How I Facilitate Professional Book Studies

It is a balance of administrative structure and teacher authority

“People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.”

- Blaise Pascal (quoted by Jennifer Allen in Becoming a Literacy Leader¹)

A handful of teachers have been trading emails lately about when to meet and discuss Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom by Jan Burkins, Kari Yates². “Can we meet at the school to chat?” is followed up with “Sure, how many chapters should we read by then?”

I am included in the email thread but I have largely steered clear of responding. My only offerings have been an online discussion board that they can “use or not, totally up to you”, along with a basic template to schedule chapters to be read and by when.

Another group interested in reading Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Gholdy Muhammad³ has been more quiet. My response has been mostly the same: offering options and some structure, yet le…