The Mingus Union High School Key Club organizes all sorts of fundraisers and student events for the school, so when advisor Terri Rose said one option could be the school’s first Scholastic Book Fair, the students jumped on it.
Normally, Scholastic Book Fairs are for specific elementary or middle schools. Rarely are there high school fairs, the reasons being partly because of staffing, Rose said.
“It’s always your [Parent-Teacher Organization] who does that,” she said. “They’re the ones setting up all the orders and everything, and organizing delivery.”
But this time, it’ll be the students in the Key Club running shifts at the high school’s library during the fair, which takes place Monday through Friday, Feb. 9 through 13, promoting it throughout the school and organizing a lot of the steps leading up to it.
“We are going to have students, myself, Kiwanis members running the point of [sale system],” Rose said. “I’m trying to figure out how to do that QR code that’s like online shopping for people who are out of state, maybe or their aunt in Georgia wants to buy them a book.”
The QR code will be posted around the high school and distributed by the Key Club.
Those who’d like to go online to browse and buy can go to the MUHS website. Gift cards will also be available.
“I’m most excited about the decorating,” Key Club president Taiya Trujillo said. “I love decorating and I love planning decorating.”
Secretary Zaira Landaverde said she’s most excited about seeing people come when they have so many different interests.
“I also think it’s more open, because middle schools, obviously, they keep it to just their school,” Key Club treasurer Adrianna Mejia said. “This one will have more opening times. It’s not just after school; it’ll be before, and it’ll be during lunch and then afterwards.”
“At least this way, people will have had the opportunities to come in,” Landaverde said. “As well as parents and younger children.”
The Key Club’s leadership students are all sophomores, so their hope is to make the book fair an annual event before they graduate.
“I feel like it’s also just like a fun activity for everyone to enjoy,” Trujillo said.
She said book fairs are good to appeal to a wide array of interests.
“We’re thinking about picture books obviously for the younger students that we have,” Landaverde said. “More Young Adult, which would be, for example, Miss Rose brought this up, she said, like ‘The Hunger Games.’”
Many book fairs use the stacked displays with one book behind and above another, and so on. This one will be more of a “tabletop book fair,” Rose said.
The Key Club is also partnering with Manzanita Outreach so buyers have the option to buy a book to donate through the nonprofit.
“What I’m going to do also is provide teachers an opportunity, if they want, to make a basket,” Rose said. “They can make a basket, [make] book collections and buy those books and donate them.”
The Key Club at MUHS often puts on fundraisers for either the school, the club or outside organizations like Manzanita Outreach.
“We did a UNICEF [fundraiser] in October,” Trujillo said. “That helps people get electricity and water supplies and stuff like that. So that was really fun to do.”
Rose said she’s impressed with the students’ responsibility and ambition.
“Not just these three, who are my officers,” she said, gesturing to Trujillo, Mejia and Landaverde,“but every single one of them. We started this year with a group of three, and now we’re at 17.”
She said the leadership team this semester weren’t even among the original three.
During the club meeting on Jan. 12, Mejia said the club organized a game on Friday where students would play Rock Paper Scissors for beaded bracelets and necklaces throughout the day. She said she was really pleased with how many people got involved.
“It got competitive,” she said. “I saw someone with 10 necklaces, and I just thought that was really fun.”
Seeing the success of that event makes Mejia most excited to see the turnout at the book fair and what people get excited about.
