In the club

Teachers from 12 schools use grant to hit the books

By Allison Gorman

While other local book clubs have been tackling some well-known titles—The Shack, say, or Three Cups of Tea—12 groups in Chattanooga have been meeting to discuss less familiar fare, like Rigor is NOT a Four-Letter Word and Why Are School Buses Always Yellow? The books might not be on the bestseller rack at Barnes & Noble—but, for these readers, they might be mind-changing, even life-changing reading.

Take it from Robin Cayce, whose club, the “Leadership Literature Link,” met once a month at Stone Cup to read Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind: 16 Essential Characteristics for Success: “One of the members of the Leadership Literature Link was so enthralled with the power of the Habits of Mind that she has agreed to launch a school-wide focus on the habits for the upcoming school year, as we all learn more and more about the power of the mind.”
Cayce, site principal of Normal Park Museum Magnet School, facilitated the club, which included 16 teachers from the school. Normal Park was one of 12 Chattanooga-area schools that received a grant from the Public Education Foundation to develop faculty book clubs. All the selected books focus on the leadership skills teachers need to help improve their schools.
“The skills in Habits of Mind were ones that teachers would help students recognize in themselves, like questioning and perseverance, so that teachers and students entered into an educational environment where both parties were in a partnership of lifelong learning,” Cayce says.

Many of the clubs have chosen books that will dovetail with professional development already in progress in their schools, says the PEF’s Frances Haman-Prewitt.
As you’d expect, a book club for teachers involves a little more than conversation and coffee.
“Every session we followed a comprehension protocol,” Cayce says. “For example, while reading chapters six through nine, we made two-column notes as we read, thought about ‘How is my classroom/our school “thoughtful”?’, and completed a thinking map. Then, when we met for that session, we had those notes and maps to guide our discussions.
“Our meetings culminated in May, and at our year-end celebratory faculty meeting, we shared our thoughts on the book, and readers volunteered to make visuals of each habit and share them. The visuals they made can then be used in their classrooms in the coming year.”

The other schools that received up to $1,000 in book-club funding are Apison Elementary, Brown Academy, CSAS, Hixson Elementary, Lakeside Academy, Red Bank High School, Sale Creek Middle/High School, Snow Hill Elementary, Soddy Daisy Middle School, Tyner Middle Academy and Wallace A. Smith Elementary.

The funding came from an anonymous donation to the PEF, Haman-Prewitt says.

To see a podcast of the faculty book club at Snow Hill Elementary School, see the online version of this story at ChattanoogaParentMagazine.com.