Last weekend, I experienced a first. After two decades of teaching English, I attended a book club meeting. It was a book club that I myself founded after surveying interest from fellow parents at the local elementary school.
While more than ten people showed interest in attending, only three of us were present on the night of the meeting. Several members posted that they couldn't attend on the announcement thread on our PTA webpage. This didn't discourage me -- in fact I expected it. It was Oscars night. The school was sponsoring an international festival the following morning. Life happens.
It might surprise you to hear that I was nervous about going to book club. Not about the book itself, but about the possible awkwardness that might be involved, the getting to know you. And it was a little awkward at first. And a little awkward throughout. But by the end, all three of us wanted to meet again, to pick another text and keep it going.
One of the attendees said that she belonged to another book club in town, one that was much bigger and that gathered at people's houses, but one which, she expressed in frustration, didn't really discuss the book. It got to be a running joke that they weren't discussing the book, and she was here because, well, she wanted to talk about the book.
We did talk about the book. And when moments got awkward, I dove into the text, to a post-it-ed page, and read aloud from a passage that I liked, and we took it from there.
Was it the book club meeting I anticipated or envisioned? Definitely not. I was hoping more people would be there. I was hoping more people would have passages flagged like I did. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a good book club meeting. While one of the women didn't bring her book at all, she came with an encyclopedic and impressive knowledge of the novel and its characters. The other member had purchased the book on her e-reader and searched for key phrases as we discussed the book, arriving at esoteric passages that only she remembered and appreciated.
It takes all kinds.
This week in my classroom, I am having a similar experience. My classes started reading The Kite Runner. I gave the students directions on how to write brisk, reflective notes after reading the assigned chapters (or beyond -- reading ahead is always encouraged!). Some came to class with texts full of sticky notes. Some had written their double entry logs according to my directions. Others started on their logs and lost momentum after getting consumed by the first few entries and falling short on time. Some didn't do the reading at all and sponged off their classmates' knowledge of the text, gregariously joining in on conversations with obvious tangential thoughts.
The garden is always full. Sometimes, though, it needs a lot of weeding to get the best growth. My students don't have a choice but to show up to the next book club meeting. My job is to facilitate learning experiences that help them appreciate, reread and revisit the text. In order for me to do that, I have to push past my own perceptions of how I think they should have prepared for class. Those who have read make it abundantly clear that they have done so. Those who haven't shouldn't fake it (it is so, so obvious!). But they shouldn't be shamed either.
So later this week, I'll be meeting with those whose participation is sub-par, helping them troubleshoot how and why this is the case, and then offering some approaches to the issues they face. Not reading is not a choice. But how they show evidence of their reading is.
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