A Bad Name

At the end of each day, I sit in a little TV studio off of the library, typing in the bus numbers as the buses arrive to pick up the kids.  One of our third graders passes through the library on the way to his mother's classroom, and he always yells out hello.  Some days, he brings me snacks.  He usually has a story to tell.

Today, he said, "So I have a song stuck in my head.  My brother taught it to me and I can't stop singing it."  I asked, "What's the song?"

SHOT THROUGH THE HEART, AND YOU'RE TO BLAME; DARLIN', YOU GIVE LOVE A BAD NAME!

Seriously, for a million dollars I wouldn't have guessed Bon Jovi. 
Love that kid.

Not Drowning

My principal gave all the specialists a professional day today.  I used it to my full advantage.  Of course, I had a patrillion things on my to-do list but didn't get nearly as much accomplished as I'd hoped.  Sigh...
I thinked my principal for the day today and told him that I didn't get ahead, but at least I felt like I wasn't drowning anymore.  And the sad part is that I take solace in that!
The specialists met for over an hour today and got a lot of preliminary planning done for the end of the year craziness.  It will still be crazy, but I feel like we're not behind the eight ball like we have been in years past. 
I didn't do much planning for the rest of the year, but I have a vague idea of what will be happening.  Oh, I think I forgot to mention that the library will be closed for almost three weeks in May/June for our state-mandated testing.  I am sick over it, but it's the way it has to be and other teachers and librarians are in the same boat as me.  At least for two of the three weeks, it would be after the time when we are done checking out books for the year.  And certainly, I can teach in the classrooms instead of the library, although I will miss my home!

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

that's what my sister would say about my recent award.  It's one of her favorite sayings.

On Friday, I was named Regional School Librarian of the Year.  Now, I am not much into bragging about myself, and certainly there were other librarians nominated who are doing the same kinds of things I do, but it feels really good to be recognized for all my hard work.

My principal (the one I heart) nominated me, and I had fabulous letters of support from my reading specialist and two members of the PTA board.  I worked really hard on my application packet and tried to address all the elements the judges would be looking for.

Wow.  I am just on cloud nine!

I Heart My Principal

I don't know how to put a little heart in the title.  I should try to figure that out...
So my principal sent out the list of people who would be going into classrooms to do interventions, and my assistant and I were both on the list.  I sent an email to the staff to let them know the library would be closed the last 1/2 hour of the day and went to my assigned classroom at the end of the day.
I didn't think it went well.  I worked with a student who needed some one-on-one time, which was fine, but on the second day, the teacher informed me that we'd be doing "fun stuff" at the end of the day.  Puh-leez.  Is that why I'm there?  I think not.
Anyway, my principal called last night to tell me that he hadn't realized that the library would have to close, and he certainly didn't want that to happen.  So he assigned my assistant and me to the same teacher, and we are able to switch off and keep the library open.  And I'll get a little quiet time at the end of the day (little is the operative word here).
So I wrote a thank you note to my principal that said, "I [heart] my principal.  Thank you for being flexible, for recognizing differing needs, and for not being afraid to change your mind."  I really mean it.  I love working for this guy.

I LOVE this guy!

I don't know where I've been.  I don't know what I've been doing for the last month.  Wait.  I know.  I've been teaching all day every day.  And I've been finishing up one reading program and gearing up for another one.  I've been spending every minute reading and writing for an online class I'm taking. 

School is nuts.  I am constantly feeling behind the 8 ball.  I don't like that feeling, but there's just not time in the day to get everything done so that I feel prepared and organized.  My principal offered to give me a professional day, but honest-to-God, what I need is a professional period every single day.  Our school baord has voted to add 20 minutes to every school day so we can make up the lost time (from the snowdays), and I asked my principal for that time in the library, doing library things.  But I don't think it's going to happen.  It sounds like we're all going to be in classrooms for that extra time.  Sigh... If I had that extra time every single day, I could make a little headway on all the library administrative stuff that's not getting done.

I happier news, I have to relate a story from one of my first grades.  I was reading Abe's Honest Words to them as part of our famous Americans study, and as I held the book up to show the class, a little boy burst out, "I LOVE this guy!"  It was just so cute. 

Snow Day Crochet

We are on snow day #7, and I've been staying busy working on school stuff (of course) and sewing and crocheting.  My first afghan is finished!

It's brown and blue--I love that variegated yarn.  Those are some of my favorite color combinations.  The solid areas are a light brown.  It's very warm and cozy--perfect for cuddling up on the couch. I've been working on this since June, so I'm thrilled to have it finished.  It wasn't so much fun to do during the hot summer months!

I just started a baby blanket.  It has motifs, which I haven't worked with before, but it's pretty simple.  Little granny squares in the middle (40 of them!) and then worked together and bound with some shell stitches.  Here's the progress so far:

and here's what each motif will look like.  It's pink and brown, the baby-to-be's colors:

We are off again tomorrow, so I'll continue working and posting. And another storm is headed our way Tuesday into Wednesday, so I may be home even longer... 

Teeny Tiny Little Flakes

of snow are falling.  They've been falling for about three hours now, and nothing is sticking to the ground.  The weather forecasters are predicting 18 to 24 inches of snowfall in our region over the next two days, and because this storm started as expected during the day, schools cancelled last night for today.
It was great getting to sleep in and not having to wake up to listen for a delay or cancellation.  Cosmo and I snuggled until about 8:30 and then had a lazy morning.  K and I went out for breakfast and to do one errand, and traffic was unbelievable!  I am glad we're back in waiting for the storm to hit full-force.  Bring. It. On.
After last weekend's snow, our work day on Monday was cancelled, school was cancelled on Tuesday, and then we had more snow Tuesday night that cancelled school on Wednesday.  We had a 2-hour delay on Thursday, and now here we are.  So I taught for a total of four hours this week.  Woah...
If this storm brings us as much as is expected, I doubt we'll be having school until at last Tuesday of next week.  Good thing I brought home some work to do over the long weekend.

Snow Days, Snow Days

I love snow days.  I love snow.  I love that I live in an area that can't clear snow in a timely manner.  We got about 9-10 inches of snow on Saturday, and school was cancelled today and it has already been cancelled for tomorrow!! How exciting is that!
Today was a work day for teachers, so the only thing that changed was that we could work from home.  I went in to school from 11:30 to 4:00 today and got a bunch of things checked off the to-do list.  As I was leaving at 4 today, I was thinking that what I really needed was another snow day.  And by 4:08, I heard on the radio that my county was cancelled again.  Wishes do come true! I am so excited that I get to finish up my to-do list.  That will at least put me on track for the rest of the week (sigh).
I am so looking forward to tomorrow!! (And, as I always say, "School is so much fun without the kids!")

She Looks Like Me!

A beautiful moment in the library on Tuesday: one of our little African-American students, when she saw the picture of Jerry Pinkney at the end of Little Red Riding Hood, said, "He's Black!" and then as we were discussing the book, she pointed to Little Red Riding Hood and said, "SHE looks like me!" And it was true.  I had been hoping that someone would notice that LRRH is a character of color.  I didn't know if I should've pointed it out to the kids overtly, but if it came up in conversation, we'd talk about it.  This little girl was so excited.  She was touching her hair and look at the cover of the book. 
And then--I could not have scripted this moment any better--a little later the girl shows me the book she's checked out, and what is it? The Little Match Girl, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney.  I don't even know how she found that book.  She's a first grader--certainly she did not know where to look on the shelves?!?! Maybe the book was out on display and she saw the illustrations and the name? I'm just not sure, but I loved the moment.

What If?

What if I didn't have an assistant in the library?  How would our program change? I am having a hard time even thinking about where to start--it would truly change our program for the worse, in many and every way possible.
1.  We'd have to limit open library visitation.  Students could only visit the library during their library class time.
2.  We'd limit the number of books students could check out based on how many books I could shelve in a day.
3.  Teacher services (putting in videos, pulling books, etc.) would have to stop.
4.  Reading programs would have to be reworked and scaled-down.
5.  All the "extras" I do (website manager, morning studio, newsletter editor, SCA adviser) would have to stop.

How could we make it work? Perhaps by taking the library out of the specials rotation and making it a completely flexible schedule.  I'd have time to collaborate with teachers and develop research units.

The county to the south of us has just announced plans to eliminate 131 positions for next year.  The county to the east of us is planning to eliminate library aides at the elementary level (and ALL sports!).  It's not long before this nightmare might become a reality in my district.

Tears

I was just sad today.  An underlying sadness, and the tears were right at the surface all day.  The kids were good today, my lessons went well, but I just didn't feel much joy today.
First, I overheard something this morning and when I asked about it later, I found out more of the story.  A colleague's husband is leaving her.  They have children, and he is just being stupid.  He doesn't even want to visit his children, which is the part that kicks me every time I think about it.  I get it that people fall out of love with each other, but what happens when a parent does that to his children? It is just sad.
Then, I had this class of very good students, and there's that one kid.  You know the kind I mean--the hard-to-like little bugger.  At the end of class, I asked his teacher if she loved him; I needed some words of advice to help me love him.  And she said that she was working on loving him.  And I told her that I just needed something to love about him. 
She pulled me aside and said that he was a child of divorced parents and that the principal recently called CPS because the kid came in obviously upset and roughed up.  Turns out his mom beat the crap out of him that morning, pulling him by his hair across the room.  Nice. So I am going to try to love this kid a little more.

amazon PRIME!

Thank goodness for Amazon PRIME shipping! I usually get my books the second day after ordering them, but my fabulous copy of the Caldecott Award-winning book The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney arrived today, barely 24 hours after ordering it! Thank you, UPS and Amazon-shipping gods.

Sure, call me late to the party, call me a bandwagon-jumper, it's okay.  I know. I am not usually a huge Jerry Pinkney fan (his watercolors, while beautiful, just aren't my favorite illustrative style). But this book is beautiful!  The simple and gentle way he tells the fable is just perfect. 

I think my love of it comes from two different things: first, I recently read his version of Little Red Riding Hood to our primary kids.  (I like this version, even though it's a bit gruesome.  Little Red is a character of color (!) and the story is set in winter--which makes a whole lot more sense as to why Red is trapsing through the woods to see her sick grandma.) It's classic Pinkney, and other than those two things I just mentioned, nothing about the book stands out to me. 

The second event is that I have just finished up 18 readings of Once Upon a Banana with the kids, a fabulously fun wordless book.  So I am in the mood for more good wordless books, and I love it when things just work out.  See? It looks like I planned to do a wordless book unit with the kids, or maybe a Jerry Pinkney sandwich (with a little David Small in the middle!). I'm good like that.

Day 5

Today was Day 5.  It's the fifth day I've done this set of lessons.  I am, simply, tired of saying the same things over and over.  Day 1 is always a little rough, not too bad, but it's the first time I'm teaching the lesson.  Days 2 & 3 are great--I'm in a groove.  Days 4-6 just keep going downhill.  I just get tired of saying the same exact things again and again.  It's the first time for the kids, and I try to keep that in mind, but I'm just tired today.
We've been reading Once Upon a Banana by Jennifer Armstrong and David Small in kindergarten, first, and second grades this rotation.  It's really fun, since it's a wordless book, and the students, all of those grades, love the story. To do it with the classes, I show the book using the projector.  We can see all of the details better than if I held the book in front of the kids. 
Yesterday, as I read the author's and illustrator's names to the students, the thought hit me that I wasn't exactly sure what the author did for this story.  Did she write the plot the way the students and I tell the story from looking at the pictures?  Did she go to David Small and say, "I have this idea about a rogue monkey who litters and craziness ensues, and it happens all around a city block and there are a ton of characters"? I'm just not sure how that works with a wordless book.  Maybe she outlined the story and then the illustrator sketched her ideas? I'd like to know! David, Jennifer: do you google your names? Maybe you'll get a google alert and check the blog and let me know!

Shop-PING!

So I had this third grade boy say this to me today as we were talking about Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  What will you be doing to think about MLK that day?  Apparently, he'll be shop-PING! I hate to say that I probably will, too.  Kohl's sent me a 30% off coupon. I'm not proud.

In other news, my principal has added more to my jobs.  Now when we call the buses at the end of the day, I have to repeat back to the outside person what she said.  I really like sitting there in silence, so I am hoping this doesn't have to last too long.

We have a six-day specials rotation, and now I have to put which day of the rotation it is on the website calendar.  Is this not something that the teachers can be doing in their weekly/bimonthly newsletters? Seriously...I am rolling my eyes. This becomes a real pain when we have a snow day and I have to change all the future rotation days.

Just griping.

Lesson Planning

What else is new? Well, actually, I feel really guilty that my lesson plan book has been mostly blank for the last three weeks.  Don't get the wrong idea: I've had meaningful lessons for my students and I have been aligned with the state standards!  No worries there!
I have just been lax about writing down what I've been doing.  Some of the grade levels are in the middle of a several-rotation project, so it's not that I'd have written down anything except "Native American research, week 4" anyway.  Although there was one rotation of third grade that I couldn't for the life of me remember what we'd done.  I had to do some serious mental stretching to remember back to the first week of December.
I am back on track now.  Everything is at least caught up; several grade levels are planned well ahead of this rotation (which begins on Monday).
I worked at school for about 3 hours today and got a lot done.  One of the exciting things that I took off my to-do list was to copy my lessons for a fellow LMS.  Here's her email:

Hello,

I was at the [state] conference and I loved some of the ideas that you all
shared. I am brand new to the library this year, and I was wondering if
you had any other great ideas that you would be willing to share? I am
looking for as much help as I can get.
Thanks so much,
C. F.

How nice was that?!?! I emailed her back and got some more information and then just decided to copy all of my grade level lesson folders for her.  This way, she'll have all my other great ideas as well as my not-so-great ones.  (C'mon, they can't all be fabulous!)
In other news, I'm working out a new lesson for our third graders.  They have to know about Cesar Chavez this year.  (?!?!) My friend Lynne Farrell Stover developed a lesson using this book.  I am excited to read the book and do the economics lesson that goes with it, AND help out our third grade teachers at the same time.

Snow Day!

Gotta love my mid-Atlantic state.  They are just not equipped to handle snow like my home state is.  We have less than an inch of snow, and my school district has cancelled school today.  It seems crazy to me, but I'll take it.  The gift of time.  It's my favorite gift ever.
The school will open at 10 today, so I'm going to go in later today and do a little work.  I've always said that school is so much fun without the kids.  And I mean that in the nicest way.  I left a few things there that I would've brought home to do over the weekend (thinking there's no WAY we'd have the day off today), so I'll go in and do a couple of small things and then bring home stuff to do over the weekend.

I've been thinking about my pledge to blog every day, and I just don't think it's realistic.  Some days, I just have nothing interesting to say, and I don't want to post just anything on here, so I will revamp my pledge to blog more frequently, but just not every single day.
This is what I would've blogged about yesterday: we were doing our ocean research in fifth grade and as I was going through the papers at the end of the class period, I noticed one student who had nothing but his name on his paper.  When I asked him about it, he told me that it took him a while to decide on an animal, and he did the reading but didn't write anything down.  His animal? the gorilla.  :(

Well, maybe he looked at this picture on the Internet.

What do I say to that? Seriously?!?! A gorilla?!?!? I told him that that was the lamest thing a student had ever told me.  I know that might've been a little mean, but c'mon! A gorilla?!?!

Putting Off Work

I am totally procrastinating tonight. I have checked email, Facebook, my RSS feeds, and now I'm even writing on my blog before doing my actual schoolwork.  I know tomorrow will be a bit easier if I do what I need to do  tonight, but I am just not feeling up for it.
One of the "extras" I do at school is the morning announcements program.  We have a cast of 3 on-air personalities, one camera person, and a guest pledge leader.  I type the script for the kids each day and also create a PowerPoint loop of announcements and menus and birthdays that runs before the announcements start.  I usually create the loop at the beginning of the month and have everything on it for the whole month--all the lunch menus and birthdays, etc.  I am totally unmotivated to do it tonight.  Tomorrow night won't be any better, nor will Thursday.  I suppose that if I just update it each morning this week, I can do the bulk of it over the weekend.  That sounds way better to me than spending two hours tonight doing it.
I am the Queen of Procrastination.  Speaking of being a queen, I am reading The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County to our kindergarteners and first graders.  The book is really growing on me.  The story line is pretty far from what any of our students can relate to, but the illustrations are really great.  The kids have really enjoyed studying the collage techniques of Shelley Jackson.  After we read the book, the kids cut the letters of their names out of old magazines and put them on a nametag, just like on the cover.  It's  a little like a ransom note, but we don't talk about that!! I even made a label to put on the nametag that tells of the inspiration for the project.  The kids have really had fun with  it.

In fifth grade, I pulled an ocean research pocket out of my filing cabinet (and by that I mean my butt). No, really.  I had done the lesson some time ago and kind of forgotten about it, but it turns out that that's what they're studying in science right now, so it fits in perfectly. You just have to love when it works out like that.

Wet books :(

I could cry.  Over the Christmas holiday, sometime after the Blizzard of '09 as our 16+ inches of snow melted, a leak formed in two corners of our library.  One corner leaked all over the mounted TV and zapped it.  No big loss.  I can easily live without TV in the library--hardly use it at all, actually.
The leak in the second corner, was, however, much more devastating.  Two entire cases of books.  10 shelves in all, were destroyed.  Completely-waterlogged-and-molding-already-destroyed. My principal and I found it at the same time this morning, and he was even more upset than I was.  He just kept pulling books off the shelves and saying, "no more...no more damage!" as I stood there shaking my head. 
He made all the right phone calls and soon our library was swarmed with people from maintenance, central office, and the construction crews.  One man took pictures and let me know what I'd need to do next, which is to print a list of all the destroyed books and AV equipment so he could submit it to our insurance company.
Unfortunately, we have $1,000 deductible, so we won't be able to replace everything, but hopefully, I'll at least get to replace the most popular titles.
Such a sad start to 2010.

Sunday Night Dread

I have it.  I always get it, but it's not too bad tonight because part of me is actually excited to get back to work.  I love vacations, I love summer, but I love the routine of work even more. 
Bring on those kiddos in the AM!

Jannook!

That's the name of my most favorite Christmas present this year, the Barnes & Noble E-reader called the Nook.  I fell instantly in love with it the moment I turned it on and even thought of a great name for it.  The first book I read on it was South of Broad by Pat Conroy.  (I love his writing, even though I didn't love the story.)  I am now reading a Malcolm Gladwell book called What the Dog Saw.  It is enjoyable and light reading.  When my bookclub meets next week, I can download my next book, hopefully, whatever we decide on.

I wanted the Nook for two reasons: first, I absolutely hate holding books in bed.  They are heavy and clumsy and my hand usually falls asleep trying to hold them.  Second, I cannot wear my reading glasses in bed, and I have to hold the book a little too far away to comfortably read the text.  The Nook only weighs 11.2 ounces, and it has several different fonts and sizes to choose from.  Problems solved!
I think it will even get me reading more books for school!