Book Club, Teacher Edition

A couple weeks ago, one of our teachers, Elise, came to me with the idea of a teacher book club.  Never being one to squash a great thought, I immediately said I would support it under three conditions - it had to be teacher led, the books had to be about teaching and pedagogy, and I get to participate.  She agreed to take the lead, and I agreed to buy the books.  When she sent the email to invite teachers to participate, within a couple days we had 37 people signed up.  I bought the books (running that by Accounting was, well.... interesting) and we passed them out last Thursday afternoon at the local Starbucks.  This would be our only in-person meeting - the rest of the sessions would be via Google Hangout.

For our first book, they chose Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess.  (I asked Dave to join us for the first hangout, but he must be at sea being a pirate.... no luck getting in touch with him)

Elise sent out the Google Hangout invite, gave us our first reading assignment, some questions to ponder, and last Tuesday we had our first GHO session.  Elise set it up as a Hangout on Air, so that those on vacation and away could watch it after the fact and stay up to speed for the next session.  It was great!  The assignment was the first 32 pages of the book (which I didn't know what that was because I have the Kindle version....) We talked about passion, and the importance of giving kids voice, and about the first days of school, and how what Dave wrote in the book resonated with our views of classrooms and kids.

She sent a followup email, providing the link to everyone who couldn't be there live.  She thanked everyone who joined the session

and gave us our next assignment  ("Dave Burgess described his first three days of school and how important those days are for setting the whole tone of his school year.  What activities do you do with your students in those very important first days of school. Please contribute your ideas to THIS spreadhseet.").

This is adult learning as it should be - collaborative, open discussion, pertinent to our craft, and voluntary.  (That 37 teachers agreed to do this during their summer break is awesome.  That's 20% of our staff!).  This is adult learning as it will be in Rio - we're rolling out our gamified PD program next month (more on that in a subsequent post).  This is student learning as it will be in Rio.  And as we adults model what learning looks like for students, and students internalize what learning looks like and reflect that, the subject matter and the "stuff" of curriculum will become context.  Our goal is for our kids to know how to make sense of complex and unfamiliar material, regardless of what it is.  Our goal is for every student to be a struggling learner (after all, you can't learn if you don't struggle!)  As it should be.