A Book Club to Inspire Future University and High School Collaborations

English teachers from USU and from Carbon High school recently got together to discuss a book club they had created. Lecturer and Director of Concurrent Enrollment Jeremy Ricketts had a desire to collaborate more with the English teachers from surrounding high schools and began the process by starting a book club.

“As a member of our Concurrent Enrollment program for several years now, I have seen how innovative our high school colleagues are. Whenever I talk to a high school teacher, I come away with new ideas for my own classroom,” Jeremy recalls. He wanted to make sure he extended the reciprocal mentorship to other teachers as well.

With eight high school teachers and five USU professors, they met together and discussed their different teaching methods, while also talking about The Will to Learn by Dave Stuart Jr., the book they had read together. “Their students will become our students,” Jeremy says. “We were very interested in hearing their experiences. The book’s central concerns are belonging, effort, efficacy, value, and credibility, so our conversations centered on those.”

The goal is to use this book club as a way to transition into other meaningful ways to engage and collaborate together. In the future they hope to work on a combined community project that involves students, as well as including the Statewide librarian and a student ambassador to discuss different ways to approach research in the classroom. 

Jeremy explains, “The goal of classroom collaboration is to create sustained, reciprocal partnerships between high school and university English faculty that enrich students’ learning, strengthen connections between secondary and higher education, and give students authentic opportunities to read, write, discuss, and create with people beyond their own classroom.”