Join educators from all over the state in the online Winter 2025 IRC Book Club!  Choose one, two, or all three books!

Beginning January 19, participants will be reading, reflecting on, and responding in the Humans Who Teach book club, the Rooted in Strength book club, and/or the Illinois Reads book club during the seven-weeks of online discussions.   Participants who complete all assignments will be eligible to receive 15 PD clock hours for each book club.

For the Humans Who Teach: A Guide for Centering Love, Justice, and Liberation in Schools book club, the book was written by Shamri Reid.  This book club will be exploring the complicated humanity of those who teach and how within their humanity lies the transformative possibilities for cultivating lives and classrooms characterized by love. For the Rooted in Strength: Using Translanguaging to Grow Multilingual Readers and Writers book club, the book was written by Cecilia M. Espinosa and Laura Ascenzi-Moreno.  This book club will be demonstrating how our emergent bilingual students who speak two or more languages in their daily lives thrive when they are able to use “translanguaging” to tap the power of their entire linguistic and sociocultural repertoires. For the Illinois Reads book club, participants will be selecting books from one of the age bands of the 2025 Illinois Reads list to prepare lesson plans and activities. For Birth to 2nd Grade, participants will select a new book each week for a total of six books; for 3rd to 5th Grade, participants will select three books; for 6th to 8th Grade, participants will select two books; and for 9th to 12th Grade or the Adult age band, participants will select one book.

Participants who complete all assignments will be eligible to receive 15 PD clock hours for each book club.  Required for participation:

• Gmail address (free at https://mail.google.com/).  The Book Club uses Google Classroom, which does not work with Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, etc.  
• Texts:  Books can be purchased from the bookseller of your choice.

 Register by January 15, 2025, to participate in the book club.  Registration is FREE for IRC Members.  The cost for non-members is $50, which includes IRC membership for one year.   PLEASE NOTE:  The cost of book is not included.