Curricular Readings, Conversational Writings: Dialogue on a Book Club

Abstract

When we speak of curriculum, we often think of the curriculum that is prescribed. But when we look more broadly, and etymologically, at curriculum we see the openness of possibilities for learning content and contexts. Curriculum, meaning a running, a course, a career, stems from currere to run and this action is certainly felt by most if not all educators at some point. When we pause the race and linger a little longer with curriculum and with currere, we can meditate on Pinar’s recognition of currere as not simply course objectives and markers of the race but also the self-reflective and retelling process of considering one’s own educational and life experiences. Through the steps of regression, progression, analysis, and synthesis, the learner meditates on the past, looks forward to the future, and celebrates the present lived experience as they embrace pedagogical moments and unique opportunities for teaching and learning. It is this process that our small but dedicated book club, unknowingly at first, engaged in as we read and responded to texts reflective of the lived personal experiences, social changes, and pandemic-related tensions that we navigated during a one-year period from Spring 2020 to Summer 2021. This chapter revisits, through the curricular readings and conversational writing of two book club members, eight of the books read and shares the dialogue of identity and listening, strength, loss, and possibilities that unfolded.