Tales from a Loud Librarian

The beginning of school this year was unbelievable. First, the start date was delayed because of the pandemic, and then we were out three times for three different hurricanes. It was hard to keep any kind of routine going. Currently, our middle school students either are virtual or come to school everyday. The high school students are virtual or hybrid (attending school in alternating two or three times a week) with a much larger proportion choosing to be virtual. When things did finally get underway, I was told that the doors to the library would be closed to students. That has not meant that I have been sitting idle. I think that I have worked harder this year than any other.  Students can order books to be delivered on a Google Form This is the first time that I have displayed books in the library's windows I am providing lessons from my desk to whole classes, meeting individually with students to assist with research, and pulling books that students order and delivering those t...

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...

My Reading Life  Sign I created for the door to my office I was inspired to write this blog post after seeing the infographic created by Library Girl Jennifer LaGarde called, When Adults Don't Read, Kids Lose . I remember years ago when I was an elementary school librarian talking to a fourth grade teacher who admitted that she never read. I couldn't imagine that and was horrified. Reading feeds my soul and though my reading habits have changed over the last 25 years that I have been a librarian, I still really value reading in my life. I think everyone should. How can we expect our students to value reading if we don't read?  I have a motto for my library: All Readers Welcome. I tell my students that I chose that because unlike an English teacher who wants you to read specific books, I don't care what you read. I want you to read what brings you pleasure. It is important for these young people to find what types of reading brings them enjoyment now before th...

School has been out for a month. I have wanted to create an infographic as a snapshot of the library for 2016-17. After a week long vacation and taking some time off to read and read some more and visit with friends, I sat at the computer yesterday to make the infographic you will find at the end of this post. I used Canva to create it. I only wanted a snapshot that touches a bit on what happened in the library this year because if I tried to cover everything, the reader would lose interest fast. If you want to know more about the PFTSTA Library then you would need to read posts from this blog or follow the library accounts on Facebook , or Instagram . I took information from the report that I had to submit to the district on circulation and number of books. I looked at the stats for our databases and subscriptions and included those. At the end of the year, I sent out a form for students and teachers to give me some feedback about the library. It was mostly very positive. The quot...

In 2014 was the first time that I set up a display for Blind Date with a Book  (BDWB). The kids loved it. When I set up the display the following year, I had students add some information about each book on the wrapping so that students could make an informed choice. This really improved the whole blind date experience.  What will this new read be? Then I said the heck with this, it is so difficult to wrap the books and keep wrapping additional books after the books get checked out that I stopped putting up the display. This year I have seen so many cute displays on social media, and Pinterest is filled with BDWB display ideas . I decided it was time to bring it back to my library. She is a happy camper! I needed to figure out a simpler way to package the books, list some qualities of the book, and be ready to add new books to the display as they get checked out. I made a nice design on Canva to print out, and you can find it here and feel free to copy an...

I was looking at Goodreads online, which I rarely do, and found a nice infographic illustrating the books that I read over the last year. I thought it was pretty cool so I wanted to share it with you here. I didn't want to just add a link, so I searched the web to find a way to embed it into my blog. I found embed.ly  which allows you to create a free card out of any website. I thought that was pretty nifty, and it worked well for me here.  Ms. Kahn's Year in Books

There are only a few hours left of summer break for 2016. I start back to work on Monday, and our students will start on Thursday. Am I ready to go back? Yes and no. This has been a wonderful summer of rest and relaxation. I did not attend any conferences this summer nor did I spend hours making preparations for the new year. However, when I do reflect on the summer, I realize that my mind was never very far from the library.  I read. I am always reading something and though I don't like reading two print books at one time, I usually have one print book going and one audio book. I review books for both School Library Journal and School Library Connection . This means that I don't always get to choose what I read, but I didn't review much this summer, though I have 5 books by my bed to review right now. I am on the committee for the state library that selects the books for Louisiana Teen Readers' Choice (LTRC). At the beginning of the summer, we narrowed our list ...

Final meeting of BRiMS, that 's me in white Even though it was standardized testing week, I held our last regularly scheduled monthly  BRiMS  (Books Rule in Middle School) meeting on Wednesday during lunch. It seemed silly to cancel it since the students' lunch period was actually longer than usual last week. I liked the fact that I didn't have to cancel just because testing was being held in the morning--in some schools I would have to do so. We did have a lower turnout than usual, but I had been reminding kids about the meeting in emails, the daily school memo, and signage in the library. I do believe that the students need to learn how to take responsibility and keep track of meeting dates and times. Some forgot, some didn't read the book, and others just chose to go to the cafeteria for lunch. This year, I finally found a rhythm with the way that I organize what we read for each monthly meeting. For half the meetings, there was an assigned book and t...

I got a chance to pose with Raymond Arroyo just before he left A couple of weeks ago, Judith Lafitte, from the local independent bookstore Octavia Books , and I were lamenting the lack of authors for tweens and teens traveling to New Orleans this past year. Since 2010, Octavia has sent many authors to my school to make presentations to the students. In October, we had someone scheduled who eventually had to cancel due to a family emergency. We were crushed but certainly understood. Since there are only two and half months left of the school year, I thought that this would be a year of no face to face author visits. The day after that phone call with Judith, she sends me an email saying that Raymond Arroyo, a native New Orleanian, would be visiting the bookstore and wanted to do a school visit.  Even though I had little time to prepare, and I was out of the building two days last week for a conference and ended up out of school a third day due to weather, we wer...

Link is here Last month I was asked to write a blog post for the Learn2Earn blog . They have lots of great articles about ed tech and reading for K-12 teachers. I was asked to write something for the reading section. That is right up my alley, so I took some of the websites that I shared recently during a conference presentation and wrote about how to use these sites in a classroom or library for the blog.  Read the blog post on Learn2Earn here: " 7 Fun (And Effective!) Reading Websites That Engage Students ."

I couldn't let the new year begin without posting here. HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone! The last two weeks off have helped to get my mind off of school. Getting a respite from the flurry of activity at school mid-year will certainly help propel me through the beginning of a new semester. I hope that others felt the same.                                                     I had a chance to read three books during the break. I was hoping to get in a fourth, but the book that I had to read and review for School Library Journal slowed me down.That always seems to happen when I pick up a book that doesn't move me. It takes longer to read because I have to psych myself up to opening the book and finishing it. It took a week, but I did finish it and submitted the review today. When I get to self select, I don't finish a book that I don't like. I fell in love...

I run two book groups at Patrick Taylor. My high school book group, Bookmarked , was created in the fall of 2007 which was my second year as librarian at the school. The students really wanted a library club, but the square footage of the library was so small that I could not imagine how any students could do any actual library work. Instead I created a book discussion group. Not only did we meet to talk books, but I tapped these students to help me with fundraisers and special programming like Teen Read Week. Helping me with these special activities seemed to appease the members. I waited until February of 2009 to institute a book discussion group for my middle school students called BRiMS, or Books Rule in Middle School . Both of the groups meet during lunch, and this year, the school added a third lunch. Now BRiMS is made up of only 6th and 7th graders. Bookmarked has 8th-12th grade students. This has actually worked well because in 2014 and 2015, Bookmarked lost a lot of members w...

When the 2015-16 school year opened, PFTSTA had a growth spurt of 100 more students than last year. These additional students meant that the cafeteria could no longer fit the students in two lunch periods. Now there are three separate lunches. The library opens for the 6th and 7th graders lunch period at 11:00 and concludes at 1:07 when the 8th graders report to fourth period. I wasn't sure how this would play out for Teen READ Week (TRW) because the members of the high school book group always ran the events held during both lunches. The high school students are in third period when the little ones have their lunch. I decided that it was important for me to simplify this year, and in the end, I had helpers from both the middle school book group and the high school book group.It worked out that I did have the extra pairs of hands that I sorely needed. Also, I lost  a day of celebration when the students had no school on Monday due to the day of professional development and par...

I presented twice This past Saturday I traveled to Lafayette, LA to present at the first ever LASL Fall Summit. In the past, the Louisiana school librarians had a mid-winter conference. It was always scheduled in late January or February every other year, but even in Louisiana, the weather could get in the way during the winter. Fog and ice could make it difficult for people to travel the state to attend a one day conference. In 2014, I got half-way to Lafayette and had to turn around because the fog made it impossible to cross the Atchafalaya Basin that lay between me and my destination.  Why did Susan cut off my hand? I do have another one. The attendees in the first session My presentation was entitled, "Where Reading and the Web Collide." My focus was to give websites and apps that librarians, teachers, parents, and students could use to enhance the reading experience. Even though I only serve students in grades 6th-12th, I tailored this talk to K-12 ...

One of the ways that I like to use this blog space is to share some of the titles that I am reading and write about which books are my new favorites. So far this summer I have finished ten books and are in the middle of two books as I type this post.  I choose the books that I read for a lot of different reasons. I am a book reviewer for both School Library Journal and School Media Connection (formerly Library Media Connection) . That means that I am sent books to read and review. I get to choose favorite genres and age ranges, but what I get is a crap shoot. Sometimes I love the books but very often I am underwhelmed.  SLJ asks all reviewers not to broadcast to publishers or authors what books that they will be reviewing. I am also asked not to publish, like on this blog, my reviews until six months after the review has been published in the print magazine. LMC has never given me any such guidelines, so I just follow what I do for SLJ. By the time that my review h...