What If A Student Is Unresponsive In Zoom?

On Thursday January 29, 2021, a wise teacher named Dwayne Reed tweeted an important question on Twitter:

Have you ever removed a non-responsive scholar from your virtual classroom? One whom you’re receiving absolutely no communication from. Is it ever right to do that, or is it always wrong? Are there any exceptions?

We responded with the following thread that we feel may be a helpful resource for teachers and administrators who are struggling with virtual learning during a time of multiple global pandemics. Here is what we shared (with a few modest corrections).

We feel that it is inadvisable to remove an unresponsive scholar from an online classroom. On its face, suspension and expulsion, even in virtual space, goes against the principles of trauma-informed/healing-centered education and undercuts cultural-responsiveness.

We recommend this:

✔️ Affirmatively (without punishment like “10 points off if you don’t turn on your video!”) ask the student to respond and share why it is important to participate by saying,

Participating with your video and audio on helps you own and remember the material in a much deeper way most of the time, friends. Special thank you for giving deeper participation a try.

✔️ If the student is still not responding, ask if they are okay. There could be trauma at play.

Or the youth could have something in their home environment that would shame them if revealed on camera.

✔️ Then, without suspension or expulsion, contact the appropriate school or learning administrator to talk about the youth and encourage participation.

✔️ If need be, talk to the parent and gain background. Avoid presenting non-participation as always bad because there could be mitigating factors, esp. for low income BIPOC youth.

✔️ Most importantly, talk at the next available time, to the youth. Connect. Show care.

Another wise teacher named Megan Woodrich joined the conversation and tweeted the following questions:

What do you advise if it’s more than one student? What if it’s ten? What if you’ve called home already? And spoken to counselors? I typically err on the side of curiosity and compassion, but it seems like there is little I can actually *DO* right now.

We responded with the following:

We have faced this same situation: more than one student is non-responsive and not participating in the Zoom space. Furthermore, parents and administrators have been contacted. We recommend the following steps in this scenario.

✔️ First realize that we teachers deal with multiple unresponsive and non-participating students a lot sometimes day-to-day within our in-person classes as well as virtual learning spaces. We must not assume that lulls in responsiveness and participation are always bad.

✔️ A quiet learning space where the students are “hanging back” or even multi-tasking behind their cameras may simply be what our exhausted, stressed, hurting students need on a given day during a pandemic.

✔️ Try short interactive games like this to mitigate unresponsiveness:

Without asking to turn on the camera in the virtual learning space, say,

Stretch break time! Where ever you are and however you feel, put your hands up in the air like I’m doing and stretch up! Reactivate your bodies! Take a moment and shake it out, friends!

✔️ After a stretch break, or even without a stretch break, remind the youth that you care about them with direct, affirmative words like this:

I want you all to know how much I feel you even if your video is off. We’re all in this together.

✔️ Continually build or rebuild trust and connection so students feel good about participating and being involved.

Push through the lesson. De-stress and try not to worry about 100% compliance and total participation. Go easy sometimes on your students and on yourself.

Remember: you care more about them and their overall wellness than on any one assignment or lesson.

This is what culturally-responsive, trauma-informed whole child, whole community education is all about.

Affirmative speech is so important.

Click here to learn more about the importance of affirmation in education and beyond.

My name is Upāsikā Miss tree turtle. I am the Director (CEO) of the Baltimore Wisdom Project and the Co-Director (Co-CEO) of Wisdom Projects, Inc.

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Feel free to contact me with questions, comments, or requests for assistance about the information shared here.