Finding a Focus

You know what today is?  It is supposedly the end of my third week of "vacation". Officially I have been off contract for three weeks as a school librarian, but you know how those three weeks have been filled? Each day I have done one of the following:

• presented at a workshop, 
• attended a technology conference,
• participated in planning sessions for staff development or programming for the 2014-2015 school year.

I jokingly refer to this month as my "pro-bono" month because, contrary to popular belief, teachers/librarians do not get paid for work they are involved in outside of their contract days. Somehow the ridiculous idea has been deeply embedded in those outside of education that a teacher's work stops when the students aren't there.  I have realized more than ever that is terribly, terribly incorrect. This past month, while I have participated in the conferences,planning sessions etc. I have also begun embracing the power of Twitter as a professional development tool.  The ideas that are swirling around in my head are so numerous that my head is beginning to hurt!  If you are an educator and have been reluctant to venture on to Twitter, "because who needs another place to stalk celebrities or old high school classmates?", then I respectfully ask you to reconsider.  I have used Twitter during the last month as a place solely for the purpose of professional development.  I follow leaders in my field, as well as authors and publishers, and my colleagues so I can share ideas on how to improve my effectiveness as a teacher/librarian and improve student learning.  It's amazing!  I once heard someone say "If you're the smartest person in the room, you need a bigger room!" While I don't profess to be smarter than anyone, Twitter has become for me the largest room in the world. It's sort of like attending a mini conference every day, listening to ideas, reading about the outcomes and sometimes seeing the plans in action.  It's fabulous and scary all at the same time.  There are so many wonderful ideas out there that I want to try them all, but how in the world can I do that? When will I have time to properly implement these great plans?  

I've come to the conclusion that I need to find a focus (shouldn't really be a lightening bolt moment, but there it is!), a way to zero in on some of the great ideas I've discovered in the last few weeks and months.  One of the great ideas I heard was from Dave Burgess who suggested teachers create a 5 word GPS (click on the link for his video explanation or watch the video below) for their year.  This 5 word GPS could help keep you moving in the right direction to accomplish your goals.

I LOVE the idea, but haven't managed to narrow it down to just 5 words, I'll share those as soon as I find just the right ones. What I DO have is 5 areas of focus and that's a start!

1. Arranging my library according to genres - I've completed that task, but now need to focus on how to promote that to my students.
2. I have helped create a framework for supporting my teachers with the use of iPads in the classroom - the follow through on that will be a year long task.
3. Using Twitter and Instagram to promote the library and it's resources to my students - this actually began last year, I just want to amp it up a bit this year and definitely include pieces on digital citizenship.  This can actually be combined with the genre promotion, so my focus is actually a bit more zeroed in - yea me, progress already!!
4. Creating a MakerSpace in the library - I think for the sake of my sanity, I need to limit that to a weekly session; perhaps during special "maker months".
5. Campus-wide Research Focus - looking for ways I can be in every class to instill, in both teachers and students, the idea that research isn't scary and it's actually something we all do every day - just informally.  However, we need to amp up those "formal" skills in every curriculum area.

Sooo, it looks like it will be another busy, but exciting year professionally.  I've decided to use the month of July as my month to zero in on my priorities.  I don't want to hear about ANY new ideas (please, my brain REALLY is hurting from all the exercise!!) - I just want look for people who have experimented with the ideas I have for the upcoming year.  I want to use this month as my preparation month, my build-a-plan-of-action month, my reflection month OHHH and by the way, I also want to spend this month rejuvenating myself, spending time with my family, preparing mentally for the fact I will have a daughter in high school next year (where did THAT time go?)!  One month doesn't seem long enough for the list of goals I want to accomplish by May 2015, but it's all I have left.  

So here's to the start of my real "vacation", may it be as restful as I need it to be and may it involve creating LOTS of great memories with my family.

Library Transformation -part 2

When I last posted about the genre project in the library, I was in the middle of generating reports, labeling books, and changing call numbers in our library program. I began with all the sports books, moved to mystery, horror and historical fiction. Pulling these books and moving them to a temporary location cleared out enough space on my shelves to start shifting books to make room for the new genre sections. I estimated the number of shelves each section would take and started the big shift. With each new genre I pulled, I shifted all remaining books to the ends of the fiction section of the library.  I had students help with all of the shifting and a bonus cleaning opportunity appeared! (Strange, but true, observation: I would call teachers during their study hall period asking if they had any students who would like to assist in the library each time we had major labeling or shifting to do.  80% of the helpers were the male students.  Not sure why this struck me as odd, but it did.  Maybe they just liked the ability to move around - they always managed to turn it into a race!)

Library ninjas playing the dusting game

When all reports had been run, books re-cataloged and "stickered", I ended up with about 200-300 books that were still on the shelves waiting to be designated a genre. This might have been my favorite part of the whole project. I called in one of my ELAR teachers and asked if her class would like to help in this final stage. I explained each of the genres and why a book would fit in one and not another. They had a great time deciding on the genres and I LOVED eavesdropping on this discussions. It was great to hear them discuss setting, character and plot.  The best news? They tore through those final books in one 90 minute period!

This was definitely the messiest time of the entire process, but it lasted only 2 days.  I had giant stacks of books on nine of the library tables.  I'm not going to lie - it got a little ugly and there was LOTS of shifting this time around, but my amazing library volunteer and the library ninjas helped tremendously!  Bonus was I did an obscene amount of squats that qualified for my exercise for the Summer.  I will not feel bad about foregoing any Summer exercise thanks to this project!
So all that remains is labeling the books that are being returned and creating shelf signs to designate each genre. I can already tell this will help me with some of my purchasing decisions.  I have a great visual indicating I need to purchase more books for my sports section as well as my adventure and humor sections. Stay tuned for circulation updates.

Neat and tidy, waiting for the new year!