Where did September go?

Ok, so I haven’t been updating monthly like I promised myself, but it’s because of a good reason! Planning a wedding and getting married takes up a lot of your free time! However, we’re done with that and now life resumes to normalcy…or as normal as it gets with us ;)

So the first 6 weeks of school are almost over- I’ve met my new admin team, met new faculty members, and have welcomed in new students. I remember being really nervous prior to this school year starting with a new administration team not knowing how everyone felt about libraries. Administration usually feels one of two ways about the library- they either believe it’s a vital component to the success of a campus or they find it a waste of time and funds. I’m so excited and very lucky to say that my admin has a passion for literacy and understands the value of the library.

So here’s what’s happened so far this year:

New schedule

I was advised by multiple people that my fixed schedule from last year was a not best practice for a school library. I was advised to switch to a flexible schedule, meaning teachers come and go as they need. I knew right away that this would not work for my campus so instead I opted to do flexible for 4^th-6^th grades. I have to admit heading up this project was kind of a disaster. Figuring out times that would work best for my PreK- 3^rd grade teachers while trying to remain “flexible” and open for my 4^th-6^th grade teachers was and still is a challenge.  It was a pain and initially I don’t think my 4^th-6^th grade teachers were thrilled with me NOT doing lessons every other week (go me!). So I've cheated a bit and still have 4^th-6^th grade blocked out for weekly check-out times, however, they need to schedule lessons with me when they need.  So far I haven’t seen the huge change I thought I was going to but I have been able to do some book talks and visit with classrooms and I have done a STEM lesson with my 2^nd grade classes. I think as the year settles down I’ll be able to do some more outreach and get out among the school beyond my 4 walls!

STEM/Makerspace lessons:

Like I mentioned above, I got to do a STEM lesson with our 2^nd graders in our Makerspace.  Last year our Makerspace was only for 4^th-6^th graders and used as a reward for good behavior. This year I’m trying to open it up to everyone and persuade teachers to use it for lessons.  Last week, while 2^nd grade was in their folktales and fables unit, I had them do a STEM activity with The Three Little Pigs. Basically groups of 4 students had to brainstorm a plan and build a house for the pigs made out of toothpicks and marshmallows. The house had to stay intact while the big bad wolf blew on it (my hair dryer). I’ll be honest, the activity didn’t go as smoothly as I had envisioned when I did it with my first class. However, I tweaked it and the next lessons went much smoother and the students had a lot of fun! I can’t wait to do more lessons!

Bluebonnet Book Club:

One of my goals this year was to start an after-school book club so students would have an opportunity to read more Bluebonnet books. I limited myself to fifteen 4^th-6^th graders thinking I’d be lucky if I could get 5 to sign up. What kid would want to stay after-school and read with the librarian? Well apparently a lot do! I filled up those 15 spots the very next morning. Luckily, I was able to call-in backup and some wonderful teachers on my campus volunteered to help me out.  As I type this, I’m up to 59 students who have committed to staying after-school to read and discuss book. I can’t get over it- I’m so excited and anxious for this club to get started!

Tech Thursdays:

I’ve partnered up with our new instructional technologist and we’re doing technology professional developments once a month. Last time we hosted a Google Forms and Google Classrooms session, this month we’ll be focusing on our online research resources.

Now that I’m looking at it, that’s a heck of a lot of goals accomplished within the first six weeks while planning a wedding!

New Year, New Challenges

I'm the worst blogger ever- I haven't updated since mid-October. The whole reason I started this blog was to chronicle my journey and I didn't even document a whole semester. Arrrrgh! I'll do better this year. First year as a librarian is similar to first year as a teacher- no amount of courses or field work can actually prepare you when you're in the middle of it. Throw in the fact I've just moved from a city of almost 2 million to a town of 2,000 and I'm working for a new district! It was a big year but I survived and I'm ready for year 2!

So it's July 5th, which according to retailers means- BACK TO SCHOOL. Teachers all over the state cringed as I typed that! How does summer just fly by like that? 

I went to a workshop a little over a week ago in Austin at our region's office and the first thing we did was record our accomplishments of the school year. Here's what I wrote:

- weeded our reference room/collection

-created a makerspace

-weeded our fiction collection

-weeded our easy and junior fiction collection

-opened up our Bluebonnet program to 3rd-6th grade

-removed the wall dividing our library between elementary and intermediate

-organized a successful book fair

All in all I feel like I got a good amount of work done but I'm ready to do more. 

This year we've got a new principal, new assistant principal, new campus instructional technologist, new teachers, etc...So, in a way, I'll be starting over again this year. Here's what I'd like to do this upcoming school year:

-weed our nonfiction and junior nonfiction collections

-clean out our magazine "room"

-start an after-school "Bluebonnet Book Club"

-promote the Texas 2x2 book program to my Kinder-2nd grade classes

-partner with the campus intructional technologist to help teachers

-meet with teachers more often

-help grade levels with research

-hold a school-wide storybook pumpkin patch 

-create reading challenges for the winter holidays and spring break

-create a "March Madness" reading promotion activity

-have this year's book fair be just as successful as last year's

-create a new schedule for the library: Last year, I saw all 45 classes throughout the week due to the fixed schedule I created. Pre-K rotated between classes every other week. Kinder-3rd grade met every week with a 15 minute mini-lesson and 15 minute checkout. 4th-6th grade met every week but alternated between a 30 minute lesson and 30 minute checkout each week. After reflecting, I've decided a fixed schedule for my 4th-6th graders is not the way to continue things this year. I felt terrible about taking away 30 minutes from each class every other week with a short lesson...by the time you get the students in and seated, then have them clean up and transition out in the end- you really only have 20 good minutes. I never felt like that was enough time to dig deep into a topic or skill. I'm debating going to some sort of flexible schedule...that way any teacher (not just ELA teachers) can schedule the library and I can have more time to meet and co-teach with other teachers. 

I've got a lot of new ideas I want to try this year- some may work, some may not but I'm ready to give them a try!

I promise to update more this year :)

S'more

If you haven't checked out the website S'more...go do it. Now. Go ahead, I'll wait.
S'more is basically an electronic flyer. It has a variety of cute templates and it is SO EASY to use. I originally saw it mentioned on Pinterest and played around with it a little. When I went to a librarian meeting and the presenter showcased it for a bit, I knew I had to have it.
For my library I use it as a monthly newsletter that I send out to the school so teachers can see what we've been up to in the library, what activities are coming up, and some fun links that may be useful in the classroom.
Take a look at the 2 I've done so far. I love this tool!

https://www.smore.com/m618x
https://www.smore.com/jfrr2

BLUEBONNET BOOKS!!!

If you couldn't tell by the title, I'm pretty excited about Bluebonnet books. I think they may be a reason why I wanted to become a librarian! If you're not familiar, every year the Bluebonnet committee picks twenty outstanding 3rd grade- 6th grade books. When a student reads 5 or more they can vote on their favorite. The book with the most votes wins the Bluebonnet Award. I can remember reading these books every year as a kid and even as a teacher I would check them out so my students had the chance to vote. This summer I even got the opportunity to attend a TLA Bluebonnet session where I got to meet the committee members and hear about the selection process. Ok, enough already, I could go one for days!

At my campus, the tradition has been that only 6th grade participates in the Bluebonnet program. The 6th grade reading teachers make it a part of their curriculum and it even goes into students' grades. I'm all for that, but I changed it a bit this year by opening it up to all 3rd grade-6th grade students. So, this is what the program will look like this year:

For my kiddos who read 5 books- they get a pencil, they are able to vote for their favorite, and they'll have their picture displayed in the "Hall of Fame". I'm wanting to have mini-voting booths set up in the library at the end of January with ballots and stickers to make it as real as possible. My "Hall of Fame" is in the front foyer so everyone can see the Bluebonnet readers. If a student reads 10 books, they will receive a free book. If kids read 15 books I'm hoping to have a Bluebonnet breakfast with blueberry muffins, blue milk, etc...to celebrate. Finally, if students read all 20 books they will receive all of the prizes plus a free goodie bag.

So all of my 3rd-6th grade classes sat through my Bluebonnet lesson during their library time last week. I showed off some of the books, showed them how to track their reading, talked about prizes, and showed them book trailers. This was, by far, their favorite:                                                                                                            

As I talked about the program, the kids seemed genuinely excited. I made it clear that I wanted to explain the program to all of the 3rd-6th graders before the books were available for checkout. I told them they would be available first thing Monday morning (today). I swear since I did those first few Bluebonnet lessons last Monday, we had huge groups of kids come into the library EVERY morning asking about Bluebonnet books. Since the kids were so eager I assumed we would have a huge check-out this morning. I got nervous about having a big crowd of kids trying to get a hold of a small amount of books, so we had made numbers to give kids to keep them in order and we printed up blank wait lists so kids could sign up for the book they wanted when they all were checked out.

Well, I dreamt about Bluebonnet books all weekend long and this morning I got up extra early to fight off the crowd of kids and get everything organized. I just knew it would be crazy like Black Friday or something. When 7:45 rolled around we had........1 kid waiting at the door. Womp, womp.  *sigh* I guess it's to be expected...if I were a kid and had to wait over the weekend, I would have forgotten too. The good news is all the copies were checked out by 9:30 this morning and some of our waiting lists are over 20 people long. I hope we can keep the momentum through January. 

To take a look at this year's nominees head over to TLA ....like I told my kids, I haven't read all of them yet, but there hasn't been one I didn't like! If you're a classroom teacher I encourage you to introduce these books to your student and promote them within your own classroom!

Beginning of the Year & Dot Day

I started on next week's lesson plans today and wrote down October. OCTOBER! I can't believe how this school year has flown by.

I quickly learned that as a librarian the beginning of school means going over procedures and rules....and saying it 12 times a day. As great as the activities were, by the 15th time I had done it for the kids I was done. Next year I'm doing different activities for different grade levels. Anyhow, orientation for the younger grades meant reading the book The Shelf Elf about library and book etiquette. I then created an activity using The Book Fairy Goddess' idea and Susan Pittman's supplies at Teacher Pay Teachers. Viola! The game "Would Ms. Pope approve?" was born. The kids loved it and I'm constantly referring back to it, so I'd say it's a keeper. Side note:  The Book Fairy Goddess has been the answer to my prayers. Her blog has helped keep me sane so far and her activities are the cutest! She also has her own store on Teacher Pay Teachers. I may as well give her every paycheck now!

For my older kids, I read The Library Dragon and had them do the scavenger hunt I bought from The Book Fairy Goddess. I loved that I could tweak the cards to work for my library. At first, I thought the 6th graders would just roll their eyes and laugh it off, but I think they really enjoyed it. It was a great refresher and I know they enjoyed getting up and moving.

Last week was Dot Day (September 15th, actually). honoring the amazing book The Dot. Since I see each class one day a week, I had all grade levels partake in Dot Week! Once again I borrowed from The Book Fairy Goddess and had my students work on various dot projects. I was so surprised to see just how creative the kids were. With only a dot on half a sheet of paper, I had KINDER babies drawing elaborate dinosaurs and clowns. It was AWESOME! I was shocked at how much fun they were having with crayons and a dot on a paper. I know there's not a whole lot of time to let kids be creative in the classroom due to the pressure of rigorous TEKS and testing, so it was nice to see the kids be kids for a bit. You'd be shocked at how many of them had a hard time understanding their dot could be whatever they wanted it to be:
Student: "...but what do I make?"
Me: "Whatever you want, it's your dot."
Student: "How many colors can I use?"
Me: "As many as you want."
Student: "How big does it have to be?"
Me: "As big as you want."
Student: "Do I have to fill the whole paper?"
Me: "Not if you don't want to."
I had various conversations like this all week. It was so hard for them to let go and realize they had no expectations.
Our library is covered with beautiful, student-made artwork now. This year was a good trial run but next year, I want to make Dot Day BIGGER and BETTER!

This week I'm doing Bluebonnet Books with my 3rd-6th graders and I'm SO excited! I can't wait to see the response from the kids!

Weeding

** I wrote this on Sunday 8/30/15 and forgot to click publish...oops!**

   For those that I haven't talked to, I've inherited a lot of books...I mean A LOT of books. I think last I heard it was over 40,000.
   During my librarian courses with UNT, I remember weeding (getting rid of books) being sort of a controversial topic. Some librarians believe in conserving books and holding onto them for future patrons to enjoy. Others believe in constant, consistent weeding leaving relevant books/materials on the shelves. I think I'm part of that latter group. It's no secret that as technology grows and changes, libraries and their livelihood is being threatened. I believe, in order to stay relevant, libraries can't be museums. We must be a place that serves our students and teachers with modern tools to help them be successful in their education.
   This week was the first week of school. That first week is crazy for teachers- getting a class of new kids, teaching procedures, first week paperwork, lesson plans, etc...To let all of that take place, administration and I decided it would be best for library lessons to start next week. By the way, if I ever needed confirmation that I was meant to be a teacher, this week would have been it. I was so sad without a class of my own! I was dying for some students to stop in and take advantage of the library. It was a very long week. Since I had a lot of time on my hands without any students, it was a perfect opportunity to attempt some weeding. Just off to the side of my library I have a huge connected room that's known as the "reference room". It has tables for classes, a small area of guided reading books for teachers, study carrels, a laptop cart, and SHELVES of reference materials.  This is a great area that has a lot of potential and I've got BIG plans for it come January.
   Another thing I took away from UNT is that there is no right or wrong way when it comes to weeding. All sorts of factors play in- physical condition, copyright date, usage, etc.. So, armed with this weeding guide: Carnegie Library , I spent 2 full days examining our reference materials. I think the oldest item I found was a couple of books from 1936. I have quite a few books marked that will need to go. It's a good start but I still have the entire library, magazine room, A/V room, and professional collection room to weed.  As of right now our district does not have a formal policy so that's a whole other process I'll need to tackle.

   Here's pictures of what I'm looking at right now in the reference room. My goal is to make it usable by January!!

In other news:
-kids come in for library lessons tomorrow, I'm SOOOO excited!
-I found out this week that my mentor will be our district's high school librarian (there's only 2 of us in the district, haha), she's awesome and I'm pumped to learn from her.
-I've been pitching my crazy idea about our reference room to administrators in the district office and I've received a lot of positive feedback. I'm excited to get this idea in motion!


 I can't wait to start writing about the lessons I've done!

Surveys and Schedules

Work has officially started! Last week I had new employee orientation, convocation, and a work day. This week has been inservices and open house. I forget how exhausting these things can be!

I’m coming into a library program that has been well-established with certain procedures and programs. I would have been more than happy to keep things the way they are, but I felt a little staff input would be helpful. As a result, I created a teacher survey with Google Forms asking teachers if they utilized the library programs in the past and would they want to continue doing them. For those of you who haven’t used Google Forms before, do it! It provides instant feedback and can give it to you in a spreadsheet, graph, etc… As soon as I sent it out I had my computer open so I could keep checking for responses J

Here’s a glimpse of the survey I sent out:

Out of the 40 or so teachers this would have applied to, I heard back from 33 teachers! I received a lot of good feedback and everyone was so open to new ideas. I’d like to do this every year to keep the program evolving.

When I first came into the library this summer, I found binders of notes waiting for me. In those notes were schedules of past years. I noticed that the younger grades came in once a week, older grades came in once every 2 weeks...some lessons were 25 minutes long, some were 55 minutes long. I decided for the sake of the kids and teachers my goal was to simplify things a bit. I met with my principal, AP, and counselor, a few weeks ago to talk about my vision and they were open to EVERYTHING. Seriously, I’m beyond blessed to have a leadership team that listens to me ramble off ideas, sometimes very quickly, and say, “Go for it”. My administration has been amazing.

Once I got feedback I was able to figure out what activities worked, and which ones didn’t. Luckily, as I was going through that data and making decisions I was sent a copy of the coveted MASTER SCHEDULE. For real y’all, this is a HUGE deal. Getting an elementary campus and intermediate campus to merge into one has been a big task and everyone was sitting on pins and needles waiting to see what their day looked like. I was just as eager as well because I’ve never been a part of a departmentalized campus where kids rotate classes, so I had no idea what my day was going to look like. After looking at feedback I decided (if possible) I would have all reading classes come in once a week for a 30-minute block. Kinder-2^nd will have a 15 minute mini-lesson, 15 minute check-out. 4^th-6^th will have alternating weeks. One week they’ll have a 30 minute lesson, the next they’ll have a 30 minute check-out. That way, the older kiddos will get to hold onto their books a bit longer.

So, with the master schedule in my hands, I made my day into blocks of 30 minutes. I tried to give myself and my assistants a set lunch time (something they requested after not having one before) and tried to get everyone in during the first part of their reading class or the last part. It took a few hours and me whining a bit at the kitchen counter (sorry Chad) but I did it. I’ve taken out the teachers names, but each color symbolizes a different grade level. I’m meeting with 42 different classes, 42!!! That’s not even counting the 4 Pre-K classes I still need to squeeze in. I sent it off to my principal who gave me the OK, and sent it out to the grade levels.  So far (knock on wood) I haven’t had any complaints other than misspelling someone’s name (whoops). Everyone who’s approached me has been really excited about the new structured schedule and has had only positive things to say. Again, I’m SO lucky to have a staff who embraces change and is willing to try something new.

Speaking of change, here are some pictures of new library décor. It’s not where I want it yet, but it’s getting there!

Our school is doing a college theme, so this is our entry way into the library. All done by one of my assistants, she did great!

The easy wall. Look at all of those books!

The other easy wall. It's a daily battle keeping those letters glued to the wall.

Story corner where I get to do lessons!

My Twitter board where I'll post announcements for the older kiddos.

The bulletin board in the entryway. Again, my assistants did that one. They're amazing!