The leader Within

Chapter 7: The Book Club

Rick Hansen Secondary School also offered a White Pine Book Club for all book lovers. The White Pine reading program offered high school-aged teens at all grade levels the opportunity to read the best of Canada's recent young adult fiction and non-fiction titles. Each year a Fiction list is offered and every other year a Non-Fiction list is nominated so readers can choose from two lists. This program promotes reading for enjoyment among high school-aged students and familiarizes them with great Canadian books, by Canadian Authors. The whole club picks one book to read and then has discussions on each chapter every Friday.

I signed up for the book club because of my passion for reading. I was supposed to read set numbers of chapters before every meeting, so I could discuss it with the rest of the club. I was also responsible for helping set up the chairs in the library for the club members. Each member of the club got a turn to say something interesting or important that they found in the book while reading. After finishing the book, everyone would vote on what book we wanted to read next.

During this experience, I learned to confidently convey my thoughts across a group of people. I learnt that it is important to communicate clearly so the other person would have a clear vision of what someone is saying. In the club, everyone had to clearly point out the interesting things they found through out the book, but in order to explain their reasoning they had to provide a clear rationale. We also had to respect each other, make sure everyone feels included and gets a chance to share something with the club. This taught me that to effectively do anything with a team without any disputes, it is important that we respect each other and give everyone a chance to share their thoughts. There were many quiet people in the club who did like reading but were shy too share their thoughts. However, once the teacher encouraged them to say something, it was easier for them to come out of their shell and by the end of the semester they were confidently speaking out their opinions. This taught me that a little push or motivation from the leader can help motivate and develop their team members. I also had to demonstrate responsibility my making sure I finish reading the chapters before the meeting and show up on time. This is important because I realized that everyone needs to bring something to the table in order to have an interesting insightful conversation. This demonstrated that to complete a task, the whole team needs to make sure they fulfill their responsibility, so the final product won't suffer. Similarly, in this situation our task was to have an insightful conversation about the book and in order for that to happen everyone needed to have read the chapters.