LaUnChInG a BoOk ClUb

I've seriously always wanted to be in a Book Club, I mean, what English teacher doesn't want to gather around a table and discuss the ins and outs of books with other intelligent people?!

The movie is never better, people!! We are in Book Club to read...but really, I could watch Ryan Gosling in The Notebook all day long...xo!!

Before we even moved into the home we were building, a few ladies from the block were at the neighborhood park chatting and it was brought up that we should do a neighborhood Book Club. We chatted about some books and somehow I was elected to start things up for the New Year.

Little did I know that 10 days after moving into our home, I would get a severe concussion and have my world literally flipped upside down!  People, I missed a month straight of teaching!  I will do another blog post explaining exactly what it's like to have a concussion, but in summary it is like constantly having a hangover with severe migraines, sensitivity to light noise, and literally going crazy with anxiety.  I was curled up in my room spinning for weeks straight....I would never wish a concussion upon anyone!  They are the WORST!

This about sums up my experience:((((

3 months later and still not fully recovered, a couple friends text asking if we were really going to do this Book Club thing...???  I wasn't sure if I was totally ready to throw it all together with all I was doing at work and being momma of kids involved in a million activities! BUT....I said "YES!"  not knowing exactly how it would all work out.

I called my amazing friend (mother of two of my favorite students ever) and began the interrogation of this 17 year veteran Book Club momma!!  After an hour and a half chatting away about the how to list and a hundred notes, I had the starting point.

This is the back of a 12x18 calendar!!  

I am going to break down the basics for you and how our first official Book Club went AMAZING!!!


1. ORGANIZATION:  You need to have a PRESIDENT of the Book Club.  I know this might sound kinda crazy, and I for sure got some weird looks and laughs from some teachers at school when they said, "Now, you're the president of what?"  (chuckle, chuckle, chuckle).  You guys, this is for real if you don't want your Book Club to a just a neighborhood gossip session.  I knew my intentions setting out on this adventure was to create a culture of powerful women who uplift each other through the magic of  books and communication.  We all know that if you get 15-20 women together, every single person will have different ideas and the progress...what progress?  We would be chatting about kids and how freaking exhausted we are literally the whole time!

This first year, I am the president, but I already told the ladies that in October we will be nominating and voting for the new president for next year:)


2. NUMBERS: The ideal for number of women to have in a Book Club is 12; however, ours is much, much bigger than that!  Yikes!  In fact, it's 24! I'm going to be very optimistic with this and know that how I've set it up with expectations and why this is so important for us as women to do, that this will become something that continues for years and bonds us together in a way no other social gathering could do...wish us luck!!  At our first discussion we only had 14 women able to come.  So, in all reality, I think there will be many months that a few won't be able to come.  Everything turned out great and all the women were super respectful even with varying opinions about the book!  In our club we have ages from women in their 20s to women in their 60s.  I think this mix will be able to provide a lot of balance and great discussions with so many at different stages of their lives.

(After 2 months, the numbers have turned out great!  While we have 22 in the group, only 10-15 have been able to come so far....I will keep you guys posted on this part as well)


2. DATES:  Pick a consistent week and weekday of every month.  We originally were going to do the 3rd Thursday or every month, but it came to my attention right before Book Club started (and I'd already dated everything for the whole year...cry) that there was a conflict for 5-6 of the women in the club on that night.  It was suggested to do the 2nd or 4th Thursdays each month, but that ran into too many holidays and vacation conflicts(at least for me:).  The group decided to shift everything to the 3rd Wednesday of every single month.  This is important to set a firm date!  We are taking July off and doing a celebration, fancy dinner party in December (no book) to reflect back on the year and how everything went.  Originally, I thought the hostess would just pick a date that works for her, but my guru told me from experience that a specific night is the way to make it work.  My friend actually told me that Book Club night is sacred to her.  This is her night to be herself and have a sense of identity each month!  Wow!  That hit home....I think sometimes as women, mothers, wives, employees, bosses, or whatever else we do, we sometimes forget that we are a real, raw person underneath all of the hats or armor we wear!  I loved this sentiment and I am truly going to hold my Book Club time sacred as well.
If the kids have an event, I am going to let my husband take care of it and let myself be fulfilled with purpose!

3. BOOK SELECTION PROCESS:  I had all the women text or email me the following info for 2 books they wanted to read for the year: Title and Author, Pages, & Synopsis.
I then typed everything up like this (link) and sent out an email to all the ladies to look over.  We ended up with 30 options to choose from.  I didn't wait or keep asking for selections.  Once it was to the point of 2 weeks before our initial meeting, I knew that I had get things rolling.  30 books was plenty to choose from.
I set up a voting system on nearpod.com (I freaking love this tech tool for my classroom, so I thought what the heck, let's give it a try).  I uploaded the synopsis of the books, and then created a poll.  After this was created, I sent out an email and text to everyone.  We now have all downloaded the app Telegram so everyone can receive the texts.  For some reason the Androids weren't loading the texts in just a group message.  I will also continue to send out the emails as well for documents.

After I had the top books, I created a sign-up sheet (link) so we could know exactly what books and who's house we would be at the for rest of the year.  We have a sign-up spot for the following: Book, House, Discussion Leader, Treats, and Drinks.  Most of the posts are filled up already!  Boom!

4. DISCUSSION:  I am a teacher and I have lots of discussions about books and prompts on a daily basis with my students.  I have also done personal development trainings, leading 50-100 women through challenges and inspiring throughout the process.  I do have experience doing this and I know some of the women were a little intimidated to sign-up for being a discussion leader for the other books.  I reminded them that this is what I do for a living, and thanked them, because after a decade in the class, I should know how to do this:)

5. USE YOUR RESOURCES: I encouraged them that there are many tools on Google and Pinterest to help with figuring out how to do this as well.  Here are the links to what I used in launching our first Book Club: http://www.litlovers.com/run-a-book-club, https://www.kclibrary.org/book-clubs/guidelines, and for our book and like magic, someone had already created them for me at https://www.allthingsthrifty.com/girl-wash-your-face-book-club-questions/


I will keep you guys posted on the ins and outs of how our Book Club adventure goes!  I can tell you that I'm super excited and I honestly feel like this could be the start of something life changing for me and for many of the ladies on the block!
Find out my intentions for creating Book Club on my next post!!
Stay tuned and come back to hear all about our book selections and what juicy discussions we've had!!
XO, Leasha

Crumple up the Crap...Set it on Fire...Step into your Future

In my "real world" as a wife, mother, and friend, I like to begin each new year with reflecting back on the past year.  I decided that this year I would bring that into the classroom with my students!  I wasn't sure how it would go, but wowza, it was a home run!
I teach 9th grade traditional and Honors' English at a small school, so in reality, I have every single 9th grader that attends!  That's 220+ fourteen and fifteen year old kids that walk through my doors every single day!  I'm the type of person who feels like this is a lot of responsibility and I have a duty to inspire these kids with as much real life as I do in teaching them how to read and write. With all the running around and racing that happens in these kids' everyday lives, someone needs to help them slow down and reflect....so here's how we took a look back into the past and a glance forward into the future.

 Each day I make sure that I get at least one positive interaction with every single kid, so as they come into the room we either give high fives or knuckles and I briefly give an instruction. Students grabbed a yellow and green slip of paper from the table as they entered my classroom. I made sure the kids didn't write their names on the yellow paper.  I then had each of them write down 2-3 things that were trials this last year.  Something that they don't want to go through again.  This could be something related to school, home, friends, family, sports, or whatever area of their life that they wanted to write down.  Again, I told them that no one else would be reading these trials.

Every day I write a "Quote of the Day" on the whiteboard.  Sometimes they are chosen specifically by me and other times students put their recommendations into the container.  Today, I specifically choose the following quote: "Growth means choosing happiness over history, and never looking back." I read the quote aloud and repeated it again to let it sink in.  I then proceeded to tell them that many adults have never learned this lesson.  There are so many people in the world that hang on to the past.  They keep it in their back pocket for 5, 10, 15, or even 30+ years...and they blame their present for what happened all those years ago.  Whether it was the glory days or the childhood of abuse and violence.  We all have things in life that happen which are out of our control.  These are situations in life that get people stuck when they don't let go of the situations that have happened.  These are moments that will keep people trapped in the past forever.

I was nervous doing this, but man, these kids ate it up! The next step was for them to literally "crumple up the crap" from the past year and put it in the basket I was holding in my hands.  I invited each kid to get up and toss their past away when they were ready.  I had kids who quickly jumped up and ran through the classroom to get rid of baggage, while others sat with it for a while until they were ready.  It's much easier to talk about getting rid of things that hold us back versus the process of letting go of these trials.  It was crazy to watch during the process that some students actually dropped their "crap" as they journeyed up to the front to let it go.  There were also a few students who tossed their paper into the basket and it seriously bounced back out.

After the dropping and bouncing incidents, we took a moment to talk about how sometimes our past wants to hang onto us and even though we want to let it go, there are sometimes parts of us that want to hang onto something for whatever reason that may be.  Most of the time these reasons are subconsciously created and it may take some time for them to unravel why they would want to hang onto a trial that they faced over the past year.  It was sooooo awesome to see how engaged in this process they were!

The next step was my students to write down 2-3 awesome things that happened over the past year.  These could be things that everyone else would think is cool or something that is small, but a huge victory for themselves.  After the kids wrote down their successes, I had them turn to a neighbor and talk about them (think-pair-share).  I think they would have been happy to spend the rest of the class period talking about their cool adventures.  After a few minutes, I then instructed them to either share something about themselves that they were proud of in the last year or something that their partner should be proud of for accomplishing....BOOM again!  We had cheers of people celebrating each others' successes, which is something that many adults are scared to do...for whatever reason they think that celebrating the awesomeness of someone else may in some way, shape, or form take away from the incredible things they are doing.  People, HELLO!?? We should be cheering each other on everyday!  It was so cool to see that these kids get this.  I just pray that they can take this lesson with them into adulthood.

After the successes were shared, I told them to pick a word or two that will be their guide when things get tough, because we all know that things will get tough.  I also had them write 2-3 goals for this next year.  For the goals, they needed to be realistic, but something that would stretch them to grow in a specific area of their lives. Life is meant to challenge and change us.  We are here to learn from our mistakes and grow, to be better than we were the day before.  I shared with them my two words: BE. and "SIMPLIFY.  Yes, I purposely put the period (.) after "BE" because I feel that sometimes that is the only thing to do...simply BE.  I was again amazed by some of the powerful words and phrases they came up with.  A few that I can remember are: END, GO90 (rodeo), DO, KINDNESS, and so many others that applied to each of their own situations. I encourage my students to save these slips of paper and refer to them often.  I also suggested that some of them may want to create a vision board with their goals and words for the year in their bedroom so that they could be reminded each day of what they are wanting to accomplish for the next year.

I told the kids that when I've done this process with some of my friends, that in fact, we burn our "crap" from the last year.  They all thought I was going to pull out a lighter and do it right there at school....um, no....I would like to keep my job:) I have those crumpled papers sitting on my counter top right now (still unread....okay, my hubby read through a few of them, but these are their stories to own).  I am going to burn these papers as a physical and symbolic sign of letting go of the things that are keeping them (and me) stuck in the mistakes, failures, hardships, depression, loss, anger, and whatever else we are holding onto.  We are setting the past on FIRE!

Even if that past is from yesterday, we always get to make a new decision today.  We are always one decision away from a completely different life.  Choose to do and be better.  I am choosing to BE present, BE purposeful, and BE the woman who

You guys, I seriously love these kids!  As much as I teach them, they teach me so much about life and remind me of who I always want to be.  They keep me focused on what life is really all about....and that my friends, is people, relationships, and making a difference in the life of someone else.  I am not your normal teacher, and I never want to be.  I want kids to remember how they felt about themselves after being in my classroom.  They most likely will not remember the literature we read or finding imagery in the text of "The Odyssey," but they will remember that they felt loved and heard when they were in our classroom.

The weekend came and I was able to get assistance from my incredible man to take some pics and film the process so I can share it with my students...they keep asking, and now it's finally complete!

Let's Light it UP

I'm not going to lie that I was a little nervous I was going to burn our house down...eeeekk!

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It was very humbling to be part of this experience with/for my students.  My hope is that this activity somehow made a difference in at least one life.  I for sure will not forget this! (P.S....go RAMS!!  Superbowl bound peeps!)

“In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.”
― Octavia Butler
May my students have the strength to rise again after each failure, after each struggle.  May they find the wisdom and learn that falling and burning is part of life.  Failing forward takes courage and it is the only way to grow into the person you are meant to be.  Spread your wings and don't be afraid to burn, because that burn will give you the wings to soar into places you've never imagined!!
XO-Mrs. Leasha Butler