During the fall semester, our student teacher, Julie, hosted a book club with the 8th grade students. The book she chose was “All American Boys” by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. She chose this book as an extension of the student’s learning about systemic racism.

“All American Boys” allowed us to look at some of the issues going on in our world including police brutality and racism from the perspective of two specific characters. The characters were both students. One student was a young black man, who was wrongly accused of stealing and as a result, was brutally beaten in public by a local police officer. The other character was a young white boy who witnessed the incident. Both boys struggle throughout the book to determine what the right course of action is. 

These can be difficult topics to cover, so doing this in a book club where we could talk about what we were reading, and how it relates to the world around us, was important. A book like this can evoke some intense emotions and having an outlet to release those emotions was one of the goals of this book club. At the beginning of each class, the students were given a quote from the chapter we read and a prompt to respond to. The students also had to choose a job to complete each week to share what they read about.

The job choices included summarizer and discussion facilitator, illustrator, connector/ reflector, commentator, figurative language finder, and travel tracer. The summarizer/ discussion facilitator prepared a brief summary of the chapter, then asked their classmates three open ended questions to further discussion on the chapter. The illustrator created a scene or portrait related to the chapter read, then the work of art would be shared with the class. The connector/ reflector had to find 3-5 passages from the chapter and make text to text, text to self, and text to world connections. The commentator had to locate three to five passages from the chapter that were thought-provoking, funny, interesting, disturbing, or powerful to share with the class. The figurative language finder had to identify various types of figurative language and consider why the authors chose them and whether they were effective or not. The travel tracer had to record major shifts in action in the chapter and describe each in detail, then had to share it with the class at the next meeting. Each student was required to complete each of these jobs at least one time throughout the book club.