Creating a Club

I had the bright idea to create and supervise a book club at school. I thought that it would be a great way to have students read books that would be interesting to them on their own, and I would love to read a book for fun (during the school year, the only thing that I had time to read last year were books that I was going to teach). Also, supervising a club would look great on my resume. I did not realize how much work it would be at the high school where I work. When I was in high school, we had a book club meeting once a month, discussed the book that we read, and then chose another book. However, at the high school where I am employed, the student activities director wants my students who are interested to write up a constitution, decide on events and fundraisers, and have a calendar of events ready to go by this Friday. I don't know if I will get the amount of students needed to form this club, and I don't know how to get the students to write the constitution. Frankly, I don't know how to do any of this. Does anyone have suggestions/ideas?

First Week of School

It is Friday on the first week of school. And even though this school week has only consisted of three days, I am exhausted. This is my second year of teaching, and I have been having large bouts of anxiety for two weeks before school started, just remembering the long hours and discipline issues that I had to deal with last year. Everyone keeps telling me "it gets easier and easier, and in a few years, you will not even have to plan." My question is, how does this information help me now? The stress reached its apex yesterday (day 2). No even triggered this occurrence; my students have been very well-behaved up until now, and I have very small classes (I teach English and ELD - the English classes are not above 21 students, and the ELD contain 10-12 students). Still, I felt overwhelmed. I got online and read a plethora of blogs on the subject of teachers wanting to quit. The blogs were from people who had been teaching 6, 10, 20 years, and they still wanted to quit. And then, just when you think that you have figured out if you like teaching or not, you have a really great day like this. My students behaved perfectly (I got complimented by another teacher about it as well), and the day went by so fast. I still have one class left to teach, but it is Friday, during the last hour, and so it's not a big deal. I finally realized how to get students to do what I ask them to do. I am very kind with them at all times, and ask them to do things in a very clear, polite way. For example, I had to take my classes to get textbooks today. This usually consists of a lot of yelling at the top of my lungs to get them in line when we get to the textbook room, and then a lot of "shush-ing" them when we finally get there. Today I spent a couple of minutes before we left lining them up, explaining the procedure to them in every detail, and then reminding them that if they do not go down the hall quietly like I have asked them to, I will raise my hand and they will have to go back into the classroom and begin the march to the textbook room again. It worked like a CHARM. I only sent one class back one time for one person talking (just to set the standard). If only I had started out this way last year, things would have been a little less hectic. Not that last year was bad. Actually, the second semester of last year (once a few of my difficult students were expelled) was wonderful. The thing that I continue to worry about, however, are the hours that I can see myself working to lesson plan. Even though one of my preparation periods is the same as last year's, I still finding myself re-making all of the handouts. And last year, the reason why it got so much easier for me second semester is because I realized that I had to devote my whole day on Sunday to lesson planning for the week ahead, so that when school was finally over, I could just go home. I'd hate to give up one of my two days off every week, and I'd also hate to have to keep all of my materials at home, but I think that that's what I'm going to have to do. I have listed mostly negative aspects of the first three days of school. Now for one big positive one: my old students are running up to me left and right, telling me that they miss me, that we had the best class, and that our class was like the "Freedom Writers" class (I haven't seen the movie yet). They are hugging me, and are running from across the school just to say hi. I absolutely love that. So, there is a positive side to teaching after all. I think that next week will be a good one.