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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.
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| 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
