Reflection of March 7, 2011 Class

Book club week!  And boy, was it not only a good learning experience, but it was fun!  After breaking up into our separate book club rooms, we had to find someone to kick off the class session.  No one was speaking up, per se, and Kara and I had brought candy and had an activity planned to go with our Hansel and Gretel story, so I volunteered us to go first.  While our reflection will go into more detail, I felt we did a great job in our book club (this sentiment was also found in our evaluations).  The candy and drawing activity went over well, and it felt like those two things energized the group - good for the first book club of the night.  We had no issues with getting people to talk, and in fact one of our criticisms on our evaluations was that we cut people off.  This was partially intentional - the time for our club went incredibly fast and we wanted to make sure we had discussed enough topics.  All in all, the book club was enjoyable and fun.  One thing we did differently than every other group was split our discussion up; half was us discussing the story and the other half was discussing how we would use this in a youth book club as YA librarians.  It was a unique twist on the book club and one which I thought worked well.

The other book clubs, those of A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, The Landlady by Roald Dahl, The Four Habits of Highly Effective Librarians by Todd Gilman, and the Nightingale and The Rose by Oscar Wilde, all went really well.  It was interesting to see how others approached their story or article, and interesting that only one group chose to discuss an academic article as opposed to a children's story.  The largest challenge I saw for all groups was the issue of time (wanting to get questions in and going over, or having to modify plans as we did while going along).  Each book club was unique, however and I felt we delved into all of the topics thoroughly.

Overall, it was a great activity and I definitely learned what to do differently next time - especially on issues of timing and bringing out more voices in the discussion.  It went well!