Looking back at the start of the pandemic, UWindsor’s Salsabel Almanssori marvels that she made it through each day.

A full-time teacher with the Greater Essex County District School Board, Almanssori was suddenly delivering lessons to her Grade 8 class online. Her husband was gone long hours as a small business owner, and with no extended family to rely on, it was up to Almanssori to care for their toddler during the day. In addition to her Grade 8 class, she was teaching a UWindsor course in Women’s and Gender Studies, and, as a doctoral candidate in UWindsor’s Faculty of Education, she had her dissertation proposal to prepare.

“It was challenging,” Almanssori said, in what can only be a great understatement.

Together with UWindsor’s Kimberly Hillier, Almanssori has written about how COVID-19 has affected the balance of her roles of mother, academic, and educator in an article in the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative.

The journal is a project of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement at York University. It publishes articles on motherhood across a multitude of perspectives including differences of class, race, sexuality, age, ethnicity, ability, and nationality. The latest edition focuses on the experiences of female academics during the pandemic.

“In our article, we use a feminist lens to look at the challenges associated with our multidimensional identities,” Almanssori said.

“We juxtapose our experiences at home with the expectations on us from the teaching front, from the academic front and from the home front where there are increases in domestic labour, caring for children, and homeschooling.”

Dr. Hillier is a primary teacher with the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board. She teaches while her six-year-old daughter is also learning online. Their school schedules begin and end 35 minutes apart and don’t share common lunch breaks or recesses.

Hillier, who got her PhD just as the pandemic was spreading to North America, also teaches an evening course in the Faculty of Education. It’s but another role she juggles.

Her own experiences have made her even more attuned to the needs of her students, many of whom are mothers of young children, too.

“As university instructors, we need to be empathetic and understanding of what’s going on in people’s personal lives right now.”

The same goes for employers, she said.

“Our experiences during the pandemic have stressed the importance of workplace flexibility and recognition of the demands that caregivers, especially mothers, are currently facing,” she said.

“The lion’s share of caregiving typically falls on the shoulders of mothers… With the pandemic, those demands have only increased.”

Hillier and Almanssori speak of the “emotional” labour women bear, too. Women are not only responsible for caring for their families, but organizing that care, too.

The responsibilities come with worry and guilt.

Almanssori had no choice but to put her son, Sajjad, now 2 years old, in daycare in September. She needs to focus on her students during the day and is expected to teach without distractions.

The thought of exposing Sajjad to the virus through his contact with other toddlers worries her. But she remembers the struggles of caring for her son and simultaneously teaching online at the end of the last school year. The added demands of the current school year would make it impossible for her to care for a toddler while teaching live most of the school day.

“He probably doesn’t remember what happened in March, but I still carry that guilt.”

Hillier and Almanssori said they hope their article draws greater attention to the issues of inequities in caregiving.

—Sarah Sacheli

UWindsor doctoral candidate Salsabel Almanssori says, as a full-time teacher with the Greater Essex County District School Board, she must balance life as a mother, an academic, and an educator. She said that even though she is working from home, she had no choice but to put her two-year-old son, Sajjad, in daycare.

Local leaders, researchers, and community members with interests in climate action will meet virtually over the lunch hour starting Monday, Feb. 22, in a week-long climate research initiative.

The series of presentations and roundtable discussions are being organized by the Windsor-Essex Climate Change Collaborative in partnership with the Windsor Law Cities & Climate Action Forum and the Windsor Law Transnational Environmental Law Clinic, with the support of the Office of the Vice-President of Research and Innovation, Michael Siu.

“The United Nations Secretary General has noted that 2021 is a particularly important year for global climate action and has highlighted the need for cities and local communities to lead these efforts,” says forum director Anneke Smit. “We know that there is a wealth of interest and expertise in Windsor-Essex and at UWindsor, and this is a way of celebrating that and deepening our collective commitment to climate action in this region.”

The groups hope to highlight the need for climate action to be a whole-of-community approach, including leadership by public anchor institutions.

“Climate change is already impacting our region in profound ways” says Claire Sanders, climate change specialist at the Essex Region Conservation Authority. “In response to the multitude of vulnerabilities and risks facing different sectors, as well as the need for collaborative and collective action, ERCA initiated a regional climate change strategy in 2018 called the Windsor Essex Climate Change Collaborative.”

Speakers on Feb. 22, including UWindsor president Robert Gordon, County of Essex Warden Gary McNamara, Hotel Dieu Grace Healthcare CEO Janice Kaffer, Erie Shores Healthcare CEO Kristin Kennedy, Conseil Scolaire Catholique Providence director of education Joseph Picard, City of Windsor climate change specialist Karina Richters, and senior administrators and representatives of several other local public institutions, will highlight ongoing or planned climate action by their institutions.

With climate research — and funding — increasingly focused on interdisciplinary collaboration, the week’s activities are also intended to support the development and strengthening of research networks.

Organizers encourage UWindsor researchers and community partners interested in collaboration to register to participate in one or more lunchtime research roundtable sessions from Feb. 23 to 25. Each session will focus on a different sphere of climate-related research at UWindsor and with community partners.

Topics to be discussed will include climate-resilient watersheds, urban sustainability, and international and transnational climate action, with roundtables taking a broad interpretation of what constitutes climate-related research areas. Participants will be given five minutes each to highlight current or planned research, or ideas for collaboration on climate-related themes. All Climate Week activities are also open to the public.

Researchers and other attendees are asked to register on the Windsor Law Centre for Cities website.

Poet Cecily Nicholson will conduct a public online reading from her work as her inaugural activity as UWindsor writer-in-residence at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 22.

Attend the event live through the Microsoft Teams videoconference platform. Admission is free and accessible through any web browser.

Nicholson is the author of the poetry books Triage and From the Poplars, winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her most recent work, Wayside Sang, which considers the trajectories of her birth father and his labour in the Windsor-Detroit area, won the 2018 Governor General’s Literary Award for English-language poetry.

Learn more about the writer-in-residence program hosted by the Department of English and Creative Writing.

Frank DeMarco, founding athletic director for the University of Windsor, helped develop and shape the athletic department by creating new opportunities for athletes while continuing to uphold high academic standards for those students.

Dr. DeMarco celebrated his 100th birthday Sunday, and Lancer correspondent, Andrew Papadopoulos, spoke remotely with him and two of his grandchildren, who are currently studying at UWindsor while competing on the Lancer varsity golf team.

Both Laura DeMarco and her brother Thomas DeMarco discussed how their grandfather’s local legacy and influence influenced their decision to stay home, and study while also learning life lessons that have shaped the people they are today.

The younger DeMarcos touch on important advice from their grandfather that has helped them succeed academically — and athletically.

Check out the complete story by Papadopoulos highlighting this family affair at goLancers.ca.

Hungry for a rematch after a close loss in the fall, Lancer Gaming will battle the Golden Gaels of Queen’s University in League of Legends action this Wednesday, Feb. 17, at 6 p.m.

The event will be broadcast live, free for all viewers through the league’s channel: Twitch.TV/OPSESPORTS.

Find more information about the esports program at UWindsor.ca/LancerGaming.