2. Observing

Listening with my eyes to understand what the school's middle-school children truly value and care about.

Note to Self

Cultivate a ‘Curiosity Mindset’ and keep an eye out for the unexpected. Focus on the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ and don’t jump to the ‘why’ just yet. Be open and steer clear from generalizations, judgment, evaluation, assumptions, and prescriptions (should/would/could) to gain deeper insights.

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Plan

In this first phase of the project, I am curious to learn more about the following:

• How do children respond to externally imposed time given to read during school hours? How does it differ to them reading voluntarily?

• How do parents, teachers, librarians, and peers impact the attitude of children towards reading? How is the child's relationship with each of them changing?

• How does the physical environment influence children's interest in reading?

• What are the primary distractions that children give in to while they read?

• What are those moments that make children want to read voluntarily?

• What mode of learning captures children attention?

• What makes children curious?

• How do children choose what to read? How do they read?

Children Indian School Al-Ghubra predominantly come from the middle to upper-middle socio-economic group. At the school, I will observe 11 – 13 year old children in a plethora of offline and online contexts as listed down below.

The offline contexts include:

• School Library during library lesson for grades 6,7 and 8 to understand children's attitude towards dedicated reading time provided during school hours

• Home Environment of a 11 year old girl studying at the school

• Classroom Environment on a regular school day at ISG

• No Book Day, a weekly initiative organized by ISG. In this initiative, children are asked not to bring their study books to school on a particular day each week and teachers are asked to use other other mediums to teach academic topics

• Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) an initiative organized by ISG in which children and teachers are asked to put away everything they're doing for 20 minutes, pick up a fiction/non-fiction book and read. This initiative is conducted by the school during school hours.

• Book Fest 2019, observing two research particiapants in a citywide book fair with 500,000 book titles on sale for all age groups.

The online contexts include:

• Biblionasium, Dogobooks, Spaghetti Book Club, etc. - book-reviewing websites for kids by kids

• Informative Youtube videos and articles on children's reading habits

Methods

Based on inputs from IDEO U experts, I developed the following guide to help myself make holistic observations. Along with referring to the headings while on the field, the guide also helped me reflect on the experience later and think about the nuanced moments I might have failed to note at the time.

This framework focusses on observing what and how children behave in the context.

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Key Observations

Choosing a Book to Read During the Weekly Library Lesson

In a class of 35 minutes, students are given 5-7 minutes to choose a book to borrow for the following week.

Within this time, children quickly skim through a wide variety of books (approx. 15 shelves) and are observed to pick up books written by familiar authors, impressive graphic covers and/or interesting titles. The summary written behind the book is rarely read.

Even though a stair ladder is placed at several spots, the books at eye level are browsed more than those above or below.

Some middle-schoolers also browse for and lend books meant for elementary school children. Most 8th graders choose magazines to read during the library lesson and avoid borrowing books altogether. These magazines are placed on racks close to the seating area and are picked up within a few seconds. Once again, children are observed to pick up magazines with catchy titles and striking cover graphics. Gendered reading also creeps in as sports magazines are particularly common among boys.

Overall, the atmosphere is chaotic especially when there are two classes in the library at the same time.

The School Librarians tend to be strict disciplinarians while managing a class of 45 students and completing all their duties in time.

The school library is managed by two main librarians and an assistant. All procedures at the library are done manually thus keeping these librarians busy throughout the day completing repetitive tasks.

Students of grades 3,4 and 5 lend a book to read at home with excitement each week. Librarians too particularly ensure that every student in these classes lend a book to read. However, this habit is observed to fade-out come middle school.

Middle-school children choose to read magazines or books during the library lesson and avoid lending a book altogether. In response to this, the librarians occasionally question students authoritatively about why they don't want to borrow books. However, for the most part, it goes unattended.

Reading at the Library

The furniture in the library allows children to sit face to face or in small groups unlike those in their classrooms. This seating arrangement facilitates and encourages discussion amongst children. However, overall, discussions are vehemently discouraged by the librarians who ask children to read individually to maintain discipline and silence. The body posture predominantly remains the same while studying as well as reading for leisure.

During the library lesson, serious readers sit alone or in pairs in the corner of the seating area. Maybe they value uninterrupted reading time? Those reading magazines are seen sitting in groups often passing their magazines around within their group and looking at pictures/reading articles from multiple magazines. Maybe these children value discussion?

Relevance

"Shakespeare? Oh god no, that guy died 300 years ago"

Similar to many other aspects of life, children value books that are relevant to the times they are living in. The pictures below are of an 11-year-old girl's bookshelf in her room. While all of these books are available in her school library, she bought them from a store/online to read them.

Feeding children's interest in popular books

Due to the high demand and low supply of popular fiction books in the school library, the librarian limited the number of borrows of these books from a single class to two. In response, the children then hid these books on other shelves in order to borrow them when it was their turn. Upon discovering this behaviour, the librarian stored the entire series in a cupboard of its own and then placed the cupboard near her desk. This discouraged children from wanting to borrow it at all as it involved interacting with authority. Some children weren't even aware that the series was stored separately.

Reading & More

Some children play hide-and-seek belween the shelves during the library lesson and pick a book to read at random.

While arranging books, it was observed that children pick out books that seem interesting and explore them.

Influence of Role Models

In school, children are introduced to concepts such as determination, perseverance, gratitude, success, etc. through moral stories written in their English textbooks or presented in the morning assembly. These concepts are also highlighted through framed quotes hung in the hallway.

However, when children picked out books for themselves outside of the academic environment, they were eager to read real-life experiences of the personalities they looked up to. These books highlighted similar values but were more relatable to the child as the characters were not fictitious and books were not preachy.

At the book fest visited, 11-13-year-olds were interested in books such as How to be a Bawse: A guide to conquering life by Lily Singh and Go Kiss the World: Life lessons for the young professional by Subroto Bagchi. Autobiographies and Biographies, although available at the school library, were assigned to a higher reading level. Hence, students could not lend it to read at home.

The influence of time

During the last lesson of the day, the substitute teacher in a 6th grade class asked students to read the storybooks they had lent that day at the library. Most students whined and took their storybooks out unwillingly while complaining that it was boring to read more as they had been studying all day. They were more interested in conducting an oral quiz in class.

On the No-Book day, teachers taught concepts through experiments, active discussions, and a 'show and tell' session. Throughout the day, children were observed to be more involved and full of questions.

Drop Everything and Read

During the first DEAR initiative at school, most children seemed to adjusted to the concept quickly with very few distracted. At the start, a child had set an alarm on his watch for 30 minutes, the time duration assigned to the activity. Once it rang, he looked around to see if his peers and the teacher were still reading. Since they were, he continued to do so too.

When the teacher stepped out for a minute, the children near the door were momentarily distracted and started looking around to see their peers' reactions.

Reflection

After observing on the field, I reflected on my experience to speculate the 'why' behind certain observations. Based on my specualtions, I am curious to learn more about the following.

• How does social setting influence how easily content can be enjoyed and digested?

• How does browsing time influence the 'right book' chosen by the child?

• How much does choosing the 'right book' as per their liking influence their liking towards reading in general?

• Children's choice of books based on mood. Are middle school children reading books meant for toddlers as a stress buster?

• Why do children prefer reading magazines/comics during library lessons? Easier to pick during a time crunch/ content more interesting than books/ tired of borrowing books and not being able to finish them/ reading short articles and completing them gives a sense of accomplishment/ good stress buster?

• Are books at eye level on the shelves browsed more due to lack of time/ lack of care towards borrowing and reading in general?

• In the absence of teachers, how would their library experience change?

• If visuals and titles play a major role in helping children choose books, how to the visually impaired choose?

• What influences children who dislike leisure reading into choosing a book to read voluntarily?

• controlled reading vs free reading?

• How can the school library encourage children to be more exciting about reading?

• Are children intrigued by stories by real people rather than fictitious characters because they are able to relate to them better/ curious about themselves and the world around them?

I have come to understand that many of my inquiries can be explored in the context of the school library. In theory, the school library and the weekly library lesson seem to be ideal in helping children sustain their reading habit. I believe so as the library lesson is scheduled into their weekly schedule hence, going to the library is not a choice. Furthermore, children can increase their knowledge without any cost as there is no library fee. But in reality, does this system work and have an effect as it should?

Hence, here on, I am curious to explore the role and potential of school libraries in encouraging middle-schoolers to read more.