I had anticipated that I would write in this reflection more generally about the book club experience. However, as I started trying to put down some of my thoughts in response to our ADDIE planning sheet I found the one question in particular elicited a very long and personal response, and I thought I would share that here.
Describe your biggest
challenges and how you overcame them:
One thing that I personally found to be
a major challenge that I was expected to overcome was not to give my opinions
too much. I am really torn about this because I have participated in several
book clubs and the organizers were never expected to keep their opinions to
themselves and always fully participated in the discussions, which I always
liked and felt comfortable with.
I felt like with this book
club there was an expectation that we wouldn’t share too many of our own
opinions, which I found to be extremely difficult and uncomfortable. I think I did a fairly good job, but we did
receive some feedback that we could have, as moderators, talked less. And one
of them did pick me out in particular “Sarah talks a lot! Her opinions are interesting and I could
tell she was trying to hold back. Something to keep practicing.”* This feedback didn't upset me, except that it shows me that as hard as I try to hold back I have to try even harder. I am
always conscious of the fact that I tend to talk a LOT, in fact I am incredibly
self conscious about it and I worry a lot that teachers will get annoyed with
me. Believe it or not for every time I talk in class there is a time when I
force myself to be quiet because I am very worried about overpowering a
conversation, or being perceived as overly pushy. So I’m kind of torn about this observation,
it is something about myself that I am highly aware of. I think I do an okay job controlling it, but
I know I could do better and it is something I have to be constantly conscious
of. On the other hand I don’t know if I
agree with the book club model in which the person who organized it is more of
a passive observer and simply feeds the group questions. I think that if the book club is for teens or younger readers the impartiality of the organizer is probably more important, but for a general adult group I actually think it is a little awkward.
I have a few overall take aways from this expereince:
1. I don't EVER EVER EVER want to run a book club where I can't fully participate in discussions. This probably won't be too difficult since the kind of jobs I want aren't very likely to require me to run book clubs.
2. Even though I probably won't be running anymore book clubs in the near future, I need to stay ever vigilant about mitigating the extent of my own input when I am supposed to be acting as an impartial moderator.
3. Overall and in spite of some of the personal frustrations expressed above I really enjoyed this experience, it was fun to get to talk about fiction for a change.
* As a side note the same person who gave the feedback about me talking a lot also gave one of my very favorite feedback comments in response to the question about what strengths the book club had: "There was no judgement. This was a complex work and I felt safe to say that it took me a few readings to understand it." This made me feel really good because we knew we were picking a somewhat more complex story, and it was really important to us that we create an atmosphere where people would feel comfortable talking about what the struggled with as well as what they enjoyed. We didn't want anyone to feel intimidated or uncomfortable and our feedback indicates that we succeeded in this.
Your thoughts on only facilitating versus fully participating are interesting-- and I agree with your take away that for your future library setting, it probably won't be something that comes up much. To me, this more applies in public libraries, particularly if you're working with a group that differs from you in age or interests. I want to work with children and teens. If I'm facilitating a book club for teenagers, I know I'll want to keep my opinions out of the discussion so that it doesn't feel like school and so that they feel free to talk openly.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, it IS really tempting to want to share what you know, especially when you've been putting time and effort into questions and researching the context of the reading material. I don't feel, though, that you overshadowed the conversation by any means during our book clubs on Monday. Everyone had plenty of time to share their opinions and thoughts, and overall, the conversations felt fairly balanced.
Haha that's good, I mean like I said in the post I wasn't upset, or even that surprised by the feedback, and overall the feedback we got was really good. It's just that it made me really think about my own inclinations and how they relate to a book club, or other similar situations.
DeleteAs far as teens or any younger group, where you are an authority figure (even if it's just because you're the adult) I totally agree with you. I taught summer reading classes a couple of summers ago and when we would discuss the readings for that week it worked a lot like a book club, and I have to say I found it much easier to stay impartial in that environment. Thinking of it that way I wonder if the fact that our class book club was with a group of my peers made it harder for me. I mean I wonder if I was with a group that was comprised of adults, but whom I didn't have the same social/professional connection if I would have felt the same way. Interesting....