Book Clubs, the Socratic Way

Summary (feel free to move past this if you attended class & did the readings):

Last week in class, we discussed the different responses to our viewing the McGonigal video presentation which was interesting but the most interesting part of the night is when we gathered in our large cohorts to discuss the trends we saw in our different blogs.It was fascinating to see how people intepreted the same blog posts so differently. Certain bloggers that I found wisdom in other people found annoying.

This week's readings discussed how libraries can move past the traditional borrowing service and make a "bridge to entire community" and how educators can move past traditional lecturing to engaging ALL students in discussion.

Hoffert recommends a thematic approach to library book clubs, so that the library isn't slammed with 20 requests of the same title and more people in the community including teens and men are included. Ms. Hoffert also mentions a library can mix in other media with the books as well as inviting authors to participate. She really demonstrates going the extra mile as librarians.

Tredway profiles the uses of Socratic seminars in the classroom, when students read a text or study materals then engage in discussion about the text instead of their professor lecturing at them. This encourages critical thinking and, then eventually, critical writing.

Metzger describes how she tailored a Socratic seminar to run her high school literature classes. She found she could reach nearly all of students, even the ones who were considered "mediocre" readers and those with learning disabilities, and improve their reading AND comprehrension skills.

My Responses:

I firmly believe in teaching through Socratic seminars, when appropriate for the subject matter. The Honors Program at my undergrad taught all the classes using the Socratic method (very fitting when we studied Aristophanes and Plato). We'd closely read the text for the week and then discuss it in class, with
our professor providing important historical context or guidance, especially with the Greek texts. It's amazing how much I retained from those classes but even more so how much my wring improved. Comparing my freshman year essays to my senior year ones felt like comparing the writing of two different people. No other
classes affected my abilities while doing my undergraduate work.

A variation of the Socratic seminar comes to mind when thinking of elementary schools. Teachers read aloud from a story, a chapter or two every day and then engage the children in discussion about what's happening in the story and what they think will happen next (I'm recalling a specific direction during a recent subbing job). There are some flaws in what I've seen though; teachers do not always ask probing questions that really compel children to do more than reiterate what's happening and make predictions.

I loved that the students asked Ms. Metzger leave the discussion part of circles! Isn't that the goal of every teacher, to help their students become self-sufficient?

To bring the readings together, I see some potential for creating book clubs that run like Socratic seminars, so patrons get more out of them than just the usual agreement of "I liked this one" etc.

Transferring our Learning -- A Monumental Task?

         Well perhaps not such a monumental task, but most definitely a comprehensive one. While reading the pertinent chapter in How People Learn as well as Wiggins & McTighe, I realized that educating students in the correct manner and way that will allow them to transfer their knowledge to their "home, community and workplace" could take a lifetime to achieve. Not to mention, things would go much more smoothly if all of the teachers of that one student, the student's parents, and essentially anyone that student interacts with that teaches him something (including his peers) were on board! And that is just one student. Either education as a whole has to be completely rethought, re-worked, everything we've done until now thrown away and start over (which is what I suspect the book's authors are advocating) or we have to be content with what we have and make it work. I'm starting to think revolutionizing education and starting over is the way to go. These readings make me remember my childhood education and attempt to assess it in light of my new learning; according to most of the readings, I was taught ever so incorrectly, what a shock. Yet, I managed to make it this far. But I'm digressing--back to the subject matter!
            I learned something interesting about myself this week: I'm definitely, for the most part, a performance-oriented learner. However, when it comes to English literature, I am a learning-oriented learner--my appetite for learning in this discipline cannot be sated! I always thought I was simply "not good" at math.
         Another interesting thing to me was the idea of awakening metacognition in students as a useful tool to improve rates of knowledge transfer. I love the idea of telling students "We're going to learn about shapes and how we use them outside the classroom....Do you think we've learned everything there is to know about shapes? Where can we go to learn more? What do you think we should know about shapes?" and truly engaging them in the learning process. For the first time ever in my education, this semester I had a professor ask each student what they wanted to learn from this class and which career path they were interested in. She made the syllabus after that first class, tailoring it to our responses--brilliant and yet such a simple concept, teaching us what we wanted to know! Granted, primary and secondary educators do not have quite that luxury thanks to the need for students to pass standardized tests (don't even get me started!) but even employing that concept within the daily lesson could possibly make a big difference.
          I wanted to touch on the idea of "learning [especially advanced learning] can't be rushed" and what that means for us librarians in our one-shot-workshops but I feel as though this blog post is long enough so...class discussion topic?

Maximizing Our Time with Technology

http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/885275-264/state_of_self-service_2010_do-it-yourself.html.csp

The above article refers to self-service becoming in vogue in libraries. As we talked in class about improving information literacy in our learners and teaching our patrons skills that they can use the rest of their lives, I wondered how we would have the time to do so. If someone walks into the library and we begin helping her, with the intent listed above, that will very well take more than the cursory 10 minutes we may feel we can allot to each learner. However, as this article argues, maybe the benefit of this technologically marvelous age is that it will free up time for librarians to help patrons where they most need it.

Our book discusses improving the learning environments in the classroom, including in the area of formative assessments and feedback on those assessments. Bransford et al. contend that “new technologies provide opportunities to increase feedback by allowing students, teachers and content experts to interact…” (141). Why should that statement not extend to librarians as well? I can use technology to spend time with my library learners, time to assess how they are searching for information and time to give them feedback on improving their searches. Perhaps the “check your books out yourself” stations that seem to be popping up in libraries recently are a good example of this technology. Patrons who have been using self-checkout lanes in the grocery stores for the last few years will be familiar with this technology and use it, freeing librarians to spend more time with those patrons who are searching for something more than the latest James Patterson book.