Trying Online Book Discussion Using Workshopping the Canon

Learn at least one new thing every week. That’s one of the engines for this blog: to challenge myself as a person to keep growing wiser, not just older, and to challenge myself as a teacher to live the talk of being the chief learner in my classroom. Every week I have to have something to write about.

My new thing for this week is joining a Facebook book discussion. This is a two-for—I get to process a professional book (Workshopping the Canon by Mary Styslinger) with colleagues, and I get to experiment with a new format. Real time, face-to-face book discussions have been an important part of my professional life (see this blog), and I’m excited to try one on a social media platform. 

Workshopping the Canon is about helping students access the richness of traditionally taught works of literature (think To Kill a Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, and Hamlet) using workshop strategies. That is, by creating a thematic unit; compiling a variety of associated texts (articles, poems, short stories); reading aloud together; giving students prompts, strategies, and time for connecting to the text; digging into the literary aspects; and discussing it all with peers. I’m affirmed to find that I do much of this in many of my units. I’m excited to have a format for publishing (here on my blog) the units I’ve been teaching and a list of even more resources, prompts, and strategies for those and future units. And I’m challenged both to expand what I already do and to think about incorporating choice book clubs with more accessible works on the theme of the canonical work. If you’re a secondary English teacher, appendix B alone is worth the price of the book—it’s a chart of a number of canonical works with accompanying unit foci and essential questions plus a plethora of supplemental texts.


We’re only on the second week of 4, but I’m already wowed by the potential of the format. Because I’ve worked at small schools, to have the possibility of more than 3 participants, the books I’ve used have had to apply to a broad range of subject areas and grade levels—like Making Thinking Visible, or How to Differentiate in the Academically Diverse Classroom. And it’s been great to hear the stories of a kindergarten teacher, a middle school social studies teacher, and a high school biology teacher and get the sense that we all have the same goals of for our students of, say, curiosity and competence. But for professional reading focusing on my specific subject area—English Language Arts—this blog has been my only way of processing and accountability. And suddenly, I have another one. And 83 colleagues with whom to process! I have to find a balance that though I can’t interact with all of them, I (and everyone) will benefit more if I do interact with some of them. If I were to facilitate a group like this for, say, secondary English teachers in international Christian schools in Japan, that would be a much smaller group than interested members of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). 

Next step? I may try my first Twitter chat—hosted by NCTE on this book. 

What have you learned this week? Have you ever tried a book discussion on a social media platform? Are you a secondary English teacher interested in trying one? If so, let me know!