FOSTERING COLLABORATION Between Students and the Community: A Book Club on Zoom — by Susan Binkley When I heard in the spring of 2020 that schools would close due to the covid-19 outbreak and move to remote learning, I never imagined that I too would be learning remotely. I wasn’t a student, I wasn’t enrolled in any kind of class, and I certainly didn’t plan to be. I was a parent. I dreaded being turned into a homeschooler with the new remote learning situation. But an unexpected learning experience was a pleasant surprise during the very unpleasant covid-19 shutdown. This is not a story of a parent helping a child with her online assignments. Instead, it is the story of a parent who became a student in a fifth-grade class. My daughter’s fifth-grade teacher at Wickliffe Progressive Elementary School sent an email inviting parents to join one of the class’s book discussion groups. As an avid reader, I jumped at the chance. I heard him describe the different book choices to the students during a Zoom morning meeting, and the book A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer caught my attention. The story took place in Mozambique and Zimbabwe – two countries I knew very little about. It didn’t appeal to my daughter, however, and she chose to be in a different book group. So when I joined the Girl book group, I wasn’t necessarily there in the role of my child’s mom, but just as a parent from the community. The book group, consisting of the teacher, five students, and me, met on Zoom twice a week for three weeks. Our first session immediately started with the students teaching me how to use Zoom -- how to raise your hand and mute yourself on Zoom. We then launched into the discussion of the book. Once we started, I could barely get a word in edgewise. I was so impressed with how eager the students were to share their thoughts. They wanted to talk about the main character Nhamo, her grandmother, and the region. Their excitement about the story was lively and invigorating from the very first meeting until the last. I learned so much from the students. They focused on different aspects of the story than I did and picked up on details that I missed. For example, they wanted to discuss the stories and tales told to Nhamo by her grandmother. I had glossed over these stories-within-a-story, and so I could barely contribute to the discussions about them. As children, these students often listen to stories themselves, whether bedtime stories or read-alouds
Spring 2021 The Journal of the Progressive Education Network PEN 25
