Tales from a Loud Librarian

PODCAST found here 7th Graders on Field Trip in the Ninth Ward, February 2020 Every year over the last ten I have worked with the 7th grade English teachers on a project that encompasses literature, research, a written/digital product, a field trip, and service learning. In that time there have been five different teachers who have taught ELA to this grade level. One thing that has remained constant is me, and over the years, I have developed a tool to make the research super easy for the kids. Using  Livebinders  I have been able to curate resources and collate all the tools that the students need from the very beginning of the project when they read historical fiction about Hurricane Katrina's devastation in our area to the very end with the digital scrapbook. This is truly a collaborative project between the English teachers, myself, and our colleagues at Dr. King Charter school where we visit for service learning.  That's me receiving a thank you c...

I View image | gettyimages.com This is the story of how Hurricane Katrina ten years ago affected my professional life, as I remember it. I totally understand if you have no interest and want to skip this post. You have my permission to stop reading right now.  I need to actually start in 2003. In spring of that year, I made the decision to leave the elementary school where I had been librarian for twelve years. It was an extremely hard choice to make. I loved the students and parents at that school. I believe that I was made to sing, dance, use puppets, and voices to bring books to life for the younger set. I had developed a program where I taught information literacy and library skills in a very systematic way to the students. I loved what I was doing and was extremely proud of my program, One of my good friends worked in a school of 1500 students in grades 7th -12th. The other librarian, who was also a friend, was retiring. If I did not move at this time, I mig...

Yesterday was the ninth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I also happened to finish Julie Lamana's book, Upside Down in the Middle of Nowhere . Now in retrospect, it seemed to be a fitting way to commemorate the occasion. This work is an outstanding middle grade novel. Our seventh graders have read Jewell Parker Rhodes' Ninth Ward over the past several years , and Lamana's book is equally as gripping.   Lemana follows a family from the Ninth Ward that has to escape the rising waters by climbing into their attic and eventually onto their roof. Death faces them square in the face and when they finally get rescued off the roof, the family also gets separated. It was a hard book to read and took me longer than it should have considering its intended audience. I think that it was due to the subject matter. The one thing that bothered me about the story was at the end when Armani gets a ride into New Orleans on the 2nd of September to try and find her missing family member...

Yesterday, I received a thank you note from our good friend, author Jewell Parker Rhodes . The students in 7th grade read Ms. Rhodes book, Ninth Ward , collaborated with a 7th grade class from Iowa that read the book, and took a field trip to see the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. In February, Ms. Rhodes visited Patrick Taylor. During her visit, we showed her the videos that the students created that highlighted their field trip to the Ninth Ward. She explained that she was going to a conference in Oxford, England in March and would love to share the students' videos with the attendees. We sent her three of the videos which you can see here .    Above is a picture of the gifts that she sent the students. The package included pens and bookmarks that sported the Union Jack and postcards from Oxford. The seventh graders are holding up the postcards that they selected as their gift from Ms. Rhodes. Hiding on the left in the second row is English teacher Cheryl Bordelo...