Chatting in letters is about being an “irresponsible storyteller”

   
*
I found an email from the end of last year (2010) that talked about being a sto­ry­teller in chil­dren’s class­es. Per­haps it can be of some ref­er­ence to moms and dads who are inter­est­ed in being a sto­ry­teller in their chil­dren’s class­es.
 
Let me first share some thoughts on orga­niz­ing a read­ing club in my child’s class.
Just last week, when I returned to Guangzhou, Xiao­mai came to talk to me about a sim­i­lar top­ic. She’s been involved in a lot of plan­ning and orga­niz­ing the book club. She feels that oppor­tu­ni­ties to engage chil­dren in read­ing activ­i­ties are lim­it­ed, so she’s real­ly focused on run­ning each activ­i­ty effi­cient­ly, hop­ing to achieve the desired results, help more chil­dren get start­ed, and ensure that par­ents also feel that their chil­dren are being helped, that this kind of read­ing activ­i­ty is ben­e­fi­cial, and that it’s mean­ing­ful to con­tin­ue. These ideas, of course, are all very good wish­es.
But she encoun­tered a prob­lem. The chil­dren were all dif­fer­ent, with vary­ing lev­els of read­ing pro­fi­cien­cy, enjoy­ment of read­ing activ­i­ties, and par­tic­i­pa­tion. Some were even reluc­tant to coop­er­ate, hin­der­ing oth­ers who want­ed to par­tic­i­pate. She had no choice but to deal with them sep­a­rate­ly, only halfway through the plan, and she need­ed to recal­i­brate her mind­set.
My advice to her was that this sit­u­a­tion is per­fect­ly nor­mal and hap­pens to every­one at first. We are all ordi­nary peo­ple, and we are not even their teach­ers. We have no aca­d­e­m­ic respon­si­bil­i­ty, nor do they have any oblig­a­tion to obey us. Sto­ry­tellers and chil­dren are just ordi­nary friends, and friend­ships require har­mo­nious com­mu­ni­ca­tion and coop­er­a­tion based on mutu­al under­stand­ing.
So, we should­n’t bur­den our­selves with unnec­es­sary and mean­ing­less “respon­si­bil­i­ties.” Does read­ing help chil­dren aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly? Does it offer any con­crete ben­e­fits? Does it cre­ate any “mean­ing” that oth­er par­ents can iden­ti­fy with? This isn’t to say we should­n’t con­sid­er it at all; it’s sim­ply to say that it’s large­ly irrel­e­vant to us and should be for­got­ten. Con­stant­ly dwelling on such things only bur­dens us.
So what should sto­ry­tellers think about? How can they cap­i­tal­ize on the lim­it­ed time avail­able for read­ing activ­i­ties and make both the chil­dren and them­selves hap­py through read­ing? The hap­pi­er the chil­dren and them­selves are, the more suc­cess­ful the read­ing activ­i­ty will be. Only in this way can chil­dren tru­ly expe­ri­ence that “read­ing is such a fun thing!”
Once some sto­ry­tellers have become bur­dened with bag­gage, they tend to make the orig­i­nal­ly enjoy­able read­ing activ­i­ties more and more like teacher-led class­es, and they them­selves tem­porar­i­ly play the role of ama­teur teach­ers. This becomes very trou­ble­some.
There­fore, mak­ing book clubs fun and engag­ing is both the most impor­tant and the most chal­leng­ing aspect. Inter­est­ing does­n’t always mean live­ly and excit­ing; some­times qui­et activ­i­ties can be fun and engag­ing. How­ev­er, this requires a strong rap­port between the chil­dren and the sto­ry­teller. It’s best to start with a live­ly atmos­phere.
How­ev­er, there’s anoth­er cru­cial point. Books will undoubt­ed­ly be read at a book club, so what’s the pur­pose of read­ing at a book club? Is it sim­ply about read­ing cer­tain books togeth­er? No. Absolute­ly not. The real pur­pose is advertising—advertising the books them­selves, and also adver­tis­ing read­ing itself. There­fore, if books are read at an event, we need to find ways to ensure that all par­tic­i­pat­ing chil­dren have access to those books and their relat­ed works after­ward. For exam­ple, if I vis­it a class to share a 40-minute read­ing ses­sion with the chil­dren, when­ev­er pos­si­ble, I’ll leave the books I dis­cussed with them in the class­room, assign­ing them to the teacher or stu­dent librar­i­an, so that the chil­dren can read them on their own after­ward.
The gen­er­al process is: prepa­ra­tion — activ­i­ty (sto­ry­telling, book dis­cus­sion) — read­ing (prepa­ra­tion) — activ­i­ty (book dis­cus­sion, sto­ry­telling) — and so on. Time for read­ing activ­i­ties is always very lim­it­ed, so it is only suit­able for mak­ing it into a won­der­ful but brief adver­tis­ing time. Most of the time must be left to the chil­dren them­selves.
Fur­ther­more, orga­niz­ing a class read­ing activ­i­ty on your own is incred­i­bly tir­ing and prone to dis­cour­age­ment. So, it’s cru­cial to bring in a few like-mind­ed par­ents and assign them more tasks, pri­mar­i­ly to encour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion. It’s also pos­si­ble to orga­nize activ­i­ties where par­ents can enjoy read­ing togeth­er. This requires patience. If you throw a peb­ble into water, there’s bound to be a reac­tion. It’s just that adults often become accus­tomed to it, and even if there is a reac­tion, they delib­er­ate­ly hide it from oth­ers. O(∩_∩)O~
 
Argen­tine Primera División in Decem­ber 2010