Book Tasting: Developing a Culture of Reading with Savory Books

Beth and I both believe strongly in creating a school or district culture that is grounded in learning. It is important to us that the adults in our systems have access to and participate in a wide variety of learning opportunities that help us grow as professional educators and as a learning community. We also believe that as leaders in schools, investing our time creating professional learning experiences that are relevant, meaningful, engaging, and FUN is important. A couple of weeks ago, we came across some awesome tweets by Karmen Logan and Lindsey Helton about the “Book Tasting PD” they had created. It was such a cool idea that we wanted to share it with you. Thank you Lindsey and Karmen for sharing this post with us and the #LeadLAP readers!

Book Tasting PD:

We love learning and we love books. We continuously challenge each other with new books as well as read books together. We borrow from each other and are continually talking with others and following individuals on Twitter to learn about new books to read. This allows us to challenge each other, stay focused on our priorities, and learn from other professionals in the field.

We have a fabulous staff that work hard, desire to learn and attend professional development. Many of them lack the time for Twitter or for researching new trade-related books.  We have lots of great books on campus and have made them available and have even done some book studies as a campus such as Teach Like a Pirate and Learn Like a Pirate in the past. However most do not come and seek out these resources on their own.

This year one of our campus priorities was to really focus on developing a culture of reading on our campus and we have done so by purchasing lots of books and having monthly challenges to put books in our kids’ hands. Our campus is ninety-four percent

economically disadvantaged and therefore most do not have a variety of print sources in their homes so it has been fun to see our kids get excited to pick out a new book from our book cart.

However, we realized something was missing–developing that culture of reading for our staff. Mind you-this is springtime, state testing time and our campus struggles to make accountability so stress is at a maximum at this time of year. We did not want to throw one more thing at our teachers but we did want to give them the opportunity to collaborate and grow together. What better way to learn and grow together than through a book study. However, we did not have lots of time to give for staff to meet on a regular basis because currently all staff are tutoring several days a week after school.

Hence, the idea of the book tasting came about. We came up with six book titles and decided to order six copies of each. We chose a variety of books including Mathematical Mindset, Innovator’s Mindset, Kids Deserve It, Disrupting Thinking, Shift This, and Mindsets in the Classroom. We felt each of these books focused on our campus priorities and provided variety for all our staff. We decided to kick off our Book Tasting event at the last faculty meeting before Spring Break. We set a future date in which staff would come back and chat about the book. Next we decided on a theme to make it like a “wine” and cheese to set the stage for our time together.

We brought table cloths and platters to use for the event in addition to purchasing bottles of sparkling juice drinks, plastic champagne cups, cheese, crackers, grapes and other finger veggies and dips.  We added a few other VIP and star decor to add to the theme to create some excitement as staff entered.

On the day of the event, our staff did not know what we were doing but instead entered to see the festive arrangements. We told them to simply walk around, look at the menu and take a look at the books while mingling and deciding on a book to “taste.” We gave a short talk about how we continually read and share books and learn from others on Twitter and even about getting to Tweet with many of the authors of our favorite books. We told them that we would gladly assist them if they were not sure on a choice of a book. We explained that there were no follow up assignments or anything they would have to write but instead we wanted to them to enjoy the experience of reading and learning-just like we preach at school! We told our teachers they could discuss with each other any ideas their group wanted to do with their reading and then gave them the follow-up date for when we would meet to share our learning together.

The date is set and a new menu is planned-a final course for this book tasting finale. Teachers will meet together to share their book and then each group will share key ideas and learnings with all staff. Our goal in the beginning was to develop a culture of reading and we believe that this format  along with the savory titles we chose will allow teachers to learn from each other in a fun way and continue to develop a passion for learning as a staff. As our passion builds, we hope to continue that passion with students and provide them more opportunities to taste a good book.

Karmen and Lindsey-Learning, Leading and
Passionate about Savory Books!