Online Learning: InterPlay Provides a Fuller Experience

ONLINE CLASS PHOTO. For our final online Total Body Communication class, students were asked to wear hats and sunglasses for a class photo. Here we are!

Like magic, we assemble for class, two-dimensional square after square, we build the class body. Students pop-up on screen as if they’ve traveled through a Harry Potter “portkey” or the “Floo Network.” And, they can “disapparate” just as easily either unexpectedly because of a bandwidth failure or purposefully by “cloaking” themselves when they turn off their video cameras.

This class is “Better Speaking: Total Body Communication,” and I am the lecturer implementing Applied InterPlay to teach this class for internationals studying English at the Georgia Tech Language Institute. Total Body Communication is about teaching both the whole student body – the individual’s body (mind, heart, body and spirit), and the class community comprised of those student bodies. Can the student body(ies) be engaged online through the ethersphere?

My answer is a resounding, “YES.” Did you hear me? Yessssssss….

I should know because  on March 17^th  (three weeks from this writing) I moved to teaching Total Body Communication online because of the 2020 pandemic. I’ve been playing around with who we are as a student body gathered together online remotely from our homes.

Let me share what I have observed so far.

1.    We Are More Than a Flat Two-Dimensional Square.When individual students show up to an online class they are situated in their homes in a three-dimensional space. They need a little help changing their perception of “who” they are on the two-dimensional computer screen that compresses them into a small space something akin to a living photograph. My goal is to get them to see themselves and classmates more fully. Therefore, I have them stand up, shake out their bodies one hand and one foot at a time. I have them breathe, and we listen to our collective breaths. We turn around so we can show everyone that are more than our than the front of our faces and heads on shoulders. 

2.    We Impact One Another. In order to get students to experience the “group” student body, I use the InterPlay technique of “Following and Leading.” While each student takes a turn leading easily repeatable physical movements, the others are asked to follow that student’s movement “ecstatically” – that is with commitment to duplicating the spirit of the student leader’s movement. Through this activity, students report that they are refreshed, enlivened, and connected. There is always the student who reports being fatigued by the effort, but that kind of feeling is accepted as being a realistic part of any group body. Not everyone is going to have the same experience. 

3.    We Can Be More Fully Online Than We Are.I have a conclusion from my first three weeks of teaching Total Body Communication online. As an educator, I can lead the way for my students to be more fully themselves. When each individual feels more present and more “embodied” online, he/she contributes to building a more fully enriched class or group body. During this time of physical distancing and isolation in our homes as we quarantine ourselves, we have an even greater need to feel a part of a group. Using Applied InterPlay builds the classroom community.

4.    Online Classroom Community Supports English Language Communication.I believe that for authentic communication – in this case using English— to take place students need to feel connected not only to themselves and their truth but to each other. Establishing a classroom community whether in a shared physical space or online is essential. When students feel they are a part of something bigger than themselves, they expand to fill the space. They reach out to one another and over time develop trust in the relationship(s) they create through playful communication in English. Thanks to technology, they form multiple routes to communicating with one another: What’s App, Facebook, Instagram, and more that I don’t know about.

Teaching online is complicated. It takes planning and an openness to repeated failures from technology and handouts that don’t work in this medium. However, right now, I am dancing with all of the magical possibilities that can take place in the online English language classroom using Applied InterPlay. 

Acknowledgments: Thanks to InterPlay co-founders Phil Porter and Cynthia Winton-Henry for 30 years of InterPlay. And with the deepest gratitude I bow to my students who jumped onto online learning and willingly continued to follow my teaching embodied learning. 

CAPTURED. One of my Total Body Communication students photographed me leading the class in our final good-byes.