Arrive & Settle In

Students are asked to Arrive on the Zoom call 5 minutes before the start time. As a student, your job is to show up prepared to be present and engaged the whole time, so please be ready to put your phone away or on Do Not Disturb, have your coffee, water, and snacks on hand, and your notebook and book ready to go! Please also make sure your computer is charged up and your camera and mic are connected so you can be both seen and heard. We ask that cameras be on as much as possible so that we can connect personally in this way (although it is okay to step away briefly and turn them off).

Recall

Each session begins with a 5 to 10-minute exercise called Recall. Before opening the text and getting into any analysis, we’ll start by just throwing paint on the wall. What words, phrases, ideas, questions, and moments do we remember off the top of our minds? There is no need for order or logic in this part of the conversation. It’s sort of the equivalent of a physical warm-up, but in the context of dialogue, for contributing to the pool of thought we are co-creating.

Opening Question

Then comes the Opening Question—an open-ended question that the tutor asks the cohort about the text— to kick off the discussion portion. As a student, your job is to set out to work together to answer it as a team. It is okay if the discussion veers away from the question itself: it is guaranteed that new questions will emerge, which are necessary to answer the Opening Question. This question is just one way into the text, but providing a conclusive answer to it is not the goal (or even necessarily possible).

Discussion

Students begin to Discuss—to make statements and observations, ask additional questions, and present theories and interpretations about the text. You have permission to challenge each other, agree and disagree, build on ideas, or redirect. The main skill that each person can practice in the process of contributing their thoughts is pointing to evidence within the text to back up what they are saying. We will practice collective decision-making, e.g., “Let’s pause and read this together out loud.” Someone might say, “Let’s turn to this section because I think it relates.” While you are all in conversation with each other, each of you is in conversation with the text. The tutor is there to serve as a guide, to affirm helpful movements and avoid pitfalls—and of course, learning and contributing, too.

Collaborative Summary & Closing Prompts

In the final 10 minutes of each session, we bring the discussion to a close and collaboratively summarize what we’ve discussed, tracing where the dialogue led to productive moments, and noticing where it felt challenging or stagnant. Then the tutor offers three prompts specific to the reading: 1) Academic Writing, 2) Creative Writing, and 3) Research Activity. These three prompts are optional post-session activities for you to work on, but completing them is not a requirement. We also pull from the discussion itself, so students have the option to come up with prompts that most interest them.  

Personal Breaks: While there are no scheduled breaks, so that the discussion can keep its momentum, if you ever need to take a break, step out, use the restroom, or turn off your camera for a moment, you are welcome to do that at any point in time. Take care of yourselves—the discussion will be there when you get back!