The Go-Round

Submitted by Jean Trounstine (profile)

Strategy: The Go-Round is a simple and effective pre-discussion method I developed with my CLTL Lowell-
Lynn group.

Setting: It can be used with any group but works best when most or all of the participants have read the
material and should probably be reserved for those kinds of classes. It also works beautifully if you read a story
aloud in class (a method I always do on the first night [see Teaching Specific Texts: A Line of Cutting
Women]). Reading aloud assures that everyone has read the material, but since the levels and understandings
vary throughout a group and from group to group, I do not expect close reading from most participants.

The idea is this: before discussion begins on any piece, be it story, novel or work of non-fiction, start by going
around the table and eliciting each person's opinion on the text. This is done, one by one, with no other
comments coming from other members yet. The idea is to give each person his or her space to say exactly
what she thinks without discussion - to let the diversity of opinions stand in the room, to just be. In other
words, this technique allows us to listen as well as to speak, and it promotes an eventual civil dialogue.

The Go-Round can be begun by posing a question such as: "What did you find most interesting"
(touching/angering/disturbing/important to you or whatever you choose) in the book and why? Or it can begin
with a simple, "Let's hear any reactions and thoughts you had about the book." I always try to ask a global
question on the Go-Round for several reasons: it gives people a chance to wander around a bit in their talk and
figure out what they have to say; it enables me to get a sense of how they understand a piece of material; and
it offers stepping off places for the later discussion.

I always take notes as we go around the room and come back to the ideas, subjects, themes, characters,
confusions (I encourage them to talk about any confusions), and stories they bring up. I also find myself
drawing them out a bit, and at this point, the dialogue is between me and the respondent, and when others
want to come in and argue, I ask them to hold their thoughts until we're through. This also teaches them to
react, not just with their own ideas, but with each other's positions as well.

I find that beginning the class this way helps students know that they are responsible for the material and for
having ideas. They may feel afraid at first, but I also use this time to be extremely positive towards anything
they say, to nod and encourage whatever thoughts they voice. For the ones who want to go on and on, I might
gently let them know that we can come back to them later. This also helps us to anchor the class and can
provide a focus. For example, when I used To Kill a Mockingbird one semester, I asked:

"What is it in this book that is most compelling to you? What themes or ideas draw you in the most?" That
question seemed as useful to someone who had read the book several times (the probation officer and the
judge, as well as a visitor and one student) as it was to the student who had slept through it in high school.

With that book, I remember that one person said how much she loved the father and his relationship with his
children. The next class participant said how the father was anything but real, an absolute fantasy father.
Someone brought up race relations and the impact that the book had on her in that area; another said that
because she lived with an African-American man, she knew racism from another angle and saw the book
through those eyes.

Part of what makes the Go-Round important is the fact that a question without a set answer really has the most
power in discussing literature. As we sit around a table, with all of us coming from our own unique
perspectives, we begin to see in the first ten minutes how different we all are, how much we take in as
individuals, and yet, at the same time, how others' insights resonate inside us and often show us our common
humanity.
The Van Ride: the Return Trip
Submitted by Brian Sullivan (profile)

Strategy: Interacting with students.

The commute from our Alternative Incarceration Center in New Britain Ct. to the small, former shopping mall
campus of Tunxis Community Technical College, located in the sleepy hills of Farmington, takes approximately
14 minutes and covers seven or eight miles. The AIC van and SUV are typically full of Changing Lives Through
Literature participants. The preceding class and group discussion is carefully and relentlessly dissected by the
participants. As participants of the CLTL program, we learn significant information as to what works and what
doesn't. The beauty of the return trips is that we do not need to ponder the relative success or failure of a
particular reading and/or the subsequent group discussion. We have instant, no-holds-barred feedback that is,
to steal a line from Earl Shorris, close to the bone. Our students do not mince words; they speak from a directly
connected, inner voice, reflecting the emotional core of their very being. The stories we read have the capacity
to strike a nerve, which they often do. The poetry of Maya Angelou, the family struggles of James McBride, or
the situational volatility of T. Coraghessan Boyle's Greasy Lake, tap into an emotional storage bin collectively
shared by the students.

We have witnessed tears, animosity, resentment, confusion, clarity, understanding and laughter in the course
of one afternoon's ride back to the AIC. Shirley Jackson's The Lottery inspires wonderful discussion, in and out
of the classroom. We embrace the concept that each of us would not join the crowd to cast a stone if we were
living in the town in which The Lottery takes place. But deep within the caverns of our souls we learn in the
van, that some of us just might get in line and follow the crowd, because it is our nature to go with the flow. We
learn of peer pressure, former boyfriends, lost romances, and violent encounters. We learn of strained parental
relationships, and we gain some insight into the human condition. The literature provides a therapeutic voice
for the students' pain to escape, and the return trip to the AIC provides the opportunity for an extension of the
classroom discussion.

All is not emotionally charged negativity on the return trip, however. Ideas are hatched, futures are discussed,
and suddenly the notion of being a student is once again as acceptable as it may have been some twelve or
thirteen distant years ago in the second grade. The students express their love and admiration for Prof.
Francena Dwyer, and there is usually a verbal food critique of Prof. Dwyer's choice of snacks on any given
day. The mandatory skirmishes over the radio stations - the Beatles or 50 Cent - add to the flavor of the trip.

Our return trips to the AIC have become an integral piece of the Changing Lives Through Literature
experience. The trip has taken on a far more significant role than mere transportation for all of us.
Writing as Dialogue between Student and Teacher
Submitted by Taylor Stoehr (profile)

Strategy: Student writing can be of great importance in a CLTL class, but it must be handled with care. Almost
all probationers have learned to hate and fear writing, because they have been told by all their teachers over
the years that they are not good at it. When the CLTL teacher asks students to write about their reading
assignments, most probationers will think they are back in high school being tested - or even punished!

The first few weeks are crucial in preventing writing assignments from seeming like a series of hoops to be
jumped through. Students quite naturally suppose that their answers to questions will be seen as right or
wrong. To counter this impression, a commonsense approach works best. The writing assignment should ask
for student opinion rather than factual information, and should focus on universal human problems rather than
how a particular author represents them. Details from the reading will come up naturally if the question is a
good one. The aim is not to check up on whether students have done their homework, but to give them a
chance to express themselves freely.

Some students won't do any homework, it is true - neither reading nor writing - and yet it's important for
everyone to begin each class with a stake in the issues, some tentative commitment to an idea that can be
discussed by the group. One solution that has worked for us is to spend the first ten or twenty minutes of each
session writing an "opening exercise." The question we ask reconfigures the same issues addressed by the
homework assignment, but does not depend on having actually read the assigned text. We ask general
questions about the big ideas we want to talk about. Interestingly, this tactic of asking the same basic
questions twice does not result in mere repetition in student writing. Although most students write both
homework and opening exercise, they rarely repeat themselves, but develop their ideas further.

Most of our students write less than a page, and some of them only a sentence or two - though there is
sometimes one passionate writer in the class who fills a blue-book every week. Long or short, whatever they
write must be taken seriously. Our method of demonstrating our respect for their ideas is to type all their
writings and to add comments from the instructor - graphic evidence that we are listening to what each man
says.
Of course students are always curious about what an instructor will say to them, but in our CLTL classes I think
they are just as interested in comparing their original pencil scribbles to the printed texts they have become.
The great majority of them have never seen anything they have written typed or printed. It is a shock to many,
and the first night we hand back their writing someone always exclaims, "I wrote that?" They are surprised by
their own thoughts as well as the unfamiliar mirror in which they are reflected. Reading their own thoughts and
the teacher's response in this way can seem like seeing a video of themselves, reconsidering their ideas and
attitudes without feeling cornered or having to defend themselves.

We must keep in mind that our students are men and women whose past experience with writing has been
almost entirely negative, and associated with the disapproval of both school and parental authorities. They
have quite naturally sought the solidarity of peer-based defiance of such authorities as a defense. But now it is
possible for them to reconsider these identifications, and to reclaim their own voices - not as anxious
performances in front of judges, but as a practical pursuit of mutual understanding and socially sanctioned
support. It's important to never correct or complain of anything they write, and probably best to avoid all
judgment, assessment, and praise. Instead, the instructor simply joins in the dialogue as in conversation,
focusing on what is interesting, offering opinions and asking questions to highlight areas of deepest concern -
in short, giving student attitudes and opinions the respect of serious attention. The overall effect is to foster a
new kind of openness and earnestness in the entire class.

The teacher's side of this dialogue begins when something in the student's words strikes him or her as vital or
heartfelt and to which a response arises spontaneously. It is essential not to pretend interest in a student's
ideas - almost sure to result in merely conventional, empty conversation on both sides. If students are shy or
distrustful, it may be difficult to find a spark to blow on, but puffing all the harder raises only dust. It's better to
fall back on the homework and exercise questions themselves, which invite a response from the teacher as
well as the student.

The main thing is to take the interchange seriously, where a great deal may be communicated in a few
sentences each week, with increasing clarity about what really matters. Even though it occurs only nine times
during a semester, this dialogue in writing sets the tone for the conversations that take place in the classroom,
where a still more significant social dynamic is evolving. The ongoing reading determines our basic subject
matter, while the writing locates the true center of gravity on which group feeling must be built. Because the
writing has both a public and a private face, it can mediate the probationer's gradual approach to the social
circle - writing first of all for probationers' own eyes, then for the instructor with whom they enter into dialogue,
and finally for their classmates, who are interested in thoughts on questions that each has written about.

For most CLTL students, writing may seem at first to be going way out on a limb, but from that risky vantage
point, our probationers often realize that they are not as dumb or inarticulate as they thought. They too have
something important to say to the world - and they may be listened to after all.