2025 Summer Virtual Book Discussion Series

Our 2025 summer virtual book discussion series features three books with the potential to positively impact your professional practice and your personal life. We have selected internationally renowned education professors Michael Fullan and Joanne Quinn’s book Coherence, Wolf at the Table by Pulitzer Prize nominee Adam Rapp, and a call to demand institutional change with Jessica Calarco’s revelatory book Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net. 

The Books

Coherence: The Right Drivers in Action for Schools, Districts, and Systems by Michael Fullan and Joanne Quinn

Complex times call for clear solutions. If initiative overload and fragmentation are keeping your best plans from becoming reality, it’s time to start teaching differently. The key to bringing about the kind of successful and sustainable change you need is the Coherence Framework, a dynamic, customizable road map made up of four essential components:

• Focused direction to build collective purpose
• Cultivating collaborative cultures while clarifying individual and team roles
• Deepening learning to accelerate improvement and foster innovation
• Securing accountability from the inside out

Participants would benefit by registering with grade level or department peers or other individuals from your school.

Wolf at the Table by Adam Rapp

Each summer we select one novel to include in our summer book series. Wolf at the Table explores our consistent proximity to violence and its effects over time through one family’s pursuit of the American dream. Pulitzer Prize finalist Adam Rapp writes with gorgeous acuity, cutting to the heart of each character as he reveals the devastating reality beneath the veneer of good society.

Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net by Jessica Calarco

America runs on women—women who are tasked with holding society together at the seams and fixing it when things fall apart. In this outstanding book acclaimed sociologist Jessica Calarco lays bare the devastating consequences of our status quo. Holding It Together draws on five years of research. Calarco leads us to see women’s labor as the reason we’ve gone so long without the support systems that our peer nations take for granted, and how women’s work maintains the illusion that we don’t need a net.

The Details

Our book discussions will meet Wednesdays from 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. Coherence will meet June 18 and July 9. Wolf at the Table will meet July 16 and 30. Holding it Together will meet Wednesday, August 13. You will receive a secure Zoom link about one week before each session.

Please read approximately 1/2 of the book prior to each meeting. For Holding it Together, please read the majority of the book by August 12. Books are not provided. We recommend you reserve a copy at your public library, order one online–many librarians like the mission of Bookshop or visit your local independent bookstore.