Tales from a Loud Librarian

When May rolls around I gird up to do what is needed at my school. Most of those tasks do not really relate to the library. The seniors graduated this year on May 11th. I coordinate senior awards night, plan graduation, and help the students with their val and sal speeches for the graduation. For a long time, I was also AP coordinator, and that was a total nightmare because all of these tasks fell within the same few weeks. I would finish school totally wiped out needing my months off to regroup.  Tyler speaking to the YALSA BFYA committee at ALA Annual in 2018  During senior awards night, I give out something special to all graduating members of the high school book group, Bookmarked. Actually, over the last few years, there have been no seniors in book group. Students would join early in their high school career, but by the time that they became a senior, they would chose to get involved in other organizations. I understand, but I have come to realize that the stude...

I like to celebrate Black History Month, Women's History Month, and National Poetry Month in the school library. April has arrived, and it is time for poetry.  Click on the picture to enlarge it, the poem in the middle was written by a sophomore One of the things that I used to do was send an email blast out to all students and staff with a poem every day of the week. The poem would be the body of the email. I would occasionally get replies back with comments about the poems, so I know that they were being read. Now, instead of the email blast, I find a poem that I like that is posted on the web and add the link to the daily Paw Prints that is sent to all students and teachers and parents who have signed up for it. I decided that I didn't want to flood in boxes with email that wouldn't get read. Anyway, I use poems from the Poetry Foundation or Poets.org or even link to one of the poem generators that I have listed in this Symbaloo . Then I print out the poem ...

Birds of a Feather Flock to the Library Teen Tech Week @ PFTSTA Library March 25-29 I know that Teen Tech Week (TTW) and Teen Read Week (TRW) may not be long for this world. Both of these initiatives have been sponsored by YALSA for years, and I can hardly remember a time when I did not celebrate them in my library. In the future, it seems that YALSA wants to promote more activities for teens year round rather than just for two weeks every year. In my library, I serve tweens and teens all school year long. I like the idea of having a special week in the fall and one in the spring to highlight what the library has to offer. Even if these weeks are no longer sanctioned by YALSA, I expect to plan and execute a week's worth of fun twice a year anyway. Certainly, I can do that, but without other libraries doing the same across the US, sharing on social media does not have as big an impact when I am the only one sharing. TTW had a national roll out on March 9t...

Bookmarked Junior Edition or BJE is a later edition to the stable of book groups at Patrick Taylor. This group needed to be created once the school grew to include three lunch periods rather than two. Though the group meets weekly, there are usually only about four or five regulars. That is fine by me, but when I work hard to schedule a visit with an author, I want to see all the members attend. Yesterday, we had a nice turn out for author, Chelsea Sedoti .  I scheduled this event through SourceBooks. This publisher has made it easy to schedule virtual author visits. Their one requirement is that we buy some of the author's books. That is not an issue because I want the students to have an opportunity to read a book by a visiting author whether the visit is virtual or face to face. For some reason this year, I had a hard time connecting with the sales department at SourceBooks. I planned this event back in September, and I wanted to order the books early. It wasn...

This has been a hard school year for me. Besides the day to day of my job as school librarian, I have been trying to empty my mother's house since June that she lived in for 62 years. This has taken a lot out of me emotionally, and the act of sale is mid-January, so there is not much time left to finish it all. Also, the little aches and pains of aging are starting to catch up with me. I really need the two weeks off from school that starts on Saturday.  As I was cleaning around my desk and filing some papers away today, I found this letter in the way back of my file cabinet. I don't remember the student or the year that she wrote this to me, but, boy, it has it put a smile on my face. Sometimes I forget the little things that I do have a huge impact on the students that I see everyday. To me this just helps reinforce that librarians do make a difference.  If you click on the image of the letter, you can enlarge it to read I am going to take some time for...

It is always a great day when I have students visit with an author. I first met Ashley Elston at a state conference. Like me, she is from Louisiana. Her presentation to the roomful of librarians was hilarious, and I thought that my students would really enjoy talking to her. After the conference, we connected on Twitter, and I found out that she was happy to schedule a virtual visit with us. We agreed on a Monday in December during one of our regularly scheduled Bookmarked meetings. If I can schedule the author when the group is used to being in the library at that time, it is easier for the students to remember. Ashley came to writing after she had her children. She explained that being a wedding photographer did not mesh well with being a mom with young children. She really did not know what she was getting into but just began writing. She has four published books, and a new one to be published in the fall of 2019. For this visit, we concentrated on talking about her two...

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...