Adult book club discussion Heritage Christian Online School April 2011 led by Pippa Davies Teacher Librarian HCOS.

1. Disrupting Class Adult Book Club HCOS April 2011

2. Important Points re sharing Open in prayer Give each person chance to share their opinion respectfully. Share how book impacted you as opposed to whether you hated or loved the book.

3. Question 1: Culture Clayten Christenson shares from an American experience how the digital world is impacting our culture in schools, and in other business innovations. Is he celebrating public schools and/or homeschooling? How is he trying to change the culture? Do you think that as a Canadian collective group of homeschooling teachers we can share in the same ideals, or are they different according to the educational culture and climate?

4. Question 2: Themes! Christensen shares how motivation in schools is often intrinsically linked or extrinsically linked? Extrinsically ties into getting students to do something based on an external motivator like society’s needs, as opposed to the students’ own needs? In our homeschooling environment do you think our students have more extrinsic or intrinsic motivation? Why? How can we influence our students to be more intrinsically motivated?

5. Students learn in Different ways? Should we be standardizing testing, or looking for different ways of evaluating students’ success? Does the homeschool environment lend itself to student centric testing? Are homeschool teachers like brick and mortar teachers, in that they teach according to their type of intelligence? Do you know what kind of intelligence you teach from? What about your parents, how do we influence them?

6. How to keep students motivatedand engaged? How does Clayten suggest technology needs to work for us? Consumption vs non consumption? Online courses? Individualised? Is this happening in our school? Are you happy teaching from a mono-lithic approach (one style fits all?) How do you deal with students who do not learn according to this approach?

7. How can our school compete against non-consumption? Where are most of our students coming from? What type of learning are they looking for? The majority… Do we need exams?

8. How to create student centric learning? What criteria do we need to add to make the homeschool learning environment engaging and interactive? How do we move from monolithic to student centric? Is this already happening in our school? What do the stats say about students who teach themselves? Where does a student feel elements of success in his school day? How can we add to this?

9. Solutions to the Problems? What types of solutions does Christensen explore in the book? Are they easy to implement? Do we have charismatic visionary role models? Do they help us? Why or why not?

10. Organizational Psychology How come solutions in one company are harder to introduce in another? How is HCOS structurally organized to create teaching heavyweights or disruptive innovators? Do we work collaboratively or are we in our own little world?

11. Does Christensen back up his research? Does he give definitive facts? Is his theme the right theme? What does he base his research on? Is his tone passionate and inflammatory? Objective and earnest? Do you think he offers solutions to the problems being raised in the book? Does he affirm you as a teacher?

12. How has this book changed you? Has it broadened your outlook on a subject? Has it given you Godly insight? Could you relate to any part of the book on a personal basis? Do you have a new type of thinking related to this particular climate of learning? Or were you already doing what he suggested?

13. Thank you! Thank you for sharing in our first adult book club session. I really appreciate all of your input! I look forward to doing one again next year if this was a success?