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Start More School Clubs and Be a Little Silly with Jason Bodnar (Part 2)

Season 2 Episode 61 Published 11 years, 8 months ago
Description

Jason Bodnar, an assistant principal in Indiana, explains how to start school clubs and why a school can never have too many. His method is simple: ask the students, use a student leadership team, and survey kids online. A club with four or five kids still counts.

Bodnar DJs his school's dance every nine weeks, and he says kids see you in a different light when you do. His middle school runs nail art, Minecraft and guitar clubs. The sixth grade game club needs almost no prep. Kids and teachers just play once a week.

What you'll learn

  • Survey students through your learning management system to find out which clubs they want before you start one.
  • Build a student leadership team that gathers what kids want, especially at the high school level.
  • Recruit a parent or community member to lead a club when nobody on staff knows the topic, as Bodnar's former principal did with robotics.
  • Start a game club where teachers and kids just play once a week, with almost no preparation.
  • Replace sit-and-get professional development with the EdCamp model, where teachers say what they need and want.

Chapters

  • 0:00 Why a school can never have too many clubs
  • 3:14 DJing the school dance and being silly
  • 5:54 How to find out which clubs kids want
  • 8:53 Getting a parent to lead a robotics club
  • 10:53 Flexible clubs: playing chess versus teaching it
  • 13:22 Starting the Principally Speaking podcast
  • 20:04 Why blogging works like an online resume
  • 23:16 Open reflection and better professional development

Times are for the episode without ads. Your player may be off by the length of any ads.

Questions this episode answers

How do I find out what clubs students want?
Bodnar says to put a student leadership team to work gathering that information, then use your learning management system to survey kids. With a thousand students, paper votes were a pain. Online surveys make it easy, so he sees no reason not to ask.

Do teachers get paid to run school clubs?
At Bodnar's middle school, clubs are voluntary and not expected of teachers. He says teachers who want to connect with students don't run clubs for money, because clubs pay little anyway. They meet once a week or every couple of weeks to do something kids enjoy.

How can a club run with very little preparation?
Bodnar points to the sixth grade game club at his school. Kids come once a week and play games with teachers, and it takes basically no preparation. He contrasts it with teaching chess, which means building another lesson plan.

About Jason Bodnar

Assistant principal at a middle school in Indiana and host of the Principally Speaking podcast.

Links and resources

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