Book Discussion: Leaders of Their Own Learning – Celebrations of Learning

Here at Bettendorf Middle School we were lucky enough to bring some of our teachers to a three day training conducted by Expeditionary Learning. It was an amazing three days of learning, relearning, and examining how and what we teach.

Part of the training we used and read the book Leaders of Their Own Learning by Ron Berger. Since that training we have been trying to figure out how to keep the momentum going by not losing the powerful conversations and breakdown of how we teach.

We have decided to launch a book club on this book. For now we are going to focus on one chapter: Celebrations of Learning. We are a project based learning school and in April we will host our second exhibition night. We feel that by reading this chapter now and thinking through what makes for a powerful learning event we can develop a very powerful exhibition event for both students and the community.

As I worked with my other colleagues to prepare for this book club I thought it would be important to open up the dialogue to educators outside of our building.

Here is how it will work

1. Grab a copy of the book so you can read along with us.

2. Download the Voxer App and create an account.

3. Email or reach out to me via social media with your Voxer ID so I can add you to our book club group.

4. Between now and February 25th we will be discussing this chapter on Voxer. We will host specific questions, but more importantly this will be our chance to share out our ideas about the material. I will share out the Question Guide soon so we have some common threads to focus on.

5. At some point between now and then I will host a Google Hangout so we can talk live and in person.

6. On February 25th we will announce the next chapter for the book club.

I hope you will consider joining us. We look forward to hearing from you and your thoughts as well as sharing what our thoughts and ideas are and how we try to make sense of all this being a public middle school of 1100 students.