I Ran A Club

I became “Mr. Dalkner” for a ’25 Spring semester afterschool club at my children’s school. The club was called Comicbook Clubhouse and included nearly 40 kiddos from grades 2nd through 6th (half of which were 2nd graders). That’s a lot of energy to try and manage! The focus was to read, create, and share comic books. There was a small library of used comics and graphic novels to read and plenty of supplies to create with. Each session started with a prompted drawing. “Fill a page with…” you in the future, or bugs but big, or what you’ll do on your summer vacation, etc. Then I would present a small slide show preparing them for the project of the day. During the semester we tackled projects like making comic strips, jam comics, comic lettering, designing characters, making covers and splash pages, directed drawings, and finally constructing a ‘zine style comic book. I wound up creating a whole series of lesson plans and this became more of a serious thing than I probably should have. I’m quite proud of the kids and what they accomplished and I’m very fortunate to have other parents as volunteer helpers. Without their help things would have very easily gone off the rails. I’m planning on running the club for the ’25/’26 school year. Wish me luck!