Aww, it’s so sweet of you to say that and to take the time to leave a message. Thank you so much! Right now I”m trying to post twice a month 🙂

I’m so glad to help! Starting a business is super scary! From imposter syndrome, to feeling like people are going to judge you for your work… it’s a lot! I listen to positive podcasts each morning and I find it helps me get into the right mindset everyday because it really is all about that mindset. Ruth Soukup’s podcast is really great for that. I also love the Being Boss and Goal Digger podcasts. Just remember, there are teachers and students out there who NEED your work! You’d be doing them a disservice by giving up. You should find me on social (@itslitteaching) and keep me updated on your progress!

Hi Taylor! I love that you do ten minutes every day! I am thinking of trying that method next year!

My library has definitely been a labor of love! I have collected books in a few ways. First, every summer I ask everyone I know for their old YA books. I work with teens during my summer job and they are happy to help. I also reach out to adults on Facebook who I know read YA.

Second, we go to a conference every year that has a vendor who sells overstocked YA books for $2 each! This is where I’ve gotten most of mine. I have put a decent amount of my own money into it, but when $200 gets me 100 books (and I want to read a few myself!) it’s not too bad. If you’d like to check them out, they have a website: https://www.books4school.com/

I also use my own money when I see Scholastic BOGO sales at our school. I’ll often do one or two small orders from the First Book website each year. I have also gone to Goodwill and Half Priced Books to book hunt.

I did do one Donor’s Choose project for some, and I don’t know why I don’t do it more often! I got a ton of great titles and I was amazed by how willing total strangers were to donate to my little classroom.

The last way has been from school. Once a year my department and I will go make puppy dog eyes at our principal and ask for some books. He never turns us down if we all ask together. Our librarian is also working on a professional goal of increasing the school’s independent reading. She has been grabbing the books from the other libraries in the district that are being retired and then passing them to us instead.

In short, I will beg, borrow, and steal whatever I have to do to get the books, but I rarely pay full price. When I do buy them on Amazon, it’s only ever because I want to read it. In that case, the classroom gets it when I’m done, and that keeps a lot of the book clutter out of my home 🙂 Hope that helps!

Thank you so much!

The NoSweat Librarian on Teachers Pay Teachers & Pinterest

I don’t know your freshmen, but I, too, would have reservations about teaching this book with the freshmen at our school. There are more and more books with similar themes. You could look at Dear Martin by Nic Stone (not as rich, but a shorter and easier text). I’m looking into teaching this one with some sophomores and (slowly) working on some Teachers Pay Teachers resources as well. You could also look into Swing by Kwame Alexander. It just came out last week, and I haven’t read it, but our librarian who was on the advanced reading team said it deals with similar issued to THUG, but focuses in before the event rather than after. It’s written in verse too, so that may be more material to work with. In the future, maybe you could do one of these texts in conjunction with the THUG movie? You could also perhaps incorporate some THUG excerpts (the scene between Starr and Big Mav discussing systemic racism comes to mind). Also, you could check out the book How I Resist (an anthology) for some supplemental text. Oh! And you can still keep a few copies of THUG in your classroom library for those more mature readers (the ones who can’t handle it will weed themselves out after seeing how big the book is!).

I would love to know what you end up doing!