“The people who come to evening classes are only ostensibly after culture. Their great need, their hunger, is for good sense, clarity, truth – even an atom of it. People are dying – it is no metaphor – for lack of something real to carry home when day is done.” Saul Below, Herzog
Most of us crave deep connection. We want to feel seen, heard, and understood, our experiences validated. We want to extend the same to others. And yet increasingly, despite (or perhaps partially because of?) the ubiquity of social media and its promise of connection, many of us are feeling lonely and isolated. We lack the time, the space, the confidence, and the perceived safety to build connections across our diverse communities that sustain and nurture us.
Shared reading can offer just that – the time, space, confidence, and safety to connect. Those who facilitate shared reading play a critical role in fostering that environment. Facilitators are instrumental in “bringing out what is within”. They know that stories open portals through which our experiences can be interpreted, shared, and made meaningful. They understand that there are as many truths to a piece of literature as there are readers. They are skilled in helping shared reading participants unlock and share those truths with one another.
Facilitators develop these skills through formal training – open to anyone who enjoys reading for pleasure, is interested in working with people in a group setting, and has the capacity and eagerness to use the shared reading model. The training cultivates several competencies needed to lead a shared reading group:
– Understand how shared reading can help people live well
– Know the key principles of shared reading (e.g., be kind, care about what you read, keep it real, get in and stay in, be bold)
– Learn how to evaluate, select, and prepare literature that serves as the focal point and prompts deeper reflection
– Discover how to slow down the reading to ease communication
– Understand how to create inclusive, safe, non-judgemental spaces
– Cultivate strategies and techniques for engaging and validating people of all abilities and sets of experiences
– Sustain a strengths-based, person-centered practice
Equipped with these tools and techniques, facilitators bring their own personalities, skills, and sets of experiences to the role. Each develop their own particular way of facilitating group members’ exploration of the literature, themselves, and one another. Research suggests certain attributes are key to effective facilitation: openness, non-judgement, cultural competence, flexibility, calmness, empathy, and supportiveness. Shared reading facilitators are profoundly interested in giving people “something real to carry home when day is done.”
Photo by Alexis Brown on Unsplash
