EDUO 9021: Teachers’ Book Study Club

Course Overview

Reading books and discussing them is important for students and teachers. While discussing the content of a book, we will often get much more from the book than if you just read it on your own. Often reading a book as a school team can also be a useful way to implement a new strategy or get the entire team on the same page (pun intended). The booklist of approved books provides a wide array of book beneficial to classroom, school, district and community enhancement. This course encourages educators to create time to explore the content of a book with each other in order to gain the benefits that can happen when there is dialog between professionals around a focused topic.

This course can be taken multiple times for different books. Additional sections of this course will be numbered as follows. 1st section EDUO9021, 2nd section EDUO9022, 3rd section EDUO9023, etc.

Course Objectives:

In this course participants will have opportunity:

1. To read important books that impact current issues of education
2. To think about and analyze ideas in the books
3. To research and comment on the author’s life experiences as they relate to the book’s theme.
4. To deepen your understanding of the concepts in the books by creating inquiry questions
5. To create posts about the book as it relates to your educational experience in an online group of other readers or to discuss and collaborate ideas presented in the reading with colleagues in a face-to-face setting
6. To write a response to the experience of reading, synthesizing and posting that presents arguments regarding the possibility and advisability of implementing the author’s ideas

Steps to Completion

1. Form a “book club”, a group of educators interested in have a book study.
2. Select a book that is either on the approved book list (found on the course website), or contacting the
   instructor for approval prior to registering.
3. Determine the method of meeting (in person or online discussion), frequency (how often you will meet) and duration of meetings with your book club. If you would like assistance with this, the instructor will be glad to give input on this.
4. Read the book, participate in the discussions, and complete the assignments below. Bringing Mindfulness Practices (Meditation) into any Classroom EDUO 9702 1.12.17 Page 2
5. Attending all the meetings of a book club is extremely important. If a meeting of the group is missed, the attendance needs to be made up in some manner. There are two main ways to make up for this.

• If you know in advance of needing to miss the meeting, is to have a written summary of the main
points or any points that concern you from the required reading for that meeting and have
someone else present that to the group, so your voice is heard at the meeting.
• Submit the summary or points of concern to the instructor for this course so that your
participation for that meeting is counted.