Tales from a Loud Librarian

Middle School Lunch  Running the library last year was extremely stressful for me. There were a number of factors that made it so. None of those factors were in my control, though how I handled the stress certainly was. I was dreading getting ready for the new school year a few weeks ago because I considered that little had changed for this year. I have to give a big shout out to my principal because she has figured out a way to make my job in the library a bit easier this year. I want to let you know that the year has gotten off to a very good start.  The first problem that made teaching extremely difficult in the library occurred right at the beginning of the 2016-17 school year, and it had to do with the furniture. We moved into the new building in August of 2013. We had only about 400 students then, and there were many empty classrooms. The library had been outfitted with only four rectangular tables which was certainly not enough when a class of 32 students arrive...

That's me, Ms. Kahn, looking at a student's work on Easybib Collaborating with the teachers in my building is one of my priorities. It is a waste of time to teach skills in isolation because in most cases what you are trying to teach just won't stick. By planning lessons with my teachers to meet the specific needs of their teaching and classrooms means that the students will immediately use what I am sharing with them. It also means that the students will be assessed on what I am teaching because the teachers require an end product.  Another type of collaboration that I do is help teachers follow through with the activities which I introduced in the library and is what I call, the second person in the room. This means I serve as an extra pair of hands, eyes, and mouth. I have been the second person during skype visits when the teacher felt uncomfortable with the technology or they wanted help to make sure the conversation with the expert on skype went smoothly. ...

On Thursday, September 22nd, the seventh graders were treated to a visit by local author, Whitney Stewart . The students have begun the research process for their social studies fair papers in English class. I asked Whitney if she would visit PFTSTA to talk to the students about how she goes about researching when she begins a new non-fiction book. She has been very fortunate to actually meet the subjects of some of her biographies including Sir Edmund Hillary, the 14th Dalai Lama, and Aung San Suu Kyi. To meet these remarkable people she has traveled extensively throughout Asia. The students were blown away by this. She even made suggestions to the students on how they could contact people that might give them first hand information on the topics that they selected for the social studies fair. She had some wonderful insights for the students that neither the teacher nor I had thought about.

One of my goals for this school year is to create 2-3 minute mini-lessons that teach students how to use the library databases and create citations for their research. This is the current trend called a flipped classroom or blended classroom. If students can get to the how-tos at home, then at school I can spend time hands on with helping them in their research. I have created a few videos, but it is slow going. To speed up the process, I have enlisted some student helpers. The students chose what they wanted to teach and used Screencast-o-matic  to create their tutorials. When I make the videos, I use my laptop and a microphone. The students decided it would be easier for them to create them by using the interactive white board. The pictures below show two students as they create their screencast. All instructional videos can be found on the PFTSTA Channel in Vimeo .  

In May, one of our English teachers asked if I would work on a grant with her. She was looking to fund sets of books to use for teaching her 7th graders. The grant was sponsored by Gale and Library Media Connection. It was not a whole lot of money, but we thought that it was real doable. For the Gale Teams Award we had to highlight a collaborative project that was designed to address a problem or need, explain our goals and strategies and how we met these objectives. During the 2010-11 school year, Lisa Valence and I worked together to help the students write the research paper for the annual social studies fair. We broke down the research process in small bites for the students, and we felt that we had succeeded in achieving our goals. This was the program that we highlighted in the grant. Today we received the following email: (Click on the image to enlarge it)   There were a total of 3 winners in the whole country, and we won the middle school division!!!! Gale is send...

Here are some of our new students. I broke a record I think. On the fourth day of school they were in the library for orientation. After orientation, the doors to the library are open for the school year. It was a stampede. The kids were begging me to open. I could not say no. Food in the library. That is an issue that remains a problem. I really don't want the food, but on the other hand I know that they students want somewhere other than the cafeteria to eat. I make sure that they throw away all trash, but they still manage to drop bits and pieces on the tables and the floor.