A Grand Conversation

It was early January of 2015. That year, I was a newbie in many ways: new to the school, new to Kindergarten, and new to winters in Cairo. I adjusted my scarf while realizing I was also new to innovative ways of teaching.

I joined my colleagues, all seated at round tables scattered across the square, dimly lit room. We had just come back from a short “stretch your legs” break, my mind still racing with all the new ideas I had been given access to. For an entire morning, Christy, our consultant, spoke to us about reading instruction, the skills readers need to become fluent, and the essentials behind reading comprehension. Each page I filled with notes carried a burning eagerness and a “How did I not know this before?” sense of guilt.

I remember thinking, “And this is just the first day!”

She ended the short break by standing in the middle of the room—a small cup of coffee in her hands and a picture book under her arm. Her eyeglasses perched on her head, holding back her bright red curls. I leaned forward.

When was the last time someone read to me?

Focus, Ana.

“All right, friends,” she snapped me out of memory lane, put on her glasses, opened the sticky-note-filled book, and began talking. She wasn’t reading words from the text; she was sharing a personal story. Then, she asked the empty space above us a question and aimed her gaze toward the book.

After the first two pages, she paused and made an observation. She invited us into her thinking and ended with another question. Back to reading she went. I was mesmerized—still trying to find that perhaps non-existent memory.

My mind was searching for something that had never happened. No one had read to me like this.

The story pulled me in; her tone brought me to that field, where two girls spoke to each other from opposite sides of a fence. One of them on a tire swing, bows in her hair; the other wearing a pink sweater and uncontrollable curiosity, her elbows resting on the wooden fence.

Christy’s voice, warm and soothing, made the story emerge from the flipping pages. Again and again, she would pause to push my thinking, point to something I hadn’t noticed, and force me to dive deeper into the world of those two characters.

As she reached the culminating page, teachers around the room gasped. Then there was silence. Christy’s glasses went back up to meet her curls, and she asked us to form a circle with our chairs to chat. A smile on her face as she hugged the book.

Once in formation, she placed the book on the floor in the middle of the circle and stepped out, hiding behind a large easel with a blank chart. Marker in hand, her mind plotting. I could tell something was about to happen.

Like a well-choreographed dance, she prompted us to chat about the story with someone next to us. Planned questions, intentional points in the story. She barely intervened as the conversation ping-ponged everywhere, just came close enough to each of us to listen in. A few times, she would pause the group, invite someone to share their thoughts out loud, and suggest we follow that person’s perspective—then back to the hidden chart she went.

My mind struggled to focus, trying to go in opposite directions: I desperately wanted to see what she was charting, but I didn’t want to miss a single comment from the group.

“Quote the text,” she would say from behind the easel, pointing at the picture book resting in front of us.

Every single teacher in that group had something to say—an idea to dissect, a disagreement to announce. The story had ended when Christy finished reading, but it still held us spellbound, pulling us tighter with each new perspective and connection from the readers in that circle.

Once Christy determined we had squeezed enough out of Jacqueline Woodson’s unmatched storytelling, she went on to explain what a Grand Conversation was and the benefits of such a protocol for upper elementary readers. The burning sensation of my note-taking morphed into impatience. I couldn’t wait to be part of another experience like this one.

I sit in my office now, watching this memory come to life through each word that appears on the screen. I embrace this particular and transformational moment in my teaching life, and sigh. I skim through the pages of The Other Side, evoking the wisdom and knowledge Christy shared with me over many years as I prepare to demo a Grand Conversation for two teachers on my staff.

The book is ready, the moves are planned. All that’s left is to trade my self-imposed expectations for the curiosity and eagerness that once lit me up.