Passion, Power, and Positives: Book Clubs for Professional Development

by Jennifer Sturge, May 2022

I believe that once someone learns to read, they are always reading to learn. Whether reading fiction or nonfiction, as a first-grader or a 50-year-old librarian, what we read teaches us in some way, shape, or form. I think back to my middle school self and reading Stephen King books under the covers with a flashlight, Anne Rice books that had me exploring and learning New Orleans, and cereal boxes that taught me weird facts and figures. Reading fiction taught me about the world, just as my textbooks shared information on science, social studies, and math.

These days, while I am always reading a book for my own enjoyment, I find that I spend just as much time reading for professional development. I read to learn. One way to do that is through the book club model. School library supervisors, this article is for you! Keep reading to learn more about book clubs for professional development that will save you time, energy, and genuinely benefit your district.

The Book Club Model

Supervising school libraries is a rewarding and exhausting job. We want to provide the best possible PD for our school librarians while ensuring that we can still complete all of the other aspects of our jobs. When I think of book clubs, I picture a group of friends who all read a fiction title and then come together to discuss it, have a few adult beverages, and spend the evening with good company. However, minus the adult beverages, utilizing a book club model for professional development is efficient and effective. Think about it: Someone else (the author) has already put the presentation together for you. Often, discussion questions are available at the end of the chapter or there is a separate guide to the book that you can use for discussion. Sharing a professional title with your colleagues invites stimulating conversation and promotes a sense of collaboration and camaraderie. As a coordinator of school libraries in a district with twenty-two school librarians plus my additional duties, finding ways to enhance and deliver effective professional development without reinventing the wheel is a must. Book clubs can be an effective way of providing professional development. To get the most from a book club model, I suggest thinking about what I'll refer to as Three Ps of PD: purpose, passion, and positives.

Purpose

When I first thought about using a book club model for professional development, I was not 100% certain how to get started, and I didn't have a model to follow that fit my needs and the timeline I envisioned. I encourage you to ask yourself some questions to get started:

• Why are you considering implementing a book club model for professional development?
• What are your desired outcomes?
• How will your book club increase collaboration among colleagues, foster conversation, promote new ideas, and build leadership among school librarians?
• What group of school librarians are you trying to reach?

My consideration in forming a book club was knowing I wanted to encourage more leadership among the librarians in my district. I already saw them as leaders in their buildings, and I wanted them to feel the same way about themselves. My outcome centered on helping school librarians see themselves as leaders in new ways and build upon their leadership.

For our first book study, we read and discussed Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy by Judi Moreillon. The brief chapters, reflection questions, charts, and resources all lent themselves perfectly to our need to provide an asynchronous club. Because I wanted all of our librarians to be able to participate and increase collaboration, an asynchronous online format worked well for our needs. With school and family schedules, there was not an easy way to choose a time to get together each week. Making our book club asynchronous allowed everyone to participate on a virtual platform when they had the time.

We did hold one synchronous session at the end where the author, Judi Moreillon, was invited to present and have that final, powerful discussion. (More on inviting the author later.) One of my school librarians volunteered to set up a course shell for us to use in our learning management system (LMS), Schoology. Using the discussion questions at the end of each chapter, we divided our Schoology shell into four distinct blocks of work. Each block was designed to take place over a week. As the book study progressed, I would check in on the discussions in our LMS and offer thoughts and guiding questions. As our culminating activity, Judi was able to join us for a session on Microsoft Teams, where she and I discussed leadership and school libraries with the book study participants. As part of our last module and discussion, the librarians crafted questions to ask Judi, which I sent to her before our virtual meeting to help craft where our conversation would go.

For this book study, I offered workshop/professional development payment to the school librarians who participated and an honorarium to the author. If you can make contact with the author and negotiate an honorarium for their time, it's a wonderful way to wrap up the book club experience. There is a lot of power in hearing from the person who put the words on the page and digging into the nuances of the conversation.

Passion

The second P in utilizing book studies is passion. When I say that you need passion to have a thriving book study, I'm simply saying that by choosing the correct title and by appealing to the needs of your school librarians, you will foster a passion for learning. This is particularly true if you cannot offer a workshop, professional development payment, or recertification hours. That was the case with our second successful book club, in which I relied on the passion of the librarians for their work to make our book club successful.

For this club, I purchased the book Core Values in School Librarianship, a collection edited by Judi Moreillon (I love her work!), for our staff. Over a school year (2021-2022), I provided time to read and discuss the chapters during our monthly meetings and professional development sessions. Because I did not have a lot of time, I would scaffold and jigsaw who read what chapters so we could have a meaningful conversation in the short amount of time I was able to provide throughout the year.

I relied on our monthly librarian department meetings for this book study, which are scattered throughout the year. I also relied on school librarians' passion for our core values to have robust discussions in the short amount of time our professional development calendar allows. At the heart of it all, it's our core values that make the school library a unique and amazing place to be.

As an example, in November, our high school and middle school librarians met for a half-day of professional development. Before we met, I created two groups: one group read Chapter 1 and the other group read Chapter 2. We spent the first thirty minutes of our day reading the text and taking notes. Following that thirty minutes, the group worked for another twenty minutes as a team to create a presentation on their chapter. At the end of that collaborative time, each group had fifteen minutes to present and field questions. I repeated this process with the elementary librarians later on in the month.

We will be repeating this process for Chapters 3 and 4 at our next professional development. We will continue to read and discuss two chapters at a time—we may even go into next school year—until we complete the book. During the presentations of each chapter and the subsequent Q&A, the passion for our profession shines brightly in our conversations with our colleagues.

Positives

Numerous positives come out of utilizing book clubs for professional development, and those positives are in our conversations, connections with each other, and the connection of shared experiences.

The conversations that we have had over the past few years during our book club meetings have been genuine and authentic. Our conversations allowed us to reflect on topics like equity, diversity, leadership, and relationships. Book clubs gave us something to look forward to both asynchronously and in person—rich conversation and a healthy dose of professional learning. And, if our book club comes to a close at a local happy hour (outdoor and socially distanced) hangout, that's even better!

We feel more connected as a team, and having that shared experience creates bonds among colleagues. Book clubs and reading for our professional learning helped us feel more connected to each other and our craft of school librarianship. Book clubs among colleagues can be for fun, and they can help us make connections as we bond over conversation, questions, and themes.

Our state association, the Maryland Association of School Librarians (MASL), is hosting the next book club that my district's librarians will be participating in. We're reading The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. This book club will lean more heavily toward the personal connection to our craft rather than the professional one. But in this experience, we will be weaving the joy of reading fiction while connecting over literature with librarians across the state, and that's a powerful positive.

Whether you are considering utilizing the book club model for the first time or you are a seasoned user of the book club model, having engaging, enjoyable, and lively conversations with colleagues is a fantastic way to provide a fresh or refreshed take on professional learning.