Socratic Seminar Reflection Blog

For the past two weeks, our class has read Tuesday's With Morrie, by Mitch Albom. (It is a bit ironic that we started on a Tuesday and even ended on a tuesday) During this time, we participated in "Socratic Seminars," a group activity where we create a guide, and discussed the book we are currently reading together. In total, we have had four of them, and I have learned a lot about the book, and about life! First, the seminars allowed me to look at the book in the point of view of my fellow classmates, which added a whole new level of understanding to the text. On top of this, I was able to pick up quite a few things in the book that I never would have noticed without this activity! The Socratic Seminars also influenced my life in general, this is because I learned many things living life to the fullest, and many other valuable life lessons.

     During each seminar, I noticed many trends regarding my personal goals and myself. Personally, I believe that at the beginning, I found myself being a bit less creative with what I was saying, but I felt later on, I mentioned more unique things that weren't discussed as much in the group. (Not the thing about me pushing my sister off a bridge, that was just an example) For most of the seminar, my personal goals were to help pust more people into the conversation who were having a bit more trouble participating. At the beginning, I think I did a good job at this, but towards the last few seminars, I found myself drifting away from this goal a bit, which I regret  in some ways.

     I noticed many trends in our class during the four seminars. The first trend was that we kind of changed subjects rather quickly, we would be talking about one thing for a minute, then something entirely unrelated the next, making it unorganized when somebody would go back to what another was saying. Another interesting thing was at the first few seminars, we were strictly on topic, we never really talked about something that wasn't directly in the book. Towards the last seminars, we started to branch off to other relating topics. I actually enjoyed this because I was able to connect the text to other current events going on in the world, and my peers connections to the story.