Karen Costa explains why educators should not require students to have their cameras on during synchronous distance learning—e.g. Zoom meetings. (I found this an extra click away from a related piece linked by Ryan Boren.)

Consider a student living with depression, who has not had the energy to shower or change her clothes this week. Or the student who has been fighting off a panic attack for the past 24 hours, who needs to pace back and forth across her bedroom in order to burn off some of that nasty adrenalin. Another student didn’t sleep last night. His head is pounding from the lack of sleep. He was worrying about whether he’s going to have a job next month, and if he’ll lose his house, and if his kids are going to be okay, and he’s still reeling from the grief of his aunt’s passing, an aunt he couldn’t mourn properly at a funeral, and he spent too much time reading the news, searching for some glimmer of hope that this will all be over soon, and finding none, and this is all just too much.

I’m going to have to have my camera on for my first-ever telehealth appointment, with my new therapist, next week. My intention is to mitigate the stress of that by not being seated, and letting myself move around if need be.

I figure that if some therapists do phone appointments, there’s probably not a fixed model for how video appointments are “supposed” to go.

I also just figure it’s my decision. How they respond to it will tell me a lot about this therapist.