. My wife and I started out by thinking we would just evenly split the day, with me taking the kids for one half and her taking the kids for the other half. But that’s not the reality of where our kids’ needs are and what she and I need for our work. She has grading and teaching and writing, I have lots of emails and Zoom calls, and our newborn still wants to eat every two hours, so we just shove work in where we can and have to let go of any stress of not working when we’re not. I’ve gotten much better about not feeling guilty when I’m doing not-work things in the middle of the day, because without childcare and with a newborn, I no longer have a choice. Our strategy now is to just check in with each other throughout the day, see what the other person needs, and figure out how to make that time happen.

What is your approach to communicating with students throughout this time? I’ve tried to be transparent and consistently communicative with students throughout my time as program director, so starting near the beginning of March, I’ve been trying to digest and summarize the important information they need to know like getting paid, how to work with practicum sites (when some but not all schools were shut down), and how to get ready to teach online. 

Grad school is rough, and my time as a student was very personally and professionally challenging (while also being hugely formative and great!), so I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a school psych doc student right now; your dissertation is a big question mark, your hours accrual methods have changed dramatically, you’re at home effectively all the time.

I don’t know, this is a genuinely impossible time. It’s put everyone in crisis. It's been important for me to try and understand what our graduate students’ specific concerns are and how I can support them in addressing those concerns. The school psychology community has been incredible in collating and sharing resources among one another, so I’ve drawn from the expertise of others as much as I can. It’s my hope that we’ve let our students know that we’re here for them.

What makes you successful/or helps you de-stress during this time? How do you keep your sanity? I’ve started running again, which I thought I hated, but given the option between running and never leaving my house, I’ll take it. Climbing has been my main activity-based self-care strategy for the last couple years, but climbing outdoors right now is irresponsible and the gyms are closed, so that’s off the table. I roast coffee every few days, I cook dinner, I make sure to put on music I like instead of just Baby Shark for the umpteenth time. I have a group text with friends from grad school who are also school psych faculty, and that’s been an amazing source of support. I need external reminders that life is still okay sprinkled throughout my day.

Anything else you’d like to touch upon? I feel deeply fortunate to be a salaried employee with a stable job during a time when so many people are faced with food and housing insecurity. I’d ask people who are in situations similar to mine to seriously consider how to help people in urgent need; for instance, people who are undocumented won’t receive a federal stimulus check and are in uniquely vulnerable positions during this crisis. There are organizations that are coming together to support people who really need it, like people who are undocumented, and I think it’s incumbent upon all of us to figure out how we can help people even when we’re stuck at home. At the moment, one critical avenue for support is money and a willingness to redistribute it to those who need it the most.