Building student agency and community, one conversation at a time
Ima Kazmi looks at how the students and teachers at The British School, New Delhi are working together to foster a love of reading. Lunch, anyone?
Right question, right answer
“But how do we get them getting excited about reading?” This question would continue to hover in the air at staff meetings and parent teacher conferences, whenever our collective worries regarding lack of independent reading amongst students would pour out. A maddening puzzle with no ‘correct’ answer until the realisation dawned that this question didn’t need a correct answer but a flexible one.
What emerged at The British School, New Delhi, particularly in the last two academic years, has been a secondary school lunchbreak phenomenon called the ‘literary luncheon’. This started as a suggestion from a colleague at an English department meeting spent brainstorming strategies to strengthen the reading culture at school. As a team, we sought to curate a low-stakes, fun, ungraded, adaptable yet recurring experience that would encourage students to talk to peers about what they enjoyed reading. An informal, flexible student-led discussion where booklovers gather to engage in conversations over pizzas and pastries. We wanted to catalyse conversations between students from different year groups, to facilitate a sense of community by finding common topics to bond over, and to empower students as they took charge of defining the specifics of each luncheon.
A school institution with impact
Over the last two years, students from Year 7 to 13 have hosted 9 lit luncheons which have covered broad genres such as Romantic Fiction, Historical Fiction, Science Fiction, Comic Books, Detective Fiction, Queer Voices in Literature, and Fantasy Writing. As these luncheons become a loved aspect of student life at our school, here are three ways in which our department has leveraged these experiences:
1. Enabling learner agency by channelling reading preferences and interests
We envisaged the lit luncheon as a space inn which students exercise ownership and control over what they read and how they read it. We therefore keep the ‘topics’ or ‘genres’ for the luncheons completely open for students, inviting interest-based proposals, where students identify not just a broad genre but also break it down into discussion prompts based on what they want to talk about.
For instance, around Valentine’s Day, students floated the idea for a discussion centered around Romantic Fiction using prompts such as: to what extent does a reader’s enjoyment of a romance novel depend on its gender politics? For Historical Fiction, our student leads chose to focus on the ethics of fictionalising historical events, while our student leads for Queer Literature decided to look at how queer voices in YA novels often disrupt established tropes.
2. Designing an environment conducive to conversations
To intentionally differentiate the lit luncheons from usual grade-level Reading Circles, we’ve opted for sign-up sheets with links and QR codes that are shared via the daily bulletin and through posters. Whilst conventional Reading Circles add significant value, they can sometimes become subsumed in the rigidity of structure. That’s where the lit luncheon steps in: lunchtime, being a loosely structured slot in an otherwise structured school day, has the potential to become a clutter-breaking time and space for students where they can flourish without excessive adult supervision. This is perhaps the reason why studies show that lunchtime experiences are closely intertwined with students’ sense of belonging in schools. Carving out a slot where students from different grades can participate in a shared experience helps break the monotony of the school day as students engage with a wider range of peers, laying the groundwork for fresh possibilities for social inclusion by building a reading community.
The seating arrangements remain in a U-shaped formation, encouraging maximum eye contact and ensuring that students talk to each other, rather than at each other. Our librarian as well as students who act as ‘library ambassadors’ pitch, displaying a selection of library books, which often end up becoming conversation points during the luncheons. To help students define what a safe conversation space looks like, we consciously model productive discussion strategies during English lessons, such as taking turns to talk, stepping back to actively listen, inviting perspectives from quieter students, and responding to the previous speaker instead of always rushing to make a new point.
3. ‘Readers first, teachers later’
Teachers from the department attend the luncheons, but we go in as readers, often carrying the books we want to recommend, or adding our suggestions to the curated reading lists that the students circulate towards the end. Our role is similar to that of the students: we listen to others, share our thoughts about the discussion prompts, and gush over our favourite pieces of writing. This taps into Clark and Rumbold’s research that posits a clear link between teachers’ reading behaviours and students’ reading habits and attitudes. They argue that “when teachers demonstrate a love for reading and share their reading experiences with students, it positively impacts students’ motivation to read.”
The shared nature of the reading experience instils a sense of bonding and connection, dissolving the usual power dynamic that exists within conventional classroom spaces. In my role as the Curriculum Leader for English, this has emerged as one of the most meaningful ‘know your learner’ strategies, offering me a comprehensive insight into students and year groups that I may otherwise not directly teach or interact with in an academic year.
Flexibility and student ownership
For us, the real success of the luncheon lies in its flexible nature: students decide the shape and form it takes, whether that means starting with a literary bingo or a readers’ poll, or ending with a ‘blind date’ with a book or a wall of favourite quotes. This flexibility plays an integral role in turning the misshapen pieces of the why-don’t-they-read puzzle into a rather beautiful mosaic of learner agency, belonging and community.
Ima Kazmi is a secondary school English teacher and the Curriculum Leader for English at The British School, New Delhi, India. In her ten years of experience as an educator, Ima has been interested in exploring avenues to centralise learner agency and develop a love for literature amongst her students.
FEATURE IMAGE: by Prasanna Kumar on Unsplash
Support images kindly provided by Ima with kind permission from The British School, New Delhi
References:
Clark, C., & Rumbold, K. (2006). Reading for pleasure: A Research Overview. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED496343.pdf
Hinton, Anna Elisabeth. (2018). Lunchtime Experiences and Students’ Sense of Belonging in Middle School. Dissertation submitted to Brigham Young University. Retrieved from
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7890&context=etd