Tales from a Loud Librarian

 I have blogged about every field trip  down to the 9th Ward in New Orleans that I have made with the seventh graders. The very first one  in 2011 was the best field trip that I have every been part of as a teacher, and over my many, many years of teaching, I have been on lots of field trips. This year, we made some changes to both the unit that is taught at school and to the trip itself.  This unit with the trip is very intense because there are so many pieces and parts, and there are several teachers handling the various responsibilities so that it all gets done on time, but this also is tricky making sure that all the loose ends are tied up by the time we board the buses. Musicians' Village We have a 7th grade ELA teacher on staff who is not only new to the school but also new to New Orleans. She was more than willing to be part of this project, but she had some ideas of how the unit could be better incorporated into her ELA program. First, she wanted ...

At the spot of the levee breach in the Ninth Ward  On February 29th, the seventh grade along with five teachers boarded two buses to head from Patrick Taylor to the Ninth Ward to participate in service learning and tour the area. We began this project several years ago when the students were asked to read Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes. After reading the book, we realized then that the students had little understanding of how Hurricane Katrina affected this very low area of New Orleans. Three years ago, we added a service learning component.  Our first stop this year was Dr. King Charter School . It should have taken us 30 minutes to get there, but there was horrible traffic on the Crescent City Connection bridge crossing the Mississippi, and one of the bridges across the Industrial Canal was closed. It took us over an hour to get to the school. When we arrived, a third of the students entered the school library to meet the 1st grade, a third went to two k...

PFTSTA Library All Readers Welcome In just two days, I will begin my 35th year of teaching and 10th year at Patrick Taylor . No longer am I nervous like I was so many years ago. Now I am brimming with excitement about all the special events that I have planned in the library this year and all the new books that may come our way as the year unfolds.  To get ready for the new year, I began cleaning up the library website. There are always edits and updates that I want to make. I am anticipating changing the look of the website, but I want to gather some new pictures before I do that. One of the sections of the website that I am most proud of is the one offering assistance to the students in preparation for college applications. You can find a link to that page here .  Finding authors to visit or skype with takes time because of all the scheduling logistics. The sixth and seventh graders will meet Jewell Parker Rhodes in October. This will be her third trip to our s...

Taken at the Flood Wall in the Ninth Ward, New Orleans, by Emily Gibbons, 7th grade PFTSTA Last week, the seventh graders with their English teacher, Ms. Ritter, the librarian, that's me, their math teacher, Ms. Klusendorf and another ELA teacher, Ms. Bordelon traveled 30 minutes from school to visit the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. This is our fourth annual trip to walk in the footsteps of the characters in Jewell Parker Rhodes' book, Ninth Ward . After the first reading of this book, we realized that the students really had no clue about the Ninth Ward, and this group was only about three years old the year that Hurricane Katrina made landfall, so a visit gives them a first hand look at the devastation and reconstruction wrought by the hurricane. Before embarking on the field trip, the students are asked to complete a pathfinder that I created. I made a Livebinder with video, audio, and text describing and explaining all the stops that we will be making on the field tri...

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...