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Mt. Carmel School teachers form book club
Teachers at Mount Carmel School recently formed a book club in an effort to grow and improve their skills as professionals.
MCS president Galvin Deleon Guerrero said Friday that beginning with Chip and Dan Heath’s book, Switch, teachers have been utilizing their weekly in-service sessions to discuss the book’s insights with each other and to explore ways that the book’s lessons can help them in and out of the classroom.
Switch uses current findings in psychological and sociological research to explain how individuals and organizations can successfully make positive changes. The book emphasizes that “for things to change, somebody somewhere has to start acting differently,” and offers research-based and evidence-driven techniques for initiating and sustaining successful change efforts.
Fifth grade teacher and 2007 AlumKnight Min Ji Han appreciates the lessons she learned from Switch.
“What we’re learning is not limited to education and can be applied to many other professions,” she said. “I especially like the focus on finding bright spots of change that you can duplicate; instead of focusing on what’s wrong, we should focus on what’s right.”
For Deleon Guerrero, the best way to help students become life-long learners is to be lifelong learners ourselves and lead by example.
“By reading one book together and meeting each week to share our thoughts on the book with each other, we are growing and thriving as a learning community,” according to Deleon Guerrero.
The MCS president disclosed that the move of the schoolteachers is in line with many schools across the nation that started their own book clubs to enhance teacher professional development.
According to the ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development), “effective professional development in literacy must include a sustained, personal examination of our interaction with reading.”
