Class Reflection 02/21/2011 - Facilitating Book Clubs and Seminars...

 ... a.k.a. "The week I am completely out-of-sync with my classmates."

First, I'd like to say it was really wonderful to have Ms. Browne from the AADL speak to us on the various ins-and-outs of book clubs.  I always appreciate hearing from experienced professionals and I gained some valuable insight into what a book club is beyond my preconceived notions.

Now where the fun begins.  I was completely caught off guard by the extremely negative reaction most of my fellow classmates had to the Metzger article.  I'm honestly a little surprised no one called me out on my previous blog post in which I rave about how great I thought it was and how I thought we needed more teachers like Metzger.

My feeling is these different reactions happened for main two reasons:

First - I was subconsciously reading the article from the perspective of myself as a student, not from the perspective of an educator (and certainly not from the perspective of a K-12 educator).  I'm still making the switch from student to instructor, so this is not that surprising to me.  I also think it is a good example of prior knowledge and experience influencing my interpretation.  My favorite high school English class was, in part, very much about students discussing a text without extensive input from the instructor.  We did not do this every class period and we did have to work up to it throughout the beginning of the school year.  But at some point we began having really interesting discussions on our own, and the teacher would step only as an equal participant or when we were struggling and needed help.  It was not a formal "Socratic seminar," nor did we have inner and outer circles, but the end goal was still the same - students critically assessing a selected reading and constructing meaning together.  I guess I got wrapped up in my own personal experience and did not fully step away to assess the larger situation.  It will take some more time to fully pull out of "student-mode" and get into "instructor-mode." 

Second - I think I was focusing more on the concepts in the article than I was the author's tone or bias.  However, during discussion I could easily see the issues many of my classmates mentioned.  I do remember being a bit turned off by the author's casual mention of students with learning disabilities, and agree that a better reaction to these students' experience should have been "How can my model be adapted for these students as well?" rather than just ignoring the issue.  I also agree that Metzger's writing style is much more stylized and editorial than I would expect of an academic article, but I guess it just did not bother me that much.  Aside from these issues, I still think the foundational concepts of the article are sound - that critical reading is an invisible skill and teachers need to find methods to both assess students in this area, as well as techniques for modeling these skills for struggling students.  

In the end, maybe I did not read it closely enough and perhaps I need to read it again with a new awareness of these issues.  But what really bothered me was the idea of tossing out the article all together.  I think it's dangerous to completely discount the article or its method because it did not work for all students.  I think it can still be a good demonstration of the importance of thinking about one's audience, understanding students' progress, and making adjustments accordingly.  Whether or not Metzger did this well or genuinely, I'm not sure, but she did at least address the issue.  I really don't think it's fair to say this was a completely terrible article for us to read.  Rather it should be read and critically analyzed for its strengths and weaknesses (which is what we should be doing anyway)