Reorienting to Text or Centering Myself

This was my first ever discussion and I was painfully aware that we were struggling to get into a rhythm. I asked my students to explain an instance of cultural appropriation from our first source. A student raised his hand and talked through it for the class. While he was speaking, I noticed that no other hands were in the air. I was incredibly nervous about the potential silence. One way I thought that I might be able to get students talking was to have them go back to other texts that we’d read before the discussion. This would give them material to bounce off of and turn us towards our question. Since students were not naturally using texts to support their claims, I thought they may have needed more explicit prompting. At the same time, I worried that by pointing students back to the text so many times, I would be recentering my own voice, making students clam up even more. It was tough. I knew the text could be helpful for generating new ideas, but in pointing students there, would I be taking over the discussion and limiting their ability to engage in inquiry?