What better way to improve kids’ reading and writing than a book club…for teachers.

Rochester Memorial School reading specialists Holly Ashley and Lisa McIlmail came up with the idea, and with guidance from Assistant Superintendent Elise Frangos, devised a reading list for the group. It began meeting monthly this school year.

“There’s just not enough time for us to get together as professionals and discuss what is related to what we’re doing everyday, and that would help improve the teaching and learning day to day,” said Ashley.

All teachers in tri-town public schools are invited to the meeting where the talk centers on literacy in the classroom. Last month’s selection, “The Book Whisperer" Donalyn Miller, discussed how to get kids reading for a sustained time each day.

“The goal is to create lifelong readers, not just to get them through that particular grade,” said Ashley.

The teachers who come to the voluntary group range from elementary to high school teachers in a variety of disciplines.

“It’s all different perspectives, different points of kids learning,” McIlmail said.

At each meeting, the teachers discuss ways they’ve already put the month’s book into practice.

“We’ve heard from teachers that because the topics are very classroom centered on the issues they actually want to fix, they’ve taken it to heart and started to put it into practice in their classrooms,” Ashley said.

Even for those teachers not participating in the group, Ashley said some of them are discussing ideas from the group’s reading list and figuring out ways to incorporate them into their lessons.

“What I like about it is that it’s a that grassroots type of thing where we’re spreading out information at our level,” said Ashley.