Creating a Book Club for School Counselors

Several years ago I was introduced to the on-line resource my-bookclub.com.  It has been a great way for counselors in our district to feel a connection with one another, meet counselors at other levels,  and discuss relevant professional literature.  We have even been able to use this as one of our 4 professional learning cycles in our district.

Our local School Counselor Association started the book club idea 3 years ago.  We choose a book, send out a survey for interested counselors to choose a day and time, had individuals register for our on-line club, and then met virtually for a pre-determined number of weeks based on the number of chapters or length of the book.   The first year we read, The Use of Data in School Counseling, by Dr. Trish Hatch.  Last year we read the ASCA National Model Handbook and this year we are reading Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World , by Dr. Michele Borba.

Setting up your Book Club 
Someone has to agree to be the lead and set up the club for your group.  Go to the website https://my-bookclub.com, register, and create a club.  On your club page will be a place to display the book you are reading and share a brief paragraph about your group.  You can share the website and club name with potential members or invite people to join by email.

The Book Club Lead who creates the club account will be the one to receive requests for new members. Only individuals who are approved as  members can join you in the chat.  The chats take place in a private chat room, unlike on Twitter where you may have lots of other tweets happening at the same time you are trying to chat. This is much neater and easier to follow. We have about 55 members and anywhere from 15-20 will participate on any given chat.

Choosing a book and a day and time
Our local School Counselor Association has chosen the books based on what is occuring in our district.  However, this could easily be done by using a Google form to take book ideas and for voting.  We email a Google form to all the counselors in our district asking if they are interested to vote for their preferred day and time and their 2nd and 3rd choices.  We offered Sunday-Thursday evenings with a one hour time frame in the 6:30-9:00 window.  Our group tends to like Tuesday from 7-8pm. We also found 8 weeks tends to be the limit for group interest.  So we have made it a point to keep our clubs to that time frame.

Purchasing the books
Most of our group has been able to get their administrators purchase books or have used departmental money.  Of course, there are always those who want a book for their personal library and will purchase it theirself.

Organinzing Your Book Club
In our district we use Microsoft office where we created a shared file for our book club.  This could also be done in Google Drive.  In this shared file we keep the book club Guidelines for Participation and Facilitator Responsibilities.  There is also a sign-up sheet with dates and chapters so book club members can  sign-up to share the opportunity to be the facilitator for the evening.  This file also is the location of archived chats and the questions discussed for each chat.

In our district we can receive in-service points for doing a book study.  Creating a "course" and getting course approval before the chat begins is important so participants can earn their points.  Inviduals who miss a meeting can read the archived chat for the evening they missed and answer the questions and submit them to the shared folder for credit.

Facilitating the Chat
Each facilitator is responsible for keeping the conversation on track and posting the discussion questions during the hour the club is meeting.  Facilitators should prepare about 6 questions to pose to the group over the course of the hour.  It is easier when facilitating to already have your questions ready in a Word document. That way the facilitator only has to copy and paste questions into the chat bar.  This helps maintain the flow of the conversation throughout the chat.  Each question should begin with Q and the quesiton number.  As members respond, they should use A and the number of the question.

Wrapping up the Chat
Once the chat is over, when you sign out of the chat room the conversation for the evening disappears.  Because we tend to share a lot of good ideas and information and because we have members who sometimes have to miss chats, we always archive the evening's chat.   This is as easy as creating a Word document and copying and pasting the chat into the document and saving it to the shared file.  There you have it for reference for participants who wish to reference shared ideas and for those who were unable to attend the chat.

And there you have it!  A book club is an easy way to participate in relevant professional development (in your bathrobe) and exchange some pretty cool ideas with your school counseling colleagues.  Have you ever participated in an on-line book club?  What are some books you have read or ideas you can share about your club?  Please feel free to share your ideas below.