Substituting

Does anyone have to substitute (for classroom teachers) in their position? It's been proposed as something that might happen next year, and I'm trying to build a list of reasons why it is a bad idea.

Possible Job at my school

I just found out our middle school librarian might be leaving. Is anyone interested in moving to Boston? I'd be happy to tell you more about the position :-).

Karin

Looky Booky

This is a really cool website that lets you "read" picture books - it's pretty amazing and free :-).

http://www/lookybook.com

TV Turnoff Week

Just an FYI, National TV Turnoff Week is April 21-27, 2008. I'm trying to get families involved and offer incentives to kids who participate. We'll see how it goes :-).

Target Grants

Target grants are available between now and May 31st. I recieved a grant for $2,500 to support out RIF program for this past year and will be applying again. The process is relatively painless and worth it.

Target's Early Childhood Reading grants support programs that foster a love of reading and encourage children, from birth through age 9, to read together with their families.

http://sites.target.com/site/en/corporate/page.jsp?contentId=PRD03-001818

Check it out!

Ashley Bryan

So it turns out Ashley Bryan is the uncle of two of my students. He's doing a presentation at the public library, and I'm trying to get their mother to get him to do an author visit. Has anyone done an author visit yet? How much do they usually cost? I feel like he should do it for free because of his nephews, but he's pretty major so I'm not counting on it.

Read Across America Day

After finally recovering (thanks to February Break) from complete burnout, I have returned to find Read Across America day is next week, and I've got nothing planned. I whipped together packets from online resources to give the teachers some ideas and conned my principal into buying the staff Cat-in-the-Hat-Hats. Otherwise, I've got nothing and no energy to pull together another complicated school wide event (our last RIF distribution and our reading competetition were a few weeks ago). What are the rest of you doing? Do you have any "easy-to-implement" ideas that don't cost much/anything?

My Internet Safety Rant

I could use your opinions on my Internet safety rant! I really tried not to be too critical, seeing as I did originally intend my blog for educators, parents, etc. Mostly no one reads it so it's not an issue, but still. Do you think it is a risk?

Two Strange (slighty scary) Comments from Teachers

From a second grade teacher yesterday, “We are doing a unit on nonfiction. Does the library have any nonfiction or anything that could help us with that?” Then when I showed her the 500’s and suggested animals, she said, “So all of this is nonfiction?” (indicating a single shelf) and was blown away when I told her it was the whole row.

And from a fourth grade teacher this morning, “You guys don’t have any encyclopedias, do you?”

So clearly I am not doing my job on promoting the library or something….

Breakthrough

I think (I'm hoping) that I had a breakthrough with this oppositional defiant kid who has been given everyone so much trouble -- I just found out yesterday that he is very passionate about....SWIMMING! We talked for a while about it and his homeroom teacher said he was really excited. Yay. Now I'm hoping this will transfer to enough respect for me that he will actually respond every now and then in library. Plus, the kid doesn't seem to have any good connections with adults, so maybe this is a start. Then again, I probably shouldn't get my hopes up!

I have my first pre-planned observation with my principal on the day we get back from break. It was supposed to already happen, but then snow days threw everything off, so now I've had way more time than is necessary to get nervous about it, even though I know it will be fine! I'm having her observe kindergarten because they are the grade I most often just stare at in confusion...what do you do with kids who are that wiggly? Sometimes it baffles me. Anyway, we are starting an author study on Kevin Henkes. Any need-to-know ideas about K or about Kevin Henkes?

Dewey Intro with Third Graders

While trying to introduce the Dewey System to third grade, I tried a new analogy on a whim and it was a big success. All of it sudden it clicked for them and they got really excited. This was the first day we'd talked about it so we began by noticing that the books were in number order and a brief reminder about decimals.

Then I told them that we were going to pretend PHA was a dewey category. We said PHA was 100. If we wanted to find information on 3rd grade, we would look in 130 (because 3rd grade = 3). If we wanted to find Ms. Curran's class (3B), we would look for 132 (because C is the third letter of the alphabet). If we wanted to find information on Ossy, we would look for 132.15 because she is the fifteenth student in the class. It helped that all the students know "their numbers" (it's actually really a great system, they line up by number, number their papers which makes grading easy, etc.). Anyway, they got really excited and all wanted to figure out what their Dewey number would be or what their brother or sister's would be.

I tried it a second time today and had the same success. We ended by reading The Shelf Elf Helps Out and taking turns pointing out the sections.

Cutest Thing Ever

...and a very impressive performance! Kindergarten students performing Today Is Monday by Eric Carle.

Respect

I'm having some respect issues with the third and fourth graders - worse than last year. Yesterday, I found myself getting overly frustrated and losing my calm with them. I'm so sick of the back talk and the attitudes when I call them on something.

I know humour can help, but it's hard to let it roll off you when they are pushing your buttons. Our kids all say "Oh, Wow" (sarcastically) whenever they get in trouble so I'm going to try to respond with something that diffuses the tension (at least for me) rather than lecturing them.

How do you handle respect from your kids, particularly when you only have them once a week?

Category Labels for Elementary

So my new obsession is these little category labels with pictures (you can get them from Highsmith or Demco and probably other places - Demco has a better selection of them). I started with labeling my holiday books so that it'd be easier to pull them, but I'm finding it makes it the library so much more user friendly for the elementary kids (and some of the teachers) so I've now labeled poetry, biographies, sports, dinosaurs, and space and am gradually working my way through other highly requested areas. It's kind of relaxing to just sit and do it for an hour, and I am able to weed a little as I go along. I decided to do fiction as well so I can quickly pull a dinosaur or space fiction book. One thing to note is that you do need to buy label protectors or they fall right off and/or get scratched.

Some of the categories I am ordering labels for next:
Animals
Art
Dogs/Cats/Horses
Cars
Crafts
Cooking
Fall/Spring/Summer/Winter
Fairytales/Fables/Mythology
Health
Horror
Technology
Weather

Ethiopia Reads

I just found out about a really cool library-related charity: Ethiopia Reads. I posted more on my professional blog, but definitely check out their website.

Karin Librarian

Ha...check out this blog: http://karinlibrarian.wordpress.com/

I was searching for info on the book Extras by Scott Westerfeld and somehow came up with this blog! Anyway, the book was awesome. More on that to come. Oh, and there is a librarian named KarIn in Central New York also!

Teacher Tube

How cool is this! All education based videos - some for professional development and some for classroom use.

www.teachertube.com

I had no idea this existed until today, but I'm really excited about it.


Check out The Bionic Librarian

Our RIF Program

We just had our first RIF distribution coupled with a Pajama Reading Night. The night event was a surprizing success - we had 271 people (kids and their family members) join us which is much more than we usually get for week night events. I think the success was due to the kid's excitement about wearing their pjs to school!

http://www.wickedlocal.com/somerville/news/education/x1846405954

Awesome Document for Administrators

Administrative Guide to School Libraries - DRAFT
By Christopher Harris on metamancy

This would be a great thing to bring to your goals meeting or just pass on to an administrator as a helpful way to understand your role. It also advocates for support staff which is helpful for those of us who don't have any.

http://digitalreshift.org/files/adminguide.pdf

My Educational Crush

Yesterday was the School Library Systems Conference for all librarians in the Syracuse area. It was AWESOME. The highlight was Will Richardson, my educational crush. Seriously.

He delivered the keynote and then ran three sessions on using technology in education -- one on blogs and wikis, one on RSS and social bookmarking, and one on podcast, vodcast, and digital storytelling. To be honest, the sessions were fairly "Web 2.0 for Dummies" when I had been hoping for more advanced information and/or some discussion about how people are making it work in actual districts around here, but it was still great.

If you don't already follow Will Richardson, I suggest you do the following ASAP:

• Buy his book: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms...I loved it, but really everything is online anyway, so moving on...
  
• Read his blog;
• Check out his wikis: weblogged has a TON of useful Web 2.0 resources, sample projects, etc.; and willrichardson outlines most of what he talked about in his keynote, including tons of links.

And now that I'm motivated and gung ho, I thought I would share with you guys two of the resources I post to a lot:

• My personal blog;
• My Blackboard site -- most of the "good" content is blocked because of student privacy concerns, but I make as much of my own stuff available as possible;
• The librarians in my district are working on starting a wiki to collaborate and post projects, ideas, etc., so once we get it up and running, I will let you know.