Small Strokes Big Oaks

Roundtable discussions are my absolute, most favorite thing to do with students in my English class, and the last roundtable of the year always makes me a little sad.

I’m sure most of you can figure out what a roundtable discussion is, but for those of you who don’t know, it’s an activity during which I ask all of my students (sometimes 30 in a class) to move their desks into a large circle around the perimeter of the room, and then for the remainder of the hour, we talk to each other about whatever we are reading at the time.  I sit in the circle with the students, too (which is always funny when someone walks into the room with a pass, because they look around the circle and say, “Where’s your teacher?” every time!), and my purpose is to gently direct the conversation, but more often, I find myself just listening and participating with the students, adding a few insights here and there.

Roundtables are amazing, because the students can all see each other, and we are really on the same level.  I start the first roundtable of every year by telling them about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (it’s also amazing how many of them don’t know that story), and how King Arthur decided to have a round table instead of a rectangular one because, with a circle, there’s no head of the table.  All participants are equal, including myself.  Of course, that’s not really true.  They still look to me for the “right” answer frequently, although that happens less and less every time they do a roundtable. 

As you can imagine, the first roundtable of the year is somewhat a battle.  They look at me; they don’t talk to each other; when they do talk to each other, it’s never about the literature; sometimes, they’re so shy about sharing their ideas that they won’t say anything at all.  But as the year goes on, students who have never said a word in class before become the star players in the roundtable.  Students who might never care about literature are excited to share their ideas.  Some of the most critical thinking I’ve ever seen comes out of these roundtables, and so the last one of the year always makes me a little sad.  But also happy and incredibly proud that my students have come so far.

Yesterday, we were discussing the book (and video), The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch – which is a great way to end the year, and a really easy book to discuss because the students can relate to it and they really like it – and the students were coming up with ideas I’ve never thought about left and right.  They were saying things like, “I liked it, but all he talked about was work.  Even though he talked about his childhood, it was all stuff that related to his work.  I know he said he didn’t want to talk about his family in the video, but he could have talked about life outside of his job, right?  I  mean, there is life outside of a job, right?” 

And there was more where that came from. 

These students just blew me away, and I told them as much.  When I did, and I told them how proud I was of how far they had obviously come this year, they all just looked at me and smiled.  This happened twice – two classes, same results.  And these were two of the best moments of my teaching career.