Participant: Isabel (Pseudonym) - Flexible Learning Environments: Minoritized College Students’ Experiences in HyFlex

Participant: Isabel (Pseudonym)
Originally from the Andalusian region of Spain, Isabel had taken a second identity as a
U.S. citizen. Born in 1980s Spain, Isabel was part of the first generation out of Franco’s
dictatorship. She has lived and worked in South Korea, Spain, and the United States. Isabel
identified as a cisgender heterosexual woman. She has been married for 11 years to her partner
of 20 years and has a 7-year-old child. Regarding her ethnic identity, Isabel explained:
I consider myself Hispanic, originally from Spain. But I have taken up a second identity
as a U.S. citizen, so I have double citizenship. Even though my first 16 years of life I was
in Spain. But I also consider myself White. Yes, those are my . . . I am Hispanic because
I speak Spanish but I’m also White because I’m European and it’s different.
Even though she is White, as an English language learner, when Isabel is in the United States,
she has identified primarily with her linguistic group: Hispanics. She has felt close to the Latinx
community. When she stepped into a HyFlex course she brought with her the perspective of all
her intersectionalities. Because her courses were taught at a university in the United States, her
bilingual and Hispanic intersectionalities played a role in coloring her experience as a graduate
student in the instructional technologies master’s program she was completing.
Economically speaking, Isabel’s life has been relatively comfortable. Throughout her life,
Isabel has explored various careers that ultimately led her to pursue a career in instructional
design and technology. She has worked as an event planner and fundraiser for world renowned
institutions and think tanks. She has a teaching credential and has also taught Spanish and
computer science for children at a school in California. The COVID-19 global pandemic has
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been challenging, but Isabel took this as an opportunity for professional growth in a tight
timeframe. She shared:
When the COVID started my school gave me a week to reinvent myself. And I jumped
into . . . I had no idea of this augmented reality . . . virtual reality . . . because I was
teaching elementary students, right? I had to arm myself with techniques in ways to keep
them focused on me for 40 minutes. So, you know, augmented reality, all these types of
technology tests?
Isabel considered herself a resourceful lifelong learner, and the COVID-19 pandemic forced her
to put that part of her identity into action. Recognizing unusual times call for unusual methods,
Isabel quickly familiarized herself with some new technologies and put that new knowledge into
practice seeking to make the best out of a bad situation. Isabel, however, had some doubts about
her new approach as she recalled:
But I always had a question . . . was like, am I using these correctly? Am I really
providing a learning behind all this? Am I facilitating something to these kids? I’ve been
getting it. And that’s how I came into instructional design really, because even the
Spanish curriculum, I engineered and designed it myself without even knowing pretty
much what I was doing . . . so that’s about me.
As with many other teachers around the country and the world, in the face of shelter-in-place
order due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, Isabel had to come up quickly with curricular
solutions to meet the needs of her students who would now be joining class from their homes via
internet. She did the adjustments she could do, but she wondered if those adjustments were
effective for her students. Had she been given more time, she would likely have investigated
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more thoroughly her curricular choices and would have vetted more thoroughly the technologies
she chose for her classroom.
The COVID-19 global pandemic had also been challenging for Isabel on a personal level.
As a parent of a young child, she had to cut back on her work to make sure she had time to be
present for her child and to take care of her own health. She said:
But I have to admit that with the pandemic, the pandemic started, I had to downsize my
job because I had my child at home with me for personal reason. And I am
immunocompromised, so I couldn’t afford to get COVID, and so I had to care for my
child at home, who is 7, while my husband worked remotely and maintain you know,
sustain the family we have to divide and conquer, adjust to the situation. That said, I
started doing a master’s degree because I couldn’t be just a mom.
Although Isabel was forced to downsize her work, she still sought ways she could grow
personally. She decided to start a master’s program she could attend from home. This was not
her first attempt at a master’s degree. Isabel had previously been enrolled in a master’s program,
but halfway through the program she became very ill and had to drop out of the program to deal
with an immune disease she developed.
Although the disease was debilitating and caused her to develop alopecia, Isabel is not
defeated by the disease and has a positive outlook in life. Isabel believed in rejecting capitalist
ambitions and described herself as someone who was here to make a difference for the better.
When asked about her life’s purpose, Isabel responded:
So, I knew my purpose was . . . so I have different purposes in my life, right? There are
bigger and some smaller purposes. Um when I was in college, actually, I studied
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international business. And I worked on a student assignment, I worked for a rating
company, you know? You measure the risk of private companies. It was awful, it was so
awful. And I knew that my purpose in life is actually not making other people richer. I
like actually making a difference on things that I really don’t like.
Isabel liked to volunteer her time working with nonprofits. For several years she has been
working with refugees. She volunteered her time and skills to help improve the lives of refugees
from Africa. She explained, “I volunteer my skills and my time just to advance somebody’s life
make some sort of difference. I just find it part of my purpose in life. I know it is.” Isabel has not
let the COVID-19 pandemic nor her immune disease slow her down. She is a people person and
loves the human connection. As a student, she has taken courses face-to-face, online, hybrid, and
HyFlex. Her academic experiences, combined with her life experience, interests,
intersectionalities, and life’s calling made her an interesting participant for this study.
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