👻 Absences and Lateness

We live in a culture with limited access to fundamental human rights such as mental and physical healthcare. This makes me uncomfortable with penalizing students for missing class or being late to class. Also, CUNY is a non attendance-taking university, and while there are different interpretations of what this policy means, I take it to mean that you are an adult who can make your own decisions about whether or not you’re able to attend synchronous (live) sessions.

I hope to co-create a classroom environment with you where you feel comfortable, respected, and excited to engage in this class. However, if engagement isn’t possible for you on a particular day, or if you are going to be very late because of a technical problem or some other issue, I would invite you to catch up by doing the work for the day, reading through the discussion that we have on Slack, watching the videos in the #whatyoumissed channel, and then filling out an exit ticket to check your understanding.

If persistent absences or lateness are occurring, or if you are worried about your own ability to stay on track, I will ask you to meet with me in student drop-in hours to come up with a plan. 

🤗 Accessibility

It is important to me to provide an accessible learning environment for all of the students in this class. You don’t have to have an official letter from a university disability office to express what does and does not work for you as a learner (though if you do have such a letter, letting me know is always helpful.) I will ask you to give feedback frequently, but in addition to this, please don’t hesitate to contact me by e-mail or “drop by” my virtual student hours any time.

You may also contact Dr. Mirian Detres-Hickey at the Office of Special Services for Students with Disabilities at QC.SPSV@qc.cuny.edu or 718-997-5870 for more information about receiving additional support services and accommodations.

🎥 Camera Policy

I like seeing your face in class, but you don’t need to feel obligated to turn on your camera. We’ve all got stuff going on in the backgrounds of our lives that we might not want other people to see. There will be moments when I request that you turn on your cameras (i.e. before going into breakout rooms to chat with your partner), but doing so is never a requirement.  

⏰ Class Schedule

It can be helpful to stick to a routine when you’re learning online, so I’m planning to hold synchronous classes (where we all meet at the same time on Zoom) twice a week. I would like to ask that you hold open the full class time, though we will rarely meet for all of it. When class is over, I’ll be around to answer questions or provide support while you do asynchronous work (work that you can do on your own time.) 

🖥️ Device Rental

Do you need to rent a computer this semester? Queens College is loaning a limited amount of devices to students. For more information on renting a computer, visit the device distribution website.  

✉️ E-mailing

Generally speaking, I prefer that we communicate via our class instant messaging system, Slack. You are welcome to e-mail me, but students have mostly found it more convenient to reach me there. I just tend to check it more. Also, there are parrot emojis.

I will make every effort to respond to your emails in a timely way. Occasionally, it can take me up to 48 hours to respond. Please note that I often don’t check my messages on the weekends either on Slack or on e-mail because taking breaks from screens when we can is important! 

💲Emergency Relief Funds

CUNY has established the Chancellor’s Emergency Relief Grant Program in response to the serious financial hardships many CUNY students and their families face as a result of the COVID-19 emergency. The program provides one-time $500 grants to qualifying CUNY students, including undocumented immigrants and student parents, to help cover their basic living expenses as the pandemic and its economic consequences continue to unfold. For more information on accessing this fund, please visit this website. 

The Queens College Carroll and Milton Petrie Student Emergency Grant Fund provides quick response emergency grants to matriculated students in good academic standing who are experiencing personal emergencies. The goal of the fund is to help students remain in school without interruption and successfully complete their degree. For more information on the Petrie Student Emergency Grant Fund, please visit this website. 

👯‍♂️ Engaging With Respect And Empathy

For this class to work well, we have to help each other. While we might not always agree, it is very important that we treat each other with kindness, patience, empathy, and respect. 

Here are some tips: 

• Respect your colleagues’ pronoun preferences and the pronunciation of their name.  
• Try to speak from your own experiences rather than speaking in absolutes or speaking on behalf of whole groups of people. 
• Notice when you’re talking a lot and hold back a bit, or notice when you’ve been quiet and challenge yourself to speak up a bit more. 
• Ask for clarification when you didn’t understand what someone said before assuming the worst. 
• When you hurt someone, try to acknowledge the impact rather than focusing on your intent.

🎟️ Exit Tickets

After each class, you will be invited to complete an exit ticket, which will be a short exercise that helps me to understand what you took away from the day’s lesson. 

If you cannot attend class, I will make and post a short recap video in the #whatyoumissed Slack channel. You should still complete the day’s assignments and try to complete an exit ticket within 24 hours of the class that you miss. This will help me to know who is staying on track, who needs extra support, and what is clear and unclear. 

🍎 Food Access

The Queens College Knights Table Food Pantry offers pre-plated meals to CUNY families once per week on Tues.s from 10:30am – 3pm, and pantry items on Monday-Thurs. from 12pm-4pm. To make an appointment with the pantry, please visit this site.

If you have difficulty affording groceries or accessing sufficient food to eat every day, or if you lack a safe and stable place to live, and you believe this may affect your performance in this course, please notify me if you are comfortable in doing so. This will enable me to work with you and also to provide any resources that I have.

🔠  Grading

Rather than using a point or percentage system, this class uses a grading agreement. Essentially, you will choose the grade that you would like to earn, and then you will earn that grade by completing the necessary requirements. This means that while I will provide feedback on your writing, it will not be evaluated based on its quality. Instead, you will be evaluated based on the amount of work that you do, and then you can use feedback to help yourself to improve your drafts over time. We will discuss the grading agreement a lot in the first few weeks of class.

🗓 Late Work

I do not penalize late work. However, turning work in late can mean that you will not receive feedback from me or peer review on your own work. This can make it more difficult to meet requirements on assignments, to finish the amount of work necessary to earn a particular grade, to get your feedback in time to make changes to your drafts, and to have the benefit of your peers’ feedback. Ultimately, this can end up negatively impacting your overall learning experience. Therefore, I encourage you to meet the deadlines.

I also know that life happens and sometimes you won’t. For my own planning purposes, I ask that you please let me know as soon as possible if you will not meet a deadline, especially if it’s for an assignment portfolio, and when I can expect your draft. If late work is a perpetual problem, I will ask for you to meet with me so that we can discuss a plan.  

💚 Mental Health Services

The Counseling, Health and Wellness Center seeks to support the physical, psychological, educational, and social well-being of Queens College students. Here, students can seek accommodations and support for their disabilities; consult a nurse and health educator about health, diet, and reproductive concerns; discuss academic and personal issues with licensed mental health professionals; receive pre-professional personal advisement for minority students; and learn about the peer support services program. All services are confidential and free of charge.​

This semester, services will be provided remotely. For more information, please visit the Counseling, Health, and Wellness Center website. 

You can also call New York State’s COVID-19 Emotional Support Helpline at 844-863-9314 to talk to specially trained volunteer professionals. They are there to listen, support and offer referrals from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week.

😱 Plagiarism

There are a lot of bad ideas about plagiarism. In fact, we’ll investigate some of them in this class. Plagiarism is cultural, audience-dependent and contextual: what “counts” as plagiarism in one circumstance doesn’t “count” in another circumstance. 

We will discuss plagiarism explicitly and often to give you a chance to clarify what it does and doesn’t involve (and I will point it out if I see it happening in your work). I will assume, in most cases, that plagiarism is unintentional, and you will be given an opportunity to learn from your mistakes. But as we’ll discuss, there can be some major consequences for it in universities, so it’s important to me that you understand what it is and how to avoid it. 

⏺ Recording class

Unless you have a reasonable accommodation from the Office of Disability Services and have communicated with me about doing so, please do not record class sessions. Please note that it is not legal to share images or recordings of this class without the consent and knowledge of those being recorded. In other words, you cannot post an image or a recorded part of this class on social media or send it to a friend outside of this class. This is not only to respect each other’s privacy and in-process thinking, it’s also because students (and I) am joining this class across a variety of contexts and in states that have different laws regarding the right to know whether you are being recorded. 

I will not be making recordings of this class available. However, at the end of classes, I will make (and post) a short recap video using the Google Slides from the class to the #whatyoumissed channel in Slack. If you cannot attend class, you can watch these videos to complete your exit ticket. 

👀 Sharing Your Work

Please keep in mind that everything that you share on Slack is public to our class and also gets stored on Slack’s servers indefinitely, even if you erase it or decide to make your submission channel private. Note that this is generally true of any cloud-based service (i.e. Google Docs, Office 365, Outlook, etc.) 

Like with recording for class, you are not authorized to distribute any writing that a classmate does outside of this class for any reason without your classmate’s written consent. 

You are welcome to make your personal submission channel private only to me. To do this, you should send me a DM on Slack to let me know that you would like for your channel to remain private. If you have concerns about sharing your work with the class or on a cloud-based platform, please talk to me or e-mail me as soon as possible.

👩🏾‍🎓Student Drop-In Hours

Sometimes called “office hours,” student drop-in hours are one of the best parts of my job. I love teaching, and I especially love talking to students about their interests, their passions, their projects (even if it’s not for my class), their future goals, and what they’re excited about learning. Come to student drop-in hours with questions about the class, strategies for distance learning, your transition to college, or really anything you’d like. I want to get to know you. 

I will make myself available on Slack on Monday from 12:15-1:15, and I will be able to hop into a Zoom conference during this time if you would like to meet that way. If you need to meet with me outside of this time, you are welcome to send me a message on Slack to set up an appointment.

📚 Textbook

I am committed to designing what are called Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) classes, which use what are called Open Educational Resources (OERs). This means that you will not pay additional money for materials in this class, and instead, all readings will come from a book that has been made freely available through Open Access Textbooks: a project sponsored by West Virginia University.

You will sometimes be able to choose classes at Queens College based on their status as a ZTC. If you have questions about searching for classes like this or anything else related to the use of OERs in classes, I would be very excited to talk to you about it!

👩🏽‍💻The Writing Center

Good writers are good at understanding the way that their writing affects other people. It can be very difficult to gauge this without talking to anyone about your work (especially when you’re new to a particular kind of writing, or you don’t understand an audience’s expectations for your work.) This is why a Writing Center exists.

The Writing Center has a staff of trained tutors who are familiar with the English 110 curriculum. While I will not require you to go to the Writing Center, I heavily recommend making appointments to discuss your drafts. Here’s a link where you can learn about signing up for an appointment.