7 Highly Effective Habits of Teachers Who Hold Classes on Snow Days

I just held synchronous classes in AdobeConnect on a snow day.

To explain this, I'm going to use this nice infographic I found from dailyedventures.com:



1. They Always Start with the Why
Why did I do this? Simple: it was peer review day. It's the only day they had to go over their drafts with each other before submitting the final in a week. Peer review is far too important to skip, and making margin comments on drafts--even thorough comments--is only part of the process. Being able to actually talk to each other is critical. So I did it.

2. They are malleable and can easily adapt

I had seen this coming by about 48 hours. I knew I wanted to go online--I had to. There's no room in the syllabus to lose a day. I scoured university policies and legal notices, making sure I wasn't doing anything illegal. I wasn't--there isn't a policy that explicitly addresses online classes at all, let alone one about holding one when the campus is closed.

Even so, holding peer review online is tricky. AdobeConnect is okay, but TAs can't move themselves in and out of breakout rooms. That's a big problem. In the past, I've plucked a TA out of a group--mid-sentence--and dropped her into a new group. It's a mess.

So how did I adapt this time? By somehow convincing six former TAs to come in and help. I have no idea how I did this--I didn't beg or sound desperate; I just asked--but somehow they all popped in for one of the classes. I had enough TAs for one to be in each group for all three sections. It was brilliant.

3. They embrace change 

Thanks to our class Twitter that I launched this week (@LyraBL101), I was able to tweet about this possibility, and then decision, all weekend. With the right tools and attitude, anything is possible!

4. They share, share, and then share some more

See #3. And this blog. Follow me @lyrahilliard. Add comments on this post. Ask me anything!

5. They think win-win-win

I wanted today to be fun--as fun as it could be, anyway. Had we been in class, I would have brought cookies in; I always do that for the first review. I obviously couldn't do that today, but I brought in special guests! Courtney gave a great Writing Center overview by sharing her screen with us and showing us the website. And then students had 40 minutes with a TA (or me) and their peers. I think students appreciated it. I hope so. I know that some had connectivity problems, and my own connection cut out in my first class. In my last class, I accidentally rearranged all of the groups, which was an epic disaster. But we survived (see #2).

6. They are extremely thorough and think two steps ahead

I had already called this on Saturday. I knew campus would be closed. If I hadn't had yesterday to plan, I wouldn't have thought to ask former TAs to help, and then none of this could have happened. We held a brief Google Hangout last night, TAs sent out an announcement, I got into AdobeConnect early this morning to test settings...it all worked. It all totally worked.

7. They actively care

Believe me, I wouldn't have minded a day off! But there was no way. This wasn't a "theory" class; it was a "practice" class: hands on, working with the writing class. Students can't lose this class--that's not fair. Or right. I asked my TAs what they thought--and what they thought students would think. "You should mention that it's optional," one said. "No--you shouldn't mention that it's optional--then no one will come." "I don't think anyone will come, anyway." "Yeah but it's peer review. They should understand that it's important." "Yeah but will they?"

Apparently, they did. About 75% of each class showed up. Not bad for a snow day.

After the last class, I asked D if he thought it worked. "You made the right call," he said.

What would you have done? Would you hold class online on a snow day?

Instructor Presence

I love teaching synchronous classes online.

Yes, AdobeConnect isn't perfect. Yes, my wireless can go on the fritz. Yes, a student or two may have a hard time getting into Googledocs.

But I love it all the same. I wouldn't have predicted this two years ago, when I started teaching blended courses, but I really can do things in my synchronous online days that I cannot do face-to-face.

I always give my students ten minutes to get settled on synchronous online days. Most students come in by 9:30, but I don't start the live class until 9:40. This gives students time to run to the library, if they have class just before mine, or time to ask pre-class questions in the chat box. Meanwhile, everyone completes an opening activity:

At 9:40, I start my webcam and come on line. I'm not showing the full screen because doing so will reveal my students' names, which I will not do. But here's me, in my home office, smiling as students type in their warrants to these enthymemes.

I call on three or four students to write their answer in; this prevents students from dozing (or walking away from the computer entirely). "Adam, Beatrice, Connie, David: what's the warrant for the Starbucks enthymeme?...Good...Ernest, Frank, Gertrude, Henrietta, you're on deck for Fox News..." and so forth.

All three classes nailed this, so we quickly moved on to the next piece: finding "Viable" sources. This part was new. The day before, one of my TAs, K, and I were were trying to figure out how to come back to stasis theory in a way that would be most useful to students.

"Maybe..." I suddenly thought, "maybe I should make some sort of presentation that walks students through the research process, like Narrowing Topic --> Finding better sources --> evaluating sources --> choosing the most useful sources, as in the ones with actual arguments--> adding those sources to your stasis grid. Maybe?"

"YES!" K responded. "Students will definitely find that useful, 'cause most of them are like "what is this stasis thing and why am I doing it. This will totally be helpful."

"Okay. I'm on it."

I made a rough map, popped it into Google Presentations, and asked my TAs to help by finding images and making the presentation pretty. K added a lot, and I worked on it until 1 am (of course). It worked out. After walking through the presentation and taking a sudden detour into Academic Search Premier, I explained exactly what to do with their "top" sources: enter them on the grid, like this:

After students identified the two categories with the most claims and questions, they went into their group Googledocs from a couple of weeks ago to find a two-source stasis grid for them to fill out with two of their sources:

2/19 - Stasis Grid

	author/publication/date	categorical	definitional	causal	value	action	jurisdiction
Source 1
Source 2

They had about twelve minutes to do this (my second two classes did, anyway; we were short on time in the first class), and my TAs and I watched them in their Googledocs while I kept an eye on the AdobeConnect chat box in case students had questions. I put myself on mute for this activity, unmuting myself halfway through for "You guys are all doing great! About five more minutes" and then "okay, we're about two minutes away..."

And then, when everyone came back into AdobeConnect, I explained that they would copy this activity into their own stasis grids that was part of their homework this weekend. Six sources in the stasis grid by Monday.

And voila. Toulmin + Finding and Evaluating Viable Sources + Stasis Grid Lesson Accomplished.

Why do I love days like this? Because it was a research-focused day. Student had to be on their laptops to search in Google and Academic Search Premier and then work on their stasis grids. Why would I do that in a face-to-face class? I want students to be talking with each other when we're face to face, not staring at their laptops. This is a perfect synchronous online day lesson plan. They need me, a live instructor with a face and a voice, to walk them through Google and especially Academic Search Premier, to show them Diigo and Storify and Pocket, to reinforce why stasis theory is useful. If this had been an asynchronous day, many students would have either been confused, completely lost, or wouldn't have done it at all.

This is what blended learning and teaching looks like with Team Lyra. I love it.

Macklemore, the Rhetorical Triangle, and Toulmin Logic

I did it!

Yesterday's lesson plan was awesome. Why? Because half of it was designed by one of my TAs. My newest TA, to be specific.

Last week, I subbed for 388V, the "how to be a TA" seminar. In it, the TAs/ students split into groups and came up with a lesson plan. The lesson plan that my TA's group came up with was so awesome that I told her I wanted to use it this Monday.

TA Lesson Plan from 388V: The Rhetorical Triangle

1. 4 minutes of a video clip covering the Grammy weddings. In 388V, the TAs used a video clip of an "Entertainment Tonight Style" host recapping the performance. I adapted it to be a video clip of the actual performance: Macklemore "Same Love" Grammys 2014 (3:22 to 6:00)
2. Ask students to ID the message, speaker, and audience
3. Draw the rhetorical triangle and explain how the three points relate to each other

This is essentially where the TAs in 388V stopped. Here's how I adapted it for yesterday:

Continuation: From Rhetorical Triangle to Toulmin Logic

1. Ask "What would happen if we changed one of these? What if the audience were different?" What if the audience was a group who was not supportive of gay marriage?"
2. Use "a conservative congregation" as the new audience.
3. Would Macklemore and Queen Latifah be good speakers for this audience? Would they be able to deliver this message as effectively? No? Why not? Okay, who would be a good speaker?
4. ID reverend/ preacher (all three sections came up with this on their own). 
5. Pairs: In pairs, come up with the best way to deliver this message to this audience. Frame it as a complete enthymeme: a claim + reason. (2 minutes)
6. Ask pairs to give their claim and reason. Write on the board. Have class ID which claim and reason would be the strongest and why.

As they were evaluating the enthymemes, the students discussed the values and beliefs of the audience. "Yes, invoking God is a good idea because..." or "No--don't invoke God. Make it about equality." "So, separate church and state?" "Yes, that's the only way this will work for them." "No, that's not enough--this needs to be about Christian values.."

Brilliant. "Okay, what you guys have just done is figured out which values and beliefs to appeal to in order for the audience to accept the message. In so doing, you've completed the enthymeme with the warrant.

Enthymeme: Claim + Stated Reason. That's your skeleton of the argument. In order to make sure it works, you need to identify the unstated assumption, or warrant, embedded in the enthymeme.

Complete Argument:               Claim + Stated Reason

                                                            Warrant

Bingo. Then, students took out their homework exercise, in which they had identified the claims and stated reasons for two articles that made arguments about their research topic, and worked on identifying the warrants in those arguments in groups.

After a few minutes, I wrote a couple of their enthymemes on the board and we identified the warrants as a class, e.g., 

Orca whales should not be kept in captivity because no killer whale has ever killed a human in the wild.

Warrant: Only animals who have killed a human in the wild should be kept in captivity.

And so forth. Tomorrow: back to stasis theory and evaluating sources, with a splash of Toulmin for reinforcement. Both stasis theory and Toulmin logic will be reinforced almost daily for several weeks--these take awhile to really click. But the triumph: both concepts are in by Week 4!

Lofty Ambitions: How Much Theory Can I Introduce in One Week?

Well, that depends.

What's my objective? To stick to my syllabus? To frontload the theory before students tackle the first major paper? Or to ensure that students are learning the material in a manageable way?

Hm, I don't know. The last one seems like a laudable goal. Some might say it's the only important goal up there. In fact, I'm one of them.

Look: the stuff I teach is harder than students expect. It's harder than most people imagine when I tell them what I teach. First-year college writing: two parts process writing and one part research skills blended with peer review and served with a slice of grammar and punctuation?

Sure, I do all that. I also teach argument theory, digital literacy, and rhetorical awareness and analysis. That doesn't happen quickly, as I am grudgingly remembering this week.

The first two weeks were devoted to rhetorical context and summary. As I stand here at the end of Week 3, I'm rethinking that unit--I'm asking them to summarize an argument before they even know how an argument works. Whatever--I'll revisit that at some point. I need them writing within the first week, and the articles I choose at the top of the semester are easy enough to digest:

We start with two sample summaries of Gabriel's 2010 Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age. Then, groups of students summarized either Steve Kolowich's 2011 What Students Don't Know, Peg Tyre's 2012 The Writing Revolution, or Josh Keller's 2009 Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers. 

This past Monday, they submitted an individual summary on either Carr's Is Google Making us Stupid, Shaahin Cheyene's 2012 How the Internet is Changing our Brain or Clive Thompson's 2012 Is Google Wrecking Our Memory, which they'd already discussed in a Lyra Classic: an overcomplicated discussion board prompt that asked them to put their article in conversation with Eli Pariser's Ted Talk on Internet Filters (everyone needs to watch this--everyone--and assign it in class. Do it because we all need to know this, and do it because the discussion that this generates is brilliant).

I asked them to submit these summaries as an ungraded assignment. I've never done this before--it's usually associated with maybe ten lousy points--but I like it. I told them that this was their chance to receive feedback from me before handing something in for a grade. Makes sense, right?

Back to my dilemma: I introduced stasis theory last Monday, which is easy enough to do in fifteen minutes. The trick is to follow up with it well in the next class. This went okay yesterday, but I was more distracted by the fact that students clearly didn't grasp rhetorical context--that thing I've been pounding every day for three weeks now--and had to. I spent more time on that by tying it in with the other big piece of yesterday: simple online research skills. It was an online synchronous day in AdobeConnect, so we all hit Google and searched for a few things. We got to reinforce Pariser--"Who has a different results page than I do?" and then go over simple things like using quotation marks and filtering for dates (2011..2014). And then we got to the good stuff, which I hadn't even planned on:

"Okay, before I even click on this link--what do I know about this article? Here's my results page, and I've taken three nanoseconds to decide I want to click on this one. Why? What am I looking for?"

The most important clue: "Where is it published? What can we detect from the website? That's the first step. What else? Date. Okay. Let's click on it. Here's the link in the AdobeConnect chat box so that you can go to this article on your own computer. Alright, let's check this out. I've never read this article before. Let's pretend that we've all been assigned a short, 750-word assignment about blended learning in college. A basic expository piece to be published in The Diamondback next week. Take a few seconds to scan this. Would you use this source?"

This was not in my lesson plan. But this was the perfect way to introduce (introduce?!! Then why didn't I do this on Day 2?) rhetorical context. Now they get it (I hope. I should still reinforce it Monday so that it totally sticks...). But in essence, they've got it. Great. So then the trick was to bounce from there to stasis theory, picking up from Monday, which I thought they could nail as preparation for...

...Toulmin theory this Monday?

I must be Out. Of. My. Mind.

Stay tuned for Major Syllabus Adjustment #1 in Spring 2014.

Timing Lesson Plans

I never leave enough time in my lesson plans. Like ever.

It's not for lack of planning: I write them all out--to the time. I rewrite all of my lesson plans, even lessons that I know are successful. So how did I run out of time yesterday?

Okay, this is what happened: I didn't have time to go over the one-sentence summaries from last Wednesday, so I tried to put them into yesterday's lesson plan, which really didn't work. Observe:

:00 Quiz
:05 One-Sentence Summaries from last week
:15 Aims/ Methods/ Materials
:20 Group Summaries: Module 2 → “How to Write a Summary”
:45-50: One-sentence  summaries w/ diff sent. struct.
:00-05: PCA Wed (asynch/ Voicethread)

Stop laughing.

Okay, the quiz actually was just five minutes. Super easy, most true/ false or multiple choice, like what's the TA's name, where is my office (one of the options was Florida), and then some fairly simple concept questions (like rhetorical context, which actually most students did not get, despite the fact that I went over it last Wednesday and it was in the WA homework. I honestly don't know why so many students missed that one--anyone? Insight/ tips?)

The one-sentence summaries: I did go over them in my first class, which of course took ten minutes, not five. Reinforced the precise verbs, putting the author as the grammatical subject, and that the information in the one-sentence version needs to include rhetorical context and authorial intent/ message. This is *your* thesis statement about the text. This is also...

...The "Aims" in Joseph Harris's Aims/ Methods/ Materials. Methods and Materials are basically the construction and the tools (Methods --> how the author builds the text; Materials --> with what (tools, or evidence). Methods and materials are what gets included in a paragraph summary.

That went well in my first class...except that it of course took twenty-five minutes, not fifteen. That said, packing sentence structure, precise verbs, does/ says, and aims/ methods/ materials in twenty-five minutes isn't half bad. I just don't know why I thought I could do it in fifteen.

So, writing a group summary takes forty minutes, not thirty. And I actually knew this--I remember this from last semester (and the one before, for that matter). So, in my second and third classes, I cut the one-sentence summaries from last week, a choice I don't like because I wasn't able to integrate this class as tightly with the last one--and because that opening fifteen minutes really was helpful in my first class. So, the net result is that my first class was stressed that they didn't have enough time to finish their summaries (they finished them by midnight) and my second two classes didn't get to see me discuss their sentences and how that relates to aims/ methods/ materials.

Moreover--and this is arguably the biggest fallout--cutting into those last fifteen minutes means that I run out of time for "context" notes, like explaining why we're doing what we're doing, how this relates to what we did last week/ what we will do next week. I also lose really key "housekeeping" notes, like explaining that my TAs and I work as a team, my TA "office lounge," and things like class notes, which I haven't yet talked about at all!

So: I'm writing Monday's lesson plan already and need to save myself 20 minutes to go over all the auxiliary details that I haven't had time to yet. Maybe 25. That will work--it's the first day after the add/ drop period ends, so Monday's students will officially have committed themselves to the class.

I might post Monday's lesson plan here first for C and R to comment on, as they've both TAd twice and know all too well the gap between my ambition and what is realistic in the classroom.

So, tomorrow is our first asynchronous day. Student's are watching K's Summary Video and then doing a Voicethread in which they're responding to each other's group summaries from yesterday. The Voicethread doesn't explicitly incorporate the Summary video, unfortunately (that's always the ideal with video lectures--students need to do something with them to make them relevant), but it's set up pretty well. My TAs are doing a "demo" slide so that after the first slides where I explain how Voicethread works, students can see a slide in action. I'm excited for this one--I think it will be cool for students to hear each other comment on each other's summaries instead of just writing about them in a discussion board, as they have in the past. This makes it more real.

I still want to do something with those sentences...I don't know what. Put them all somewhere and have students revise them? Possibly. Where--a Discussion Board (meh). A Googledoc? Maybe. I could do that sentence structure thing, i.e., revise this twice, one by opening with these two words ("In the...") and the other with ("Writing for..."). These are LAST week's one-sentence summaries (all of Gabriel), so in theory, they know more now about good one-sentence summaries.

Yeah....but then they'll all be exactly the same. They should really do them with the new articles. Maybe it can be in two parts: revise someone else's sentences in two ways, and then revise your group's Gabriel sentence from last week in two ways.

Hm. I might like this. This saves me from having to beat this into the ground next Monday, and gets rid of that holdover item from last Wednesday.

Okay. That's what I'll do then. Video + Voicethread + Sentence-level edits in a Googledoc. Good.