Tales from a Loud Librarian

Two seniors designed this amazing welcome sign inspired by the book cover below Book 2 in the Constellation series That's me on the left The young adult author Claudia Gray lives in the New Orleans area, and Patrick Taylor is located in the New Orleans area. Over the last few years, every time that I would see Claudia at a book event, I would ask if she would do a school visit. She always has said yes, but she is a busy writer and getting a time set on the calendar has been a challenge. On Tuesday, November 27th, the sophomores and juniors finally had a chance to meet her. I actually set up this event because I knew that the members of the high school book group, Bookmarked, would love her, but since this event was a long time in the making, I decided that every student in those two grades would benefit from hearing what she had to say. I was not wrong. The students were a great audience, and I think they all took a little something away with them at the end of...

Find links to many of the presentations here On Saturday, I attended a one day professional development sponsored by the Louisiana Association of School Librarians . I really enjoyed it and got some great ideas to use in my library. For my presentation at this event, I chose to talk about an activity that is relatively low tech. Technology is exciting. I love learning new ways to use it in the library, but I also don't want to concentrate on tech and not spread the word about the merits of reading and finding great books. I have three book groups that I run in my library. The middle school group meets monthly, but the other two groups for older students meet every week. It can be exhausting but also exhilarating. We have had some amazing discussions. I want to tell you now that you don't have to run a book group where every student in the group reads the same book. It can be very freeing once you decide to break the mold of book groups. Another big aspect of all of my...

Today, Bookmarked, the high school book group had the opportunity to chat with YA author Cori McCarth y. She is delightful, and both the students and I were on the edge of our seats drinking in everything that she had to say. Though several of her books piqued our interest, we met today to talk about her contemporary novel,  You Were Here . This one she said is the most personal to her. She lost a classmate when she was in 8th grade right before the school year started. The adults told them that his death should not be discussed. All these years later, her emotional connection to this former classmate was the impetus to write the book.  This book is told in five voices. When she began writing, it was very difficult for her to put words on paper for the character who was mute for most of the story. She decided that his voice would work well in illustrations. She was able to convince her editor to hire an artist to turn his part of the story into a graphic novel...

I have taken a short break from posting in this blog, but that does not mean that I have been negligent in the library. October and November saw many classes in all grade levels visiting the library for research for a social studies paper. Our students must submit a paper to receive honors' credit for any social studies course. I also spent $375 of library funds on new materials for our library makerspace. I will probably do a separate post about those new items, but I am definitely going to write about the new green screen. It was up in the library less than 24 hours before students started using it. I will write a post just on that.  For now, I thought it would be fun to post a bunch of pictures so that you can see what my students have been up to.  We are a 1:1 school but when laptops break down, students use the library computers This student is focused on building a bridge with K'Nex. It is still in the works,  The Keva Planks were a real hit and...

SLJ Teen Live August 10, 2016 Interface to navigate the online conference On August 10th, I spoke on a panel during the annual SLJ Teen Live online conference sponsored by School Library Journal. In the past, the focus of this one day conference was on young adult literature, books and authors, but this year a number of sessions were included dealing with teen programming in school and public libraries. The session in which I participated was called College and Career for the Under-served .  I spoke to the 250 attendees over the phone and manipulated my slides on the computer The college application process has been an area that is near and dear to me. I have been developing quality resources for my seniors for many years. I believe that as librarian I can help support the counseling department at my school in a big way. My school is small with 600 students, and the class of 2017 has only 30 students. Our counselor must assist students with the college pro...

Engrossed in a good book School opened for students on August 11th, so I have now logged in two school days of the new year. On the first day, I began the day helping 6th graders all who are new to our school find their classrooms. At the change of each period, I was  in the hall helping to guide the students to where they should be. The district asked schools to post on social media using the hashtag #JPPSS1stday. I ran around the building taking a few pictures to post on Facebook and Twitter. Then when I had a few minutes, I worked on the library catalog and getting the library ready to open. Also, seniors, who are taking online classes, were scheduled in the library. Oh, I am the school's laminator queen, and I had piles of posters and papers to laminate for the new year.  First book check out for 2016-17 school year He is gearing up for the Fantastic Beasts movie by reading the book first The district guidelines allow librarians to wait two weeks before...