Facilitating Youth-Led Book Clubs As Transformative and Inclusive Spaces

Book excerpt: Learn how to integrate book clubs into secondary school communities for transformation and inclusion so as to enhance and nurture students' literacies along with their social and emotional development. Using her extensive experiences with culturally, neurologically, and linguistically diverse students, the author provides a rich resource that demonstrates how book clubs serve as critical places where adolescents can develop as readers while simultaneously working to build authentic relationships with their peers. Polleck offers research and theories grounded in culturally sustaining pedagogies and healing-centered engagements along with practical strategies for book club facilitators--from developing specific student-centered pedagogical approaches to embodying critical and humanizing dispositions. Book Features: Guidance based on the author's 25 years of experience as a facilitator and researcher of book clubs. A focus on encouraging meaningful participation, identity and community building, and social justice. An approach that prioritizes collaboration among teachers, social workers, counselors, administrators, parents, and other school personnel. Practical strategies that include facilitation suggestions, sample lesson plans, and reflective questioning techniques. Engaging narratives that center the voices of students who have participated in book clubs. An accompanying website with suggested reading lists, teaching materials, classroom activities, and more.