I was recently chatting with an old colleague about our days teaching in New York City public schools today. “Ugh,” she moaned. “I hated teaching book clubs.” About a week later, I was in a meeting with a different colleague who said, “Book clubs just didn’t work for my kids last year.” Whenever I hear the same things twice, my pattern-seeking brain starts to go into overdrive. There was a common feeling here that I needed to explore and unpack. I sat with those comments for a couple of weeks and let them marinate. If I’m being honest with myself, book clubs were sometimes a huge struggle for me as a classroom teacher as well. But now that I’ve had some time to reflect on the difference between what I was trying to do ten years ago and what I’m trying to do now, I realize that it wasn’t the structure or “book clubs” that were the root of the problem. It’s that I had a narrow vision of what I thought book clubs were “supposed to” look like and be like.

Highlighting Ideas from Hands Down, Speak Out: Listening and Talking Across Literacy and Mathby Kassia Omohundro Wedekind and Christy Hermann Thompson

In this One Thing You Might Try… blog post, Grace Choi shares her approach to the start of the school day and encourages teachers to swap out the Morning Work in favor of a Morning Choice time full of play, talk, and connection. 

Highlighting Ideas from Digging Deeper: Making Number Talks Matter Even More by Cathy Humphreys and Ruth Parker

In this four-part blog series, Tonya Perry, Steven Zemelman, and Katy Smith, the authors of Teaching for Racial Equity, introduce us to their Action Guides, short one-page companions to their book that help educators move from the words they read on the page to taking action. 

In this One Thing You Might Try… blog post, Andrea Castellano shares the Collaborative Shared Reading Protocol—a shared reading strategy that keeps engaging text and student talk at its center.

Highlighting Ideas from Making Number Talks Matter by Cathy Humphreys and Ruth Parker

We are proud to support the many Stenhouse authors presenting at the  National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention, November 17-November 20. 

We hope you’ll visit our booth (#403) and attend Stenhouse author sessions!

Highlighting Ideas From Conferring in the Math Classroom: A Practical Guidebook to Using 5-Minute Conferences to Grow Confident Mathematicians, K-5 by Gina Picha

In this four-part blog series, Tonya Perry, Steven Zemelman, and Katy Smith, the authors of Teaching for Racial Equity, introduce us to their Action Guides, short one-page companions to their book that help educators move from the words they read on the page to taking action. You can view the first blog and Action Guide in this series here.