Welcome to the KCTL Teaching & Learning Faculty Reading Group Wiki

About our Group: 

The KCTL Teaching & Learning Reading group meets about four times a semester in M391.  We meet with the purpose of reading critical and thought provoking books, one per semester, about teaching and learning. Books are ordered by KCTL and are available free before the semester starts at which time the facilitator breaks the book into reading portions upon which the meetings will be based. The meeting and reading information is distributed at the beginning of the semester to any individuals who express interest in participating. Approximately a week prior to each meeting the facilitator e-mails a handout of questions and discussion starters based on the reading for that meeting. Our meetings last about one hour, usually at the end of the day, and we discuss the the book using the questions and discussion statrters and also ideas, questions, and outside readings brought by the members themselves that relate to the section of the book we are reading.  The meetings are open to all  faculty, staff, and administrators who are interested in the topics being discussed. The books that we read have far reaching implications for the culture and society however we always connect what we are reading to actual teaching and learning practice in our classrooms.

About the Facilitator: 

Gordon Young, (Ph.D., Southern Illinois University), Associate Professor of Communication, Department of Communication & Performing Arts. Room E309, ext. 5939, gyoung@kingsborough.edu.  Gordon's research and publishing focuses on the areas of intercultural communication, popular culture, and critical perspectives on identity and education like his chapter in the book Mirror Images: Popular Culture and Education (by Peter Lang, 2008) and his article Using ‘The Lure of Gang Life’ to Teach Interpersonal and Group Attraction (in Communication Teacher, 2009). He is the current president of CLASP: The CUNY League of Active Speech Professors and a past book review co-editor for the American Communication Journal.
 

Present and Past Members of our Group:

Jay Bernstein, Christian Calienes, Annie Del Principe, Susan Ednie, Susan Farrell, Rick Fox, Janine Graziano-King, Gabrielle Kahn, Janine Graziano-King, Anwar Harper, Rachel Ihara, Maya A Jimenez, Diana Kalechman, Laura Kates, Stuart Kermes, Beth King, Mike Miranda, Tina Orsini, Lisa Paler, Peter Santiago, Marissa Schlesinger, Fran Smith, Cheryl H. Smith, Jack Taub, Julie Torrant, Barbara Walters, Amy Washburn (Please e-mail the facilitator with any missing names)

Reading for Fall 2011:

The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement by Jean M. Twenge & W. Keith Campbell

“Twenge and Campbell … begin by chronicling changes in American culture that have brought us Botox, fake paparazzi, and MySpace …The authors debunk myths about narcissism—that it is necessary in order to be competitive and that narcissists are actually overcompensating for low self-esteem …The authors argue that the nation needs to recognize the epidemic and its negative consequences, and take corrective action.”  (description taken from Booklist)

During the Fall 2011 semester we met on on the following dates: Wednesday, October 5 at 3pm in room E332 and Wednesday, October 26,  Wednesday, November 9, and Wednesday, November 30 at 3 pm in KCTL (M-391).

Reading for Spring 2012:

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic by Professor X

"What drives a former English major with a creative writing degree, several unpublished novels, three kids, and a straining marriage to take a job as a night teacher at a second-rate college? An unaffordable mortgage. As his house starts falling apart in every imaginable way, Professor X grabs first one, then two jobs teaching English 101 and 102-composition and literature-at a small private college and a local community college. He finds himself on the front lines of America's academic crisis. It is quite an education. This is the story of what he learns about his struggling pupils, about the college system-a business more bent on its own financial targets than the wellbeing of its students-about the classics he rediscovers, and about himself. Funny, wry, self-deprecating, and a provocative indictment of our failing schools, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower is both a brilliant academic satire and a poignant account of one teacher's seismic frustration-and unlikely salvation-as his real estate woes catapult him into a subprime crisis of an altogether more human nature." (description taken from Amazon.com)

Meeting Notes and Discussion Guides:

Fall 2011

Spring 2011   

Fall 2010  

Spring 2010

Fall 2009

Spring 2009