Ready for Programming to Begin...

Tomorrow is it.  October 1st.  The day all school-wide programs start at my school.  I've been dreading this since Day 1.

I don't know what it's like in other school libraries.  Quite honestly, when I was a classroom teacher, I didn't usually stay with my class when they went to the library.  When I taught at Coats, I stayed a few times.   It was story-time and she used puppets.  Usually while she was working with the kids, I was in the professional loft gathering resources though.  I just watched as I did what I needed to do.  When I taught at W.T. Brown, classes didn't go to the library -- they only did checkout and it was flex so it wasn't a "bring your class" thing -- just a send the kids in pairs when/if they asked.  When I taught at Wayne Avenue, we had a fixed schedule and we dropped them off.  She did a worksheet-based lesson with them, then checkout.  And then at North Drive...  my assistant usually took them and dropped them off.  I think it, again, was just a story and/or a checkout.

Now that I'm the media coordinator, I have an entirely flex schedule...  With a few exceptions.  I teach reading to 2nd graders from 8:35-9:05 in the mornings, and in the afternoons I teach character education lessons to kindergarten.  We lost an assistant, and that same class lost a scheduled computer lab time, so to accommodate, I keep that class in my library's computer lab one day a week for 30 minutes or so, allowing that teacher the opportunity to attend her grade-level planning meeting.  And I have 12 mentees that I work with.  

I don't mind doing any of this stuff.  I love working with the kids.  It just makes it hard for teachers to schedule time to come.  My blocks of time that are carved out seem to be the times they want the most.  

And what about collaboration?  My teachers want to use the library as a drop-zone.  Ditch the kids and run!  I'll get a teacher who wants me to work on a skill from time to time, but it'll be, "What are you doing with my class today, cuz it would be great if you could give them a lesson on nuclear fission for me -- I haven't had a chance to touch on science this week.  Just read them a good informational book and we'll call it done."  Really?  Sorry, Hon.  If you want to plan something, I need notice.  If you didn't give me a request when you signed up a week or two ago, then you're getting the library skill or thematic story I planned for them, and a checkout.  And if you want them doing a PROJECT, you need to plan it WITH me.  It's YOUR job to teach them this stuff.  It's my job to kick it up a notch and make it interesting.

I'm excited about the mentees though.  I know all 12 of the kids.  A couple of them ride my last nerve...  But they're all sweet (when they wanna be), and mean well (most of the time, at least).  A few are actually readers who'll be glad about spending time every week with me.  Most won't.  So, I want to do something interesting with them.  I want to teach them how to do things with the computers.  I want to teach them to blog.  I want to teach them to use animoto and photostory.  I can teach them to use the digital cameras and flip video cameras.  There are lots of things we can do to make their learning fun, and get them excited about coming to the library.  I'll give them the chance to "show off" what they've done to their classmates when their classes come.  The kids love book trailers -- they'll be so excited to make them for books they've read and show them off to their friends.  :)

So anyway...  it all starts tomorrow.  I've got 2 weeks' of reading lesson plans done and the materials gathered.  I've got my first two weeks' worth of character ed lessons lined up too.  Now to just keep up the pace for the rest of the year...  Only a hundred and how many days left till summer vacation?

Books I Grew Up With

This is a trending topic on Twitter, but I’m hesitant to participate.  When I think back on my childhood I know I read.  A lot, in fact!  But what did I read? I remember Corduroy and Paddington from when I was young.  More importantly, I remember that my mom, older sister, and younger brother would gather together at night to read bedtime stories together.

As I got older I read the classics like Black Beauty, Tom Sawyer, and A Tale of Two Cities.  I read these at home (books I owned), not at school.

I don’t remember reading much in middle school either…. Flowers for Algernon, Of Mice and Men, and The Diary of Anne Frank were all assigned in my 8th grade English class.  On my own I read a lot of King and Koontz.

By high school I read very little beyond what was assigned.  Unless you count magazines…  I wasn’t a big fan of most of what was assigned.  Catch 22 and 1984 were tolerable.  I despised most of the other books.  Through self-selection, I developed an appreciation for Faulkner, however.  I read The Sound and the Fury in both the 10th and 12th grades for self-selection assignments.  I mimicked his style for a writing assignment in a college writing course.  How can you not like reading about families way more dysfunctional than your own?

But the book I grew up with?  The one that made the biggest impact?  The one I loved the most?  The one that somehow shaped me into the reader I am today?  I really can’t say.

If forced, I’d probably have to say the big treasury of stories we read from at night.  My time with my mom, sister, and brother.  More for the experience than the stories themselves.  I always loved those times and cherished spending that same quality time with my own children as they were growing up, no matter what it was that we read.

Book Trailers

I don't know about you, but I like love book trailers.  It's so irritating that so many sites are blocked at school -- I can't find them during the day when I'm at work!  So, I come home, and find them on youtube.  Then I save them so I can share them with my students.  There are great sites for this that make it so easy.  Zamzar is the one our county used to recommend.  I don't think our tech person offered an explanation, she just told us that another site was somehow "better."  Unfortunately, I can't remember which they said for us to use.  Not that it matters, since I'm doing it at home on my personal computer...  But at any rate, there are several sites available for this.  Today I'm using KeepVid.

Do you make book trailers?  I've made trailers myself for about half the books on my Battle of the Books list.  Due to a lack of time (and the fact that I still haven't even had a chance to READ all of the books) I'm using some that others have created.

I want to teach my team members to make trailers this year, too.  And to do book talks.  I've also got a group of 12 second graders that I'll be mentoring.  Most of them are boys who aren't particularly interested in reading, so I'm hoping that teaching them to do "cool" stuff with what they read will make it better for them.  I've already set up a blog for them to use to write about books.  I have a schooltube channel, and an animoto account.  I need to add photostory to the computers they'll be using, as well, if I'm going to try that. I think they'll like narrating their own book trailers, as opposed to just typing words like they'll have to do with animoto.

Well, back to my search...