What is the Human Library? Why did we have one?

May 30th,  2017 saw our first human library at ACS Egham International School.  Thirty-six grade 9 student 'books' were loaned out to 50 odd 'readers', consisting of grade 4 students and adults from various parts of our school community.  For an hour our performing arts centre buzzed with conversation on topics as varied as learning to knit and the American Women's football team. Readers left at the end with knitted items, nibbling on lebanese food and discussing the pros and cons of various tennis racquets.  But what was this all about, you may still be wondering, and how and why did it all come about?

In November of 2015, I attended the AASL conference in Columbus, Ohio and came away from it more firmly convinced that we had to change the way we conducted our project based learning and taught research skills to our lower secondary students.  For various reasons, research skills and the inquiry cycle were being neglected by our teachers.  

At the same time, I was concerned about the fact that we had introduced a course for grades 9 and 10, called Study Skills and were teaching stand alone lessons relating to research, communication, self-management and thinking, in other words, the ATLs, which should be embedded in our curriculum. Putting the two concerns together I suggested that I become one of the grade 9 study skills teachers, that we get rid of the stand alone classes, and that we teach skills through a project.  It was my hope that we could then present this project to the other teachers as an example of a way to embed ATLs in their project based work.

I was unsure about the subject of the project or even what format it should take and grappled with this for several months.  Sure that I had come up with a solution, I offered to run a session at Dianne McKenzie and Katie Day's Inspiring Conversations in Prague.  In the session before mine, I attended a conversation about Human Libraries and at that moment everything changed!  Though my apple cart had been overturned completely, it allowed my presentation to become a true conversation in which I set out what I had planned and talked about how I would like to now change it.  Dianne gave me the idea for the topic when she discussed a similar project she had done, entitled 'My Passion'.  I had been stumbling around looking for a topic that students could take ownership of and this was it.  

So what is a Human Library?  The Human Library, developed first for the 2000 Roskilde Music Festival in Denmark in response to a hate crime, is about offering people as ‘human’ books which are lent out to 'readers' for a conversation.  Books typically had titles that represented a stigmatised or stereotyped group of people in the community. (World Peace) However, in our case, our titles were to reflect the vast array of interests of our grade 9 students. Through their preparation for a Human Library presentation, students would research and present (as a human book) a subject about which they were particularly passionate.

Our student ‘books’ would then be borrowed by 3 people per session for 15 to 20 minutes, during which time, the books would tell their ‘readers’ about their topic and share pictures or activities with them and then answer questions.  ‘Readers’, who would come from various parts of the ACS Egham community, were to be given a ‘catalogue’ in advance from which to choose the book they were most interested in.  Having done so, they would then sign it out.  The reader was also to be provided with the protocols for their role in the Human library at the time of reserving their book. To assist our ‘books’ in improving for their next ‘edition’, readers were to be asked to write a short ‘book review’, which would be shared with the ‘books’.

And our library basically followed the format that I first envisioned.  There was some tweaking to be done but not as much as I had anticipated might be needed.  The day itself was stress free for the organisers, though I imagine our grade 9s may have been a bit stressed more stressed than we!  

And our future plans?  We definitely want to repeat this concept next year with the grade 9s. Moreover, other sections of our school community have asked about holding a human library and so 2017-18 may see an explosion of these libraries across our campus.

Human Library Day!

Human Library Day has finally come...and gone!  I am both relieved and suffering from a certain let down.  So much work has gone into the organisation of it and now it is all over.  I've asked the students to start working on their reflections and I suppose that I should do so now as well.

What Would I Do Differently?

I need to ensure in future that all students understand that they must have any visuals or notes printed well in advance,  just in case the printer doesn't work on the day.  Though I thought that I had made it clear that ours was a "print" book library, students still turned up on the day with laptops.  I am sure that some of those who hadn't printed, didn't intend to print, hoping that I would let them use their electronic devices.  They now know that I mean what I say!

A number of the students failed to bring in visuals or artifacts and so their presentations weren't as engaging as they might have been.  Next time, I will model a presentation with visuals and an activity.  I will encourage all students to have some sort of activity as part of their presentation.  The most effective presentations in our library were the ones with an activity, such as learning to knit, playing chess for the first time, and making Lebanese food.

I need to emphasise the importance of finding a topic you are passionate about at the beginning of the process.  It was the students who spoke with passion who really ignited their 'readers'.  To assist students I should spend some time developing activities to assist them in identifying their passion!

I wasn't properly prepared for students to do reflections and though I gave them 3 guiding questions to use I think that those questions could have been better thought through.

What Worked Well?

I created a book report for each reader to fill out after their session and that worked well.  We had lots of positive feedback from the readers and will share it with the 'books' in a few days time.

The room layout worked well.  We had 35 students participating, 18 in the first session and 17 in the second.  For each session, each book had a grade 9, grade 4 and adult reader.  In some cases there may have been more readers when we had more grade 9s or 4s than sessions.  The tables and chairs were set up as in the picture below.

Though there was no formal assessment for this project, most students 'got' the fact that not all assessment comes in the form of marks on a report card.  In fact, having immediate feedback from your audience of 'readers' can be far more intimidating feedback than a mark.  Grade 4s are quite blunt as well!  However, next time I will have a self assessment form for students to fill out and share with us.

(As I think of more to add to this reflection, I will do so.)