Book Groups. It’s Personal.

Reading is personal. What we like, when we feel like it, how we like it — or don’t.

Sometimes I read slowly and carefully, pausing to let an idea sink in or to get a tissue or to text a friend who’s read the same book or to text a friend to read the book. Sometimes I read in a comfy chair in my house, and sometimes it’s the office chair at the doctor’s office, and sometimes I read with the book covering the timer on the punishing stair climber thing at the gym.

The reading experience is also personal because it cannot be duplicated. Nobody can read a book for you because once the text enters your consciousness, it is yours.

Reading is also social. A writer created a text to share with others, and readers encounter that text with their own experiences only to be forever changed by that encounter which does not cease to exist once the book is closed, especially if that experience is shared with others in discussions and reviews. We carry the stories and images in our hearts and minds. This is a beautiful communal experience that exist because of the personal and the social.

In a book group, the personal experience of the text will transform, which is why some people refuse to talk about a  treasured book with anyone. They want to protect, preserve that experience. While a social activity, reading with a group is still personal. It’s personal when I get to read a book of my choosing with a group; it’s personal when someone in the group doesn’t read it; it’s personal when, as part of a book group, I commit to reading a book I did not choose.

It’s personal when, in discussing a book, my experiences are confronted or shaped by another’s. In a book group, there is a chance that what someone else felt or noticed or loved or hated will impact your understanding of what that book did and can do. Maybe you are invited (or forced) to read a passage again and experience the scene anew, and maybe, this re-experiencing is unwelcome, but maybe this re-experiencing unveils a new understanding of the text.

But here is, in my view, the beauty of a book group: the book discussion has the potential to reveal a side of your fellow readers that you have not glimpsed until that moment, the moment one tells a story of how that passage helped her remember her father’s death or her school bully or just some insight you did not experience. The moment another says You know, what I think this is really about?, you recognize in her a way of being you hadn’t before and understand the text differently. Discussions can transform our experiences with one another.

The English classroom is a very live social space where the personal and social commune but also collide. Readers who see books as invitations to discovery and aesthetic experience and readers who see books as torture devices find a sanctuary in the presence of others who feel the same and disruption among others who don’t. But just as books can be windows, maps, and mirrors for readers, so, too, can other readers. This is why book groups have an important place in the English class. I think sanctuary and discomfort can coexist in the English classroom.

The Community Process

How can we nurture a reading community that values the personal and social when students bring such varied reading experiences to that community?  I’ve been trying for years to get it right. I haven’t. I can’t, so I’ve come to accept what I can do, which is to offer some mechanisms for situating discussions while appreciating the way humanity undermines, shapes, and adapts those mechanisms in ways I cannot and do not want to control.  Teaching and learning is a process of discovering, practicing, adapting, and integrating the new into already established frames of knowing and experiencing the world.

A Group of Two

The first nine weeks of the year, I focused on getting to know the students as people and readers. How will their personal experiences with reading impact the way they learn, the way I teach, the way they interact with other readers?

In conferring daily, I was able to observe and inquire about personal reading processes and experiences. I was able to also guide the process by offering strategies, book recommendations, and a respectful companion (me). I nurtured an awareness of the texts as authored, crafted works of art to be appreciated and interpreted while also suggesting we, as readers, can be skeptical of how we are implicated in the art’s purpose. In other words, I spent time talking about how certain words and phrase and structures move me to notice, think, and feel in certain ways. Reading is at once a feeling of losing time in the story while also being able to notice the inner workings of the narrative. The first nine weeks was about my relationships with each student as an individual.

In the past, I started with a whole group text as a way of building community and teaching students how I’d like things done. This year, I tried starting with the teacher-student partnership because I wanted to witness their relationships with books first, and I found that so many already had very personal preferences and strategies. Some devoured comics; others read very slowly and carefully; and a few skipped around the text to assuage anxiety of surprises. Still, some looked rather than read, and others refused altogether (almost breaking down at the thought of independent reading). Of course, many just  skimmed to get it over with — not remembering or caring to remember even the character’s name.

The whole class novel in the beginning of the year does not make sense to me now (for my vision). With personalized instruction during conferences, I taught strategies and approaches only to those who needed some way into the books, and I did that through conferring. I made notes of their choices or lack of choices. I made notes of their engagement and resistance. I did my best to be responsive rather than hold onto some master sequence of instruction. I was able to help readers who had their ways to be more conscious of that and even stretch into new genres or subjects.

A Group of Thirty

The whole-class novel experience is perhaps a more typical arrangement of reading in an English classroom. However, it is not without its problems. If a teacher assigns a chapter for homework, some will read and some won’t. If the class reads together, the teacher sets the pace, which will be too fast or too slow for nearly everyone, and the only one actually reading is the teacher (most are doing more listening). Shared reading is very limited in our class for all these reasons, but I use it for one: to nurture interdependence among the students. However, after nine weeks of independence, interdependence was frustration. In the first days of reading together, we certainly felt the tension of our personal reading preferences collide.Some students wanted to read aloud; others wanted to read alone; some would skim and read ahead; some wanted to take their time, reading slowly and carefully.

The True Diary of a Part-Time Indian helped us make that tension productive. Students already had skills in noticing figurative language, symbols, text structure, character interaction, and setting-character interaction. Now, we had to see what happened when those noticings intersected with others — other than the teacher.  It was as simple as a simile. Students noted the plethora of similes in the text: hope like a mythical creature; Junior like an alien who landed at Reardan; Mary like a mole rat.  And then, they shared these only to find that they noticed more and connected to the connotations of the images. Just like that, we pushed through the discomfort into a discussion and an appreciation for the noticings of our fellow readers because, well, we understood Junior, his experiences, and even our own existence a bit better.

For four days, our group of thirty marked passages to discuss with sticky notes. Sometimes we read together; sometimes they read with a partner, and sometimes they read independently. Then, at the end of the fourth day,  I offered sentence stems to turn those notes into questions for other readers. I also added transition phrases to promote collegiality. Essentially, this is language to get into and move through a literary conversation:

• I’ll get things started with the first question. Everyone turn to page (#) as I read.
• Thank you (name), for your question. Here’s what I think.
• I hear so and so saying (this), and I’d like to suggest (this).
• Does anyone else want add on to that?
• (name), will you ask the next question, please.
• On page ___, the character says ____, so this shows ______.
• I didn’t notice that when I read first read it, but thanks (name).
• What makes you say so?

On the fifth day, Friday, we practiced group discussions in gradually closer seating arrangements. First, we were in a butterfly set up, almost facing each other, and then I opened up the wings more like a big square.  I asked two students to facilitate the discussion in seven minute rounds to focus on different sections of The True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

The discussion rounds offered practice in embracing the awkwardness: getting a conversation started, trying out phrases to move things along, making connections, and showing appreciation. There was a modest goal: pose one question and respond to one.  We did this several times so students completely unfamiliar with the teacher stepping out of the discussion had a few opportunities.

The first time, quite a few students were just observing, trying to make sense of this strange occurrence when students were leading the discussion and not the teacher. The second time was better. It seem to me a lot like jump rope. Two people are twirling the rope; you watch people jumping in and out; it kind of looks like something you’d like to try, but you’re afraid of becoming entangled; then, you see the rhythm slow down and give it a try. It takes practice and interdependence, but eventually every student takes a few jumps with the support of peers. I’ve learned to smile through the silences because eventually comments like these emerge: “Wait, what pages is that on?” and aesthetic moments like, “How would you feel? I felt horrible for Junior.”

A Group of Peer-Readers

In the final  four to five weeks of the first semester of eighth grade,  students began reading (are still reading) in small book groups. The first round,  I organized, and second one, they did. I think both arrangements are important for a variety of reasons.

Teacher-Organized Book Groups

I wanted the first book group experience to have some people comfortable facilitating discussion, so I strategically placed a leader-model in each group and gave them a peer they seemed to like as a source of support. I figured that at least two people would be engaged, and that might bring others along. Essentially, they were the  twirlers, capable of slowing down the pace and encouraging others to observe and jump in. In considering the size of the group, I made some bigger or smaller depending on the number of books I had for each title and considering student attendance. I have one class with at least five students consistently absent.

I chose texts based on a common subject. The history class is working on an immigration unit, so I selected immigration novels representing different cultures and experiences. Here is the list of books. I also tried to match the length and complexity of the novel to the group, but in some cases, I knew the character would resonate with certain students.What we had in common across all the books was the concept of immigration, so I offered mini-lessons in assimilation, acculturative stress, and xenophobia.

I set the page goals for the meetings and made time for in-class reading where I continued to confer and check progress.

I encouraged students to bring food to the book group meetings. Together, they decided if they wanted food and who would bring what. The meal planning is a collaborative process and nurtures interdependence, ownership, and, well, fun.

I set up time to write questions before the group met so that everyone could pose a question. We used stems to promote analysis, inclusive phrases, and appreciation. We used sentence stems to write text-dependent questions and aesthetic response questions. When questions are written in ways that can bring students to the text, we see students negotiating meaning, and when questions are written with aesthetic response in mind, we see students recognizing the text as capable of stimulating our emotions.

The groups used digital recorders to record the discussions and post them on the class blog as an artifact of their learning, which we will use later for reflection,  assessment, problem solving, and celebrating.

At the end of each discussion, I asked students to record a reflection-assessment on a google form, a piece of paper, or just in the form of another discussion. Listen to a reflection discussion that I facilitated after one group discussed Tangled Threads : A Hmong Girl’s Story here and in other posts on the class blog.

Still, a few students in each class did not do all the reading, which caused some to remain silent and others to mildly disrupt their group. In the past, I might have pulled these members out of the group who were not prepared or who were disruptive, but I think the discomfort was productive in that members had to figure out how to respond, find ways to be inclusive, and strategically adapt the conversation.

During the book groups, I observed the twirling and jumping. I also observed the most irregular rhythms and entanglements. I witnessed both engagement and discomfort- sometimes in the same minute. For the most part, I tried to stay out of it, but I jumped in a few times to help students problem-solve. I knew each student had done some reading and understood the immigration concepts the books explored because of the conferring we did prior to the group discussions. In most cases, my role was to help students access their reading experiences in the presence of others. The questions, however, did the work (and the cookies helped).

The second meeting of these teacher-organized groups was generally better than the first because students knew what to expect and knew their group members better. I know there are teachers who have given up on book groups after just one attempt, but I assure you that it gets better.

Student-Organized Book Groups

When it came time to read a second immigration novel as source of comparison (because Adichie reminds us “The Danger of a Single Story“), students chose their groups and books — not necessarily in that order.

Some students decided to stick with the same group but read a book featuring a character from a different culture while others created new groups to be with “friends.” It was interesting to watch friends negotiate the selection of the book — to work through disagreement.  On the other hand, some groups formed strictly based on the text. I book-talked Luis Urrea’s Into the Beautiful North as a  nonimmigration story and Angela’s Ashes as having a bold narrator like Junior in Alexie’s The True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and readers snatched the books out of my hands — new groups were formed just like that.

Students read in class throughout the week marking passages to discuss, and on the day of the discussion, they spent 10 minutes finalizing questions, 15 minutes discussing the books, and 10 minutes processing the experience.

The social dynamics were awkward, tense, and beautiful. Some “friend” groups worked really well and others fell apart. One day,a decidedly extroverted group’s  metaphoric jump rope did not see any twirls because some members really wanted to discuss the book while others resisted any cooperation. I intervened by splitting the group because their disagreement impacted the nearby discussions. Essentially, the group was competing over values, but they came together in the final ten minutes to process the experience.  Meanwhile, another group of more introverted friends had no trouble moving into double dutch because they had found their rhythm.

The content of the discussions, revealed on the recordings, proves to me that the personal benefits the social, and the social can benefit the personal.  The meaning within and beyond the pages of the book come alive when students are permitted the space to adapt the teacher’s mechanisms to their own purposes.

By the first round of the student-organized groups, students had had four organized group discussions. Now, by their fifth experience, they were using the sticky notes, passages, sentence stems, and cookies to make meaning with their own rhythms. A group of boys reading Song of the Buffalo Boy got into a heated discussion about marriage and the character’s scheme to be with her true love. You can hear them negotiating meaning and their aesthetic responses here.  In the same post, you can listen to the Tree Girl  group. One boy had not finished the reading chunk they agreed to, but he was clearly more motivated to do the reading after hearing his peers discuss a key event. Their diverse, emotional responses to the passage one boy read aloud says it all. That conversation would not have happened with me or whole-class. One boy stayed after school that day to read with me because he didn’t want to be seen with the book outside of class.

We are nearing the end of the first semester, and students will have participated in six book group sessions.They will build their quarter portfolios next week, which includes listening to their six recordings to reflect on their experiences reading with others. I wonder what they will say.  Will they say something about their reading experiences being confronted and shaped by others? Will they speak of discomfort or joy? Will they feel a greater sense of belonging in our class, or will they say that they feel more isolated? I know some students have come alive in recent weeks because of this social time while others have retreated, preferring the comfort of thirty. I imagine the immigration stories were close to home for quite a few students who, perhaps, did not want to talk about their reading experiences, preferring to keep it personal.

As teachers, we control the reading formats with our “plans,”  but we cannot plan for or control what happens when a reader encounters a text or when a group of readers share those experiences. We can help students become conscious of how texts and other readers confront and/or shape understanding  — of themselves, others, and the world we share.

If you’d like to hear more book group discussions (and some awkward silences), go to our class blog.