Monday, October 29, 2012

Karma...

Well, Sandy came and went...  She (or He?) decided just to view the NC Coast from a distance and save her (or his?) gusto for New England.  We had some wind and rain, but nothing significant.  It wasn't any worse than a regular rainy weekend in my neck of the woods.

My media center, however, had a rough start today.  I blame Traci from the classroom underneath it, though.  You know what they say about Karma...  

On Friday, Traci came up and helped us cover the stacks.  She made the point of saying we were wasting our time.  Terry, my media assistant, told her flat-out if we cover the stacks, nothing happens.  If we don't cover the stacks, the ceiling falls in and we lose books.  We have the holes in the ceiling in 3 or 4 places to prove our theory.  Traci informed us she, however, didn't need to bother covering things in her room because, "The only way my room will get wet is if the library floods out!"  

Yeah, good thinking, Traci.

The roof didn't leak.  The stacks were dry and secure when we came in this morning.  I walked the whole library inspecting the ceiling all the way around.  Traci said, "See, told you it was a waste of time."

About 30 minutes later, a pipe burst.  It flooded the library and ran through the floors down into Traci's room.  She's lucky I had the good sense to run downstairs to check and move her computers out of the way cuz that's EXACTLY where the water was dripping.  It eventually spread to drip on her kids at their desks, too, but we eventually got to the pipe and could cut the water off and start working at drying things out.  Nasty pink water, too...  The floors were soaked in the workroom and the carpet on either side of it at the doors.  The copiers were standing in inches of water...  It seeped through the into the video room and flooded that out, and it seeped under the cabinets, through the walls, under my Fiction stacks and out into the carpet of the Fiction area by my seating out there.  It was lovely.  Blah.

It took a while for the custodians to bring up a shop vac and fans, but things were drying out by the time I left.  I'm sure it'll be moldy and yucky soon, though.  My poor library!

I blame Traci.  LOL, even if you THINK it, you should NEVER EVER say it out loud or it happens.  Kinda like car trouble -- it only happens if you forget to grab your cell phone off the charger before you left...  Oooh, and you only get stuck behind a school bus when you're running late...  All those wonderful things.  :)

Tomorrow's election day -- the kids in school are coming up to vote for President.  Let's see how that goes. :)   Hopefully everything will be dry and cooperative!

Friday, October 26, 2012

Here comes Sandy

We spent the last part of the day preparing for the storm.  We're supposed to have 40 mph winds and 5 inches of rain -- not a big deal normally, but our ceiling leaks something awful.


This lovely hole is from just a typical rainy day -- and this wasn't even a spot we knew to be leaking.  That lovely little leak took an entire stack of books with it -- it collapsed over my 000-300 stacks, taking out everything on one stack, and the right side of the stack beside it.  So now we cover for everything.  Here's my lovely assistant coming through with some more plastic...


HOPEFULLY we won't have any damage, but we covered all the stacks, the SmartBoard, the circulation desk, and all the computers just to be on the safe side. 

I'm off to work -- I'm late!  Have a happy and safe Friday night!

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Hoorays and Hurricanes

There is a hurricane hitting this weekend, and I had no idea until about 3:30 today.  Where have I been, living in a bubble?  Although, with a sigh of relief, I see that weather.com says it's going to hit New England, not here.  SO...  probably just a windy, rainy Saturday -- no big deal.  I'll be at work anyway -- can't even enjoy it.

It's been a very busy week for me, actually, so I'm not entirely surprised I missed the big news.  I teach reading and acceleration all morning, followed by back-to-back (and sometimes overlapping!) classes all day, and character education at the end of the day.  I had a meeting after school Tuesday that kept me there till after 5.  In the evenings, after I cook dinner, feed the dogs, clean the house, run errands, I've been working on lesson plans, playing on Twitter, catching up on the blogs I follow, and trying to finish reading Under the Dome by Stephen King.  I've only got about 60 more pages to go!  I'm enjoying it, but I've just taken forever to get through it and I'm anxious to move on to something else.

But, tomorrow's Friday, so all is well.

I actually don't know why I like Fridays so much.  It must just be force of habit or something...  Fridays are crazy-busy for me -- I've got back-to-back classes all day, no assistant most of the day, and when I'm done with that, I pick up my daughter from school, head home to throw on a pair of jeans, and head back out the door to my 2nd job where I work the 5-10 shift.  By the time I get home it's nearly 11 and I'm wiped out.  I need to just get cleaned up, crawl into bed, and get some sleep so I can get up in the morning and get back to work...

Yep, there definitely must be something wrong with me.  I love them regardless.  :)

I did manage to finish a prezi last night.  I've messed with it a few times, but hadn't actually ever FINISHED making anything I've started.  We are required to teach cybersafety lessons in my county in accordance with a grant we receive.  I took the plan from one of the required lessons and just put it in a prezi just to help guide the discussion.



I'm working on one for my 2-3 classes now, but my laptop crashed while I was working on it after school today, so I gave up for now.

Alrighty...  I guess I should call it a night.  I've still got a lot to do before I can crawl into bed to hopefully finish my book tonight!

Monday, October 22, 2012

I LOVE Getting Free Stuff!

Don't you?  I mean...  who doesn't, right?

I just got a FREE Shelf on the Elf and Storybook.  How cool is that?  Want one?  They're giving one to the first 5,000 teachers who sign up.  You kinda have to jump through hoops with this, but it only takes a few minutes in the end...

Go online to http://www.elfontheshelf.com and sign up.  It's up in the top right corner.  You'll have to verify your email address and create a profile.  Once you've done that, go to http://www.elfontheshelfteachers.com and sign up again.  They'll ask you to pick your grade level (K-1, 2-3, or 4-5).  This will take you to another screen with a "Join This Group" button off to the right near the top.  Once you click that, you join the group to access the teacher resources, and if you're among the first 5,000 there will be a screen for you to fill out your name, mailing address, etc. for them to send you your free Elf and Storybook.

Bonus:  There are cute games, activities, crafts, etc. on the website to keep in mind as you're doing your holiday-time lesson planning.

In addition to that...  I was given a link for free glow fish from Carolina Biologicals today.  The kids LOVE the aquarium I have in the media center, and are always eager to see the fish when they come up.  They'll love these glow fish when they come in.

For those of you who are interested in free Glow Fish, or one of the other pet-grants available (we're not allowed to have "pets" at school -- only fish), here is the link to the website:  http://www.petsintheclassroom.org

Enjoy your freebies!  

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

No Walls

My friend, Jonathan, came in last week (with only 1-1/2 days' notice) to teach what turned out to be the entire 3rd grade about turtles.  Originally it was one teacher, and then she asked if he'd mind doing a 2nd class, and by the time he left he'd done them all.  He's so sweet!  And the kids had a great time.  Here's a pic of him with the original class.


I love him to death, but the man is chronically late.  We work together at my 2nd job and he's forever getting in trouble for being late to work.  Mrs. T wanted him there at 1:20, ready to begin, so I told him to be there at 1.  He said he'd be there at 12:30.  He got there at 12:45.  Worked for me!

So anyway, the whole point of all of this was that I brought him up to the library to get his stuff ready before going on to the classroom.  The class was in math lab, and he had pics on his phone he needed to pull off and move to a flash drive.  He'd never been in my school before and even he, an "outsider" if you will, was able to immediately recognize our layout as a "bad idea."

My school was built in the 70's using the open classroom concept.  We have no walls.  It makes the school architecturally interesting, but it's very noisy.  All the time.  

In the last 10 years "temporary walls" were put up to divide the classrooms up.  These are moveable, thin, and don't reach all the way from the floor to the ceiling, nor all the way from one end to the other.  It gives us a place to put our posters and things on the walls, but does very little for keeping the peace.  

My library, however, stands as the crowning jewel above it all.  The school is round, the library is raised -- they go up any of the 5 staircases or the ramp to come in to the library.  There are 3 classes underneath us, as well, that they go down the stairs from the main level of the school to reach.  In addition, we have 6 lofts that surround the library.  None of which have walls, so everything is open to us, and we are privy to all the sounds, noise, and foot traffic.

Here's an animoto tour I put together a few years ago for a project in one of my MLS classes.  This is my pre-SmartBoard days, so the layout is a little different now, but you'll get the idea...


So, at any rate...  I'm not sure what they were thinking when they came up with this "open classroom" concept.  It makes me wonder if it was someone who knew nothing about education.  Or were they thinking about the one-room school houses where everyone learned together?  We moved on from that for a reason, ya know...

We still have some of the architect's concept portraits at the school.  They're in a closet in the artroom.  They show small groups of 2-3 kids together in areas, well away from other kids, working cooperatively on things.  It would be great if we only had maybe 100 kids, all at about the same grade level.  Unfortunately we've got 30-some classes ranging from Pre-K through 4th.  

I went into a 4th grade class the other day while the teacher was trying to teach math.  The kids were humming along with the kinders in the next room who were essentially drowning her out singing their "Days of the Week" song (to the tune of the Adams Family, which is all I ever think of when I hear them).  

Well, now you have a better idea of where I "live" during the school day.  I need to get going before I'm late for work.  :)

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Fighting Frustration

I'm back!  I've been blogging back on my Wordpress page...  I've been going back and forth trying to decide which platform I prefer.  I'm currently starting to I think I might like this one better.  Honestly, I liked that I could use Wordpress at school without logging out of my school Google accounts, not that I'm supposed to do that...  But I follow blogs with my work gmail account, and then logging into my personal one to do anything with this logs me out of that.  In the end, I'm not supposed to be accessing this at work anyway, so it really shouldn't matter.  Other than I couldn't share a blog post or anything on the spur of the moment without trading off logins.

On the downside of Wordpress...  I wasn't able to share things.  It gave me a hard time with photos and videos.  Blogger's acting more user-friendly for me.  :)

So anyway...  Here I go again.  I guess I'll use this blog for a little while and decide which I ultimately prefer. I do like that more teachers tend to be on this one.