Two goals, one stone, easy magic

So my two big goals for the school year are

1) encouraging reading outside the curriculum

2) proving that learning opportunities exist outside the doors of our school and our library.

Shannon Miller and I started chatted about connecting our book clubs late this summer, but the beginning of the school year hit and so did all sorts of other responsibilities.

So I never actually told my club about this plan.

But yesterday, we were able to spontaneously grab Shannon’s book club leader, Sebastian, into our first organizational club meeting.  I didn’t even have time to set up the projector.

Nevertheless, the result was kinda magical.

After some initial shyness, the club officers took over, filling Sebastian in on our discussion so far, exploring shared reading interests and authors we’ve been stalking, and developing a plan for organizing meetings in the future.  Lauren, our newly appointed secretary, immediately opened a Google Doc and promised the create a poll to help us make reading decisions.

Plans in the works: an October read selecting a title in the vampire/werewolf/zombie genre, a science fiction title, and a March film discussion on Hunger Games (with a possible book discussion happening before that).  We also hope to Skype in Amber, our former book club pres, who is studying abroad in Austria this school year.

Whatever happens next, yesterday’s energy and the way the kids took over the planning still has me smiling today.

Fingers crossed for future happy reading connections.

Can we expand these book club partnerships?

Filed under: book club, reading, students