When CUNY shut down for a week, my class was at the tail end of reading and discussing Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s The Inexplicable Logic of My Life.
The disruption meant that we had one planned class left for discussing the book, but everyone was so disoriented and worried about the world that it was difficult to think about returning to the book in a substantial way when we reconvened online (or at least, that was my impression). I also didn’t want to a) leave loose ends hanging for this book or b) start a new book AND a new platform at the same time.
So it worked out pretty well: I was able to ask students to play around with the new platforms using a text we’d already discussed. They were able to gather their thoughts on the book and get comfortable with these new online tools at the same time. And moving forward into the next week, they’re beginning to read the next book, now that they’ve gotten a bit comfortable with a whole new way of learning.
Here’s how I worked it all:
On Sunday, I emailed the full document outlining the plans for the semester. That document (posted here) gave instructions for accessing Slack and Zoom, the two online platforms I settled on. When students entered Slack, they were asked to post in a #confirmation channel, just saying hi so I could keep track of who accessed the Slack, and to get them posting, even if only one word. On Monday, I posted to the #random channel with an image of some blackout poems I had created. The purpose of this was to get them used to seeing the #random channel as a place for easy informal conversation, and to allow them to post their own images. In this class, no one responded until Wednesday, when I posted an image of my tea infuser, a cat chasing a fish.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, I sent another email with a few PowerPoint slides. My hope was that this would provide stability and reassure students by giving them a concrete plan. The other purposes were to provide a review of what we had talked about in previous classes, which seemed like a lifetime ago, and to encourage them (but not require them) to begin using Slack. And also to provide a bit of levity – see the “Whistling in the Dark” slide, which links to this video and this one.
On Thursday, we had out first Zoom lesson. I started by asking students to, one by one, tell us about how they’ve been feeling and/or something they’ve begun to incorporate into their routine now that everything is different. It was good for a number of reasons. My primary reasons for doing that were to 1) hear their voices and 2) make sure everyone knows how to mute themselves 😉
It went way over the time I thought it would (it took 30 minutes to get through everyone) but was so worth it. I felt the sense of community that we had before coming back as they talked about their jobs and their families and various worries. Everyone was tense and a bit formal at the start, and by the end we were back to our usual loose, comfortable atmosphere. Moving into talking about Slack and the assignments etc was a lot easier after that.
Students also fiddled with Zoom while we met and found features I hadn’t known about – I had been asking for them to physically show me a thumbs up if they understood/were on board with something I said. They discovered the ability to send a thumbs up emoji, and I will incorporate that in future Zoom sessions! They also discovered the ability to digitally raise their hands, which lets me know who has a question and works better than the in-video chat window.
When we had all gotten comfortable again, I asked if anyone had any questions or concerns. There were a couple questions and some general anxiety about how the class will work. I addressed those briefly, and moved seamlessly into a synchronous demonstration of how Slack works. Via Zoom, I shared my screen with everyone and showed them:
- how to switch between classes on Slack, since many of them are attending multiple classes on Slack now.
- how to find the channels that may not appear in their menu right away (on both desktop and mobile).
- how to post to a channel.
- how to reply to someone else’s comment or question.
- where to post general queries and where to post text- or assignment-specific thoughts.
- how to privately message me.
- how posting shorter comments works better than long responses to my prompts, to facilitate conversation among their peers.
I then asked everyone to post one comment or question about The Inexplicable Logic of My Life in that book’s channel. The comments came flying in – almost all of them were immediately comfortable with the platform, and it was clear that they had been thinking about the book quite a bit! There were a few snags, which was part of why I asked them to do this, of course – to identify any problems and enable us to troubleshoot. Three students had issues, and I was able to help them while the rest of the class posted and read each other’s posts.
After everyone had posted, I asked them to respond to at least one classmate’s comment or question. The purpose here was to make sure they knew how to start a thread (Slack’s interface isn’t entirely intuitive for that) and also to reinforce the message that “I agree with you” is not enough of an engagement. Once they got that, the responses – again – came flying in, and I very much enjoyed watching the conversations unfold. For me, it was like listening in to groupwork as I usually do during in-person classes. It reassured me that this will work!
Finally, I showed them the #reading-list channel, which is a variation on an assignment I had literally given to them the day before CUNY shut down for a week.
I then asked them if they had any other questions or concerns. They did, of course 🙂 I answered them, we reviewed the requirements for the following week (read The Sisters of the Winter Wood at your own pace; engage ten times on Slack, but no I’m not literally counting ten times; try to set aside two half-hour chunks of the week to be on Slack rather than checking in constantly or at the last second; video-lectures and PowerPoints and relevant links will be posted to the #sisters-winter-wood channel and BlackBoard).
(We did not get to talk about the songs in the book, which is a disappointment to me. But c’est la vie!)
And then, with a sense of relief, hope, and determination (at least on my part), we said goodbye, to meet again in a week’s time!
Dainy Bernstein 
One thought on “Online YA Class: Day 1 (Setting Things Up + The Inexplicable Logic of My Life)”