BookBag Wraps Up as School Starts
Published on the NixaJournalism.net website on August 20, 2025
Reporter's Insight:
Every year my team has the same issue, we never have new stories on our website the first two weeks of school. This is problematic since so much news happens during the summer and especially, those two weeks. My senior year I decided I’d fix this, I’d write two stories, one for each week. My first article was this one.
I wanted to start the year with a feel good story but still relevant to the beginning of the school year. So, BookBag was the clear option. A program giving free school supplies and other items was definitely making an impact on Nixa students but I wanted to figure out how much of an impact. To figure this out I went to three out of the six BookBag meetings, which took place throughout July and into August.
The number of students and parents that showed up shocked me.
PHOTO BY: GLENNIS WOOSLEY
BookBag founder, Sheila Michaels, helps homeschooled first-grader Cam Zeigler load books into a bag.
BookBag Wraps Up as School Starts
Summer reading program concluded its year at Clever Library, providing books, snacks, school supplies and hygiene products to families
STORY BY: GLENNIS WOOSLEY
BookBag, a summer reading program, gave out school supplies to more than 113 people.
The annual program provides families with books, snacks, school supplies and hygiene products throughout the month of July. Each Wednesday from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., families came to the Clever Library to meet authors and pick up free books.
Sheila Michaels, a high school English teacher at Missouri Connections Academy, founded BookBag in 2021. Even though BookBag provides more than books, Michaels continues to call it a “reading outreach program,” so families in need don’t feel singled out.
“Our goal with BookBag is to help people, but with dignity and no stigma — and there is no stigma in a reading program,” Michaels said.
BookBag took place five times, starting on July 9, and made two appearances during its last week, on Aug. 6 and 8, to hand out school supplies. On Aug. 6, volunteers distributed items to 113 attendees. Two days later, they handed out supplies at English Village Park in Nixa, wrapping up the 2025 BookBag season.
On the first night, school supplies were passed out, families lined up at the door of the back room in the library, where the BookBag event was taking place. One student lined up was homeschooled third grader Elana Zeigler, who came up with a plan on how to take as many books as possible.
“I’ll ask for extra boxes,” Zeigler said. “I’ll find some books that I like, and put them into the box that is being emptied. So once that box is filled with the books that I like, I’ll just take it.”
Hailey Pojar, a library assistant at the Clever Library, found some school supplies for her second-grade child. Pojar said that watching BookBag has been “inspiring” as the program is giving back to the community and giving away books “by the bagful.”
The free books come from donations. Care to Learn, a Springfield-based charity that partners with schools to meet students’ needs, provides snacks and hygiene products for BookBag. The school supplies are funded by donations and grants, including a $5,000 grant Michaels received after winning the Humanitarian of the Year award from the Community Foundation of the Ozarks in 2024.
“Every dime that’s donated goes back into buying things for the program,” Michaels said. “Nobody gets any kind of stipend. But, since we do run our finances for an official 501(c)(3), when people donate, they can get tax credit.”