Guidelines for Delve Seminar Conversations

• The guide will begin each session by asking a question. The guide’s role is not to teach the book but to facilitate conversation along fruitful paths.
• The conversation does not belong to any one individual. It is a group effort in which everyone participates, like a game of hackeysack or keeping a ball aloft by tossing it around a circle.
• You don’t need to raise your hand or be recognized by the guide in order to speak.
• The ordinary rules of polite conversation apply, as if you were at a large dinner party. Please do not engage in side-talk or interrupt your fellow readers, and please keep your remarks to the point so that others are not inclined to interrupt you. It’s important that each participant feels he or she is welcome to join in the conversation, and it is everyone’s responsibility to make sure that each individual can do so.
• Listening carefully is as important as speaking since developing connections between ideas will generate a deeper conversation. Asking questions of others is also an important way to participate; however, our conversation is not a debate.
• Because participants come from widely different backgrounds, please focus your remarks on the book the group is reading together. If you wish to draw a connection between the common text and some other book or film, please do so in a way that includes those who may not have read or seen it.
• Above all, seminars are intended to be fun. Please bring your openness, your curiosity and a good sense of humor!