Professional development that teachers actually value tends to be practical and collegial. A book study around Lies My Teacher Told Me can be both. It invites debate about content and, more usefully, about how the department teaches and assesses history.

The risk is that a book study becomes a series of complaints about textbooks with no follow-through. Avoiding that means building in decisions. Each session should end with one thing teachers will try in their classrooms.

A six-session structure fits most school calendars. Meet every two weeks for about forty-five minutes. Assign a few chapters between sessions.

Below is a suggested outline you can adapt.

Session Structure

Keep each meeting to a predictable format: a short discussion of the reading, an example from a real classroom, and a commitment. Rotate facilitators so the conversation is not owned by one person. The rhythm keeps momentum.

• Session one: overview and the case for questioning textbooks
• Session two: heroification and how it shapes student writing
• Session three: race, class, and what our own materials include
• Session four: designing source-based assignments from a chapter
• Session five: building a shared rubric for critical history writing

Keeping the Focus on Students

Bring student work to the table. Reading a few anonymous essays together shows how the ideas play out in practice. It also grounds the discussion in the reality of what students can do.

Loewen's follow-up book, Teaching What Really Happened, can serve as a companion text. It includes classroom-oriented suggestions that link nicely to the later sessions. Using excerpts keeps the workload reasonable.

Handling Disagreement

Some teachers will find Loewen too critical, and others will find him not critical enough. That is healthy. Set norms so disagreement stays professional and grounded in evidence.

Encourage colleagues to test the book's claims against their own subject knowledge. Where someone thinks Loewen overstated a point, the group can look at the evidence together. Modeling that habit is the most valuable outcome of the study.

Connecting to Grading and Assessment

Use the final session to align on assessment. Agree on a shared rubric row for source evaluation and a common scoring practice with anchor papers. That turns the book's ideas into a lasting department norm.

If the group is interested in tools that help with consistent feedback, the last session is a good time to explore them. AI grading platforms can support shared rubrics across sections, though the department should decide how much to rely on them.