They probably won’t argue over Austen, deconstruct Hemingway or decipher Tolkien.
The new book clubs at public schools around Hamilton County have more to do with a love of learning than of literature, as teachers and administrators are taking their own time to read up on how to be better educators.
Through the Public Education Foundation, an anonymous donor gave $40,000 to buy books for each of the 44 book clubs that will start soon in the county’s elementary, middle and high schools.
“This is school-based and teacher-led. They choose the books; they choose their schedule,” said Christa Payne, the foundation’s director of development and external relations who helped get the book club program started. “So often schools do professional development and go to conferences, but this is for them, by them.”
The foundation’s book club effort started last year, and this year the number of participating schools more than tripled, Ms. Payne said.
Principals or teachers interested in starting a book club at their school wrote proposals outlining how the professional development books would complement their school improvement plan.
Jennifer Purvis, an eighth-grade science teacher at Loftis Middle School, is using two inspirational books for her book club: “Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56” by Rafe Esquith and “Schools of Fish!: Welcome Back to the Reason You Became an Educator” by Philip Strand.
To discuss the books, Loftis staff plan to meet after hours in a coffee shop for a more relaxed, open atmosphere.
Alicyn Wilkey at Brown Academy is including a small group of parents with some teachers for one of her book selections: “The Leader in Me: How Schools and Parents Around the World are Inspiring Greatness, One Child at a Time” by Stephen Covey.
Central High School principal Finley King has decided on a mentor model for his book club, pairing up new teachers with more experienced ones.
“I envision having those veteran teachers learn something from their mentee because they’re brand new out of college, and then have the mentors shape some of the ideas of the new teachers,” he said.
Public Education Foundation President Dan Challener said he appreciates the willingness of the book club participants.
“Forming book clubs on their own time is just one more indication of how committed Hamilton County teachers are to doing the best job possible in the classroom,” he said in a prepared statement.
Kelli Gauthier covers K-12 education in Hamilton County for the Times Free Press. She started at the paper as an intern in 2006, crisscrossing the region writing feature stories from Pikeville, Tenn., to Lafayette, Ga. She also covered crime and courts before taking over the education beat in 2007. A native of Frederick, Md., Kelli came south to attend Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in print journalism. Before newspapers, ...
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