VHS

Today I really started in on getting our VHS tapes out of here. I created a spreadsheet and began listing all the VHS resources we have, putting in call number, title with any other pertinent information, copyright date, the date we catalogued it and the last time it was checked out. Most of them so far were back from the 90's. I worked with my fiction aides today and spent time with all four of them on their shelves, so they could see how I work the shelves, my expectations and talk to them about shelving etiquett. My knees are a bit sore tonight! Put up a new display for Women's Month. Recreated the first week of Black History Month so I could have a picture for Mr. T. (I had deleted the original thinking I had saved it....). A very busy day! 

Grant Finished

I finished up the grant for more library books today. It is due tomorrow, so I'm glad I'm through with it. Not sure I'll get anything, I've never done a grant before, so we'll see how that turns out! Had to take some time off today for a medical appointment, so I went in and got everything up and running from being off all weekend. One of the check out desk computers was not having anything to do with running, just kept looping with an automatic repair cycle. So I sent in a tech ring on that. Signed up for a webinar for the newest graphic novels. So,  short day, but getting that grant turned in made it all worthwhile!

Oracle

Mr. Trisef who wrote the Oracle Series was in for three periods today as a treat for the AVID students. So the library was pretty well closed for half the day. We got all books put away today, my favorite thing to do on a Friday! The cart was empty when I left today! I spent the morning changing the laminating film and doing the book covers for Mrs. K and then did all the folders for Mrs. C. One hundred of them! Then I got ready for our speaker, getting out the cart with the projector and the speakers for him. He did a great job with our students and you could see they really enjoyed it. I let my aides sit in on his talks and they were really excited to get that chance. I bought the 5th book in his series since I had 1-4 already. I just hope I get reimbursed! If not, it's a worthy donation! Worked more on the diversity books list. Glad we did not have snow overnight and another great day in the library!

Persuasive Diversion

Today I worked more on the diversity list, but also pulled books for the Persuasive Book Talk I needed to do 1st period. I pulled all of our 'You Wouldn't Want to Be....' books and then talked on Cryptid Tales, George vs. George and Middle School - the Worst Years of My Life to the students. Laminated after school until I ran out of film, I will finish up tomorrow! I did Mr. G's and Mrs. F and didn't even notice Mrs. K had book covers out! They were not in the box is my only excuse!

Hard to Find

Put up my last display for Black History month. Loved finding more books than I thought I had. Worked more on the Diversity books for the grant and boy, they are really hard to find :( I came up with about 20 more books, but that was really digging. I had to look at my lists, then go to the one from LMSS, then check libraries and Baker and Taylor. It was long, but my list looks good. Had to give two book talks today, had another class in to check in/out. I love that I have enough aides I can do this. Sent out three sets of books to other schools, and already have another book to be sent out tomorrow. Talked to a teacher about our grant for books for the school. Now I just need to find some great persuasive argument books for a book talk tomorrow! It is certainly a 'list' kind of month!

Grant

Today I worked on the fact that every school can apply for a $2,000 grant for books. So I decided to focus on more Diversity books and spent a big part of my day working on lists, what I already had, what wasn't on the Diversity list in Baker and Taylor. Laminated today, worked on the file folders that Ms. C asked me to do. I did about 60 today, and will do another 50 on Thursday. Then I'll just have another set of 50 to do. Took down last week's Black History Month display and started my last one for the month. A great day. So glad I have great aides that allow me to do other things! Had a math class in today to swap books. Two book talks to do and three other classes came in to check in/out books. A busy day as well!

Lists

Seems like all I've been doing is working on lists!! So I found more Hi Lo books today and a fabulous list! So I checked that with my collection and put together a list of awesome books with their lexile numbers and sent that out to our Language Arts teachers today. I didn't have any aides 1st period today again, but not much was going on. Had three classes in today to check out math books, and two really quick Hi Lo book talks for a teacher who came in really late. Finished up all the new books, strips and Date Due slips, so those are now out of my office! Listened to JLG's diversity video before I left today. Three day weekend!

Hi Lo

Had a quiet morning and got all ready for our day. Had two classes in to check in/out. Two classes of math students in to check in/out. Copier issues! New toner, a rack in the 4th drawer that wouldn't lay down right. Got them both taken care of. Didn't have any aides 1st period! Oh my! So I took care of a class then our LMAL (Library Media Assistant Lead) came by to see my school! I had a great time showing her all my stuff and she took pictures. She stayed about 45/60 minutes and we got busy so she took off. Spent time today getting together a Hi Lo list for a couple of classes coming in tomorrow. Low Lexile, High interest is what those books are called. So I used the list I got from our PA then went on the internet to find other books that other people had ranked. Had my aides start to pull those, and I finished them up. Did some laminating today. Had my OBOB kids in. Glad today is over! But still, a great day in the library!

Meeting Push

I thought our principal was hosting a meeting for other principals today so I went to great effort to clean up the library. Checking all the shelves, putting up great books, finding places where my aides had misshelved and fixed that, made sure the racks were all pretty. Then I found out that it was for a meeting for one of our after school programs to meet with some people who might help fund a project. So, it was all for the good anyways! Covered a lot of books today. Had a sub in for a teacher and realized that I hadn't told the teacher about the meeting today so went to the sub and explained what was going on. What a great punter she was! She contacted the teacher that runs our computer classes and the one period we had an issue with, he only had prep, so she got to take her class in there. Most excellent! Glad it worked out! Covered more books today and nearly got them all done! Just three left and all will be well! Made another page for our book binder to take out my review and put in an aide's review instead. I had come in at 6:45 so I could leave at 3:45 for a doctor appointment, so I'm tired! Very busy day tomorrow! Goodnight!

No More Blind Dates

With books that is! Valentine's Day is now over! Tomorrow what's left will get unwrapped and we'll just do our regular books. My aides found a few more books in their missing/overdue sheets I had done yesterday. I also added pages to our book review binder, about 12 new books in there now. Then, it's getting so big, I decided I really needed to make a list so I can see easier than going through the whole book what I've read and what I haven't. And what my aides have done! I have one page I need to redo because an aide did a review on the same book, so I will take mine out and leave hers. We have a ton of old magazine resources in the library workroom, so today I took some and withdrew them and our IC was so excited. She sorted them out and took them to teachers that use the curriculum they touch on. So much better than them sitting in my workroom gathering dust!! I am so excited!! My PA sent us an email about a Diversity book list they are starting to put together, so I looked it up, and out of 102 books, I already have 36 of them! That made me feel pretty good! Then off to score the wrestling match after school. We finished up just after 6pm. Ready for some great soup and doing a bit of quilting.

Really, this was Monday the 13th

Had a great time today putting up week three of our Black History Month. Just had a lazy evening relaxing with my hubby and forgot about this! Spent most of Monday working on the missing and overdue books list. Since what I print has names, addresses and phone numbers on it, I decided to just copy down book author name, book title and the last set of barcode numbers to give to my aides for Tuesday. It worked really well, but took nearly all day. It was quiet and we were nearly done with our 'Blind Dates with Books!' I'm sure I did a few other things, but I can't remember. Most of the day was spent going through those 244 slips! 

Calculated

I did not get any books covered today - because it was craziness in the library! I came in and sent out an email to get all the Homer P. Figg's books in and then I remembered that we were having a class come in to pick up the the new Core Connections V. 2 books and graphing calculators, so I decided to just check a few calculators to make sure they were good to go and NO!!! They were not!! Most didn't even have batteries in them! I quickly began to push batteries (they take 4 AAA's each) and then had to test them to make sure they actually worked! Luckily I had just ordered new batteries and had some, and the office had enough to make it work! Thank goodness! Some students had a calculator already and that helped as well! So a student comes in right before the class to get a book. She's standing at the counter just talking with my aide as the whole class comes in and they are just talking! Not checking out her book!! The other aide did something to her computer and it went down so I had to restart it and then relog into our textbook program (which I had already up and running on both computers when I started this morning!) I was very frustrated!! The whole morning just turned upside down in a matter of moments. The library book student ended up just leaving (but we put her name on the book and have it on the hold shelf) and got all the math students checked out. Then I spent the next period getting more calculators ready for the 3rd period group. Then I decided to go ahead and check all of our T73's (a lot) and T83's (not so much). Making sure they turn on, then removing their batteries. We had quite a few exploded batteries. I marked the ones that were well and truly dead with sharpie on their screens 'DEAD' and withdrew their numbers. Had our groups of math students in still working on projects today. They were quieter than yesterday thank goodness! Three classes in the computer lab, lots of other students in and out. Some for projects (science) some for writing. There was a moment in time where I walked out and no one was in the library but a teacher and I, and I had to take a great big breath of the calmness wafting through! A very productive day even if it wasn't on my plan for the day!

Almost Covered

Spent most of today chugging through all the paperbacks to get them covered. It was quite the chore and I still have more to do, but I really made a dent in it today. I have dreams that I'll be done tomorrow! Slow day. Just two math classes came in to change books and my aides did them. They then wrapped books. I decided to start looking at our immigration/immigrant/migrant books and put together a better list than what the computer gives, so started a search off the web for titles. Had a couple of classes in to work on projects. Had my Battle of the Books kids in, along with some very quiet others from lunch. A productive day, but on the easier side.

Immigration and Forensics

Today I had four classes in for book talks and two were on immigration and two were on police business like forensics! Wow, that was a jump to go from one to another! I collected books then talked about issues with both of them and what our library has to offer in the way of resources. It was really fun, but when the first class checks out all the books I've pulled, sometimes it's hard to get a second set as good as the first set!! Checked out more of our 'Blind Date' books. Had some boys in the hall today that were just, defiant, but didn't really care to be mean or angry. Just didn't want to answer my questions ("where are you supposed to be?" They just shrugged) oh my. I ended up sending an email to our behavior specialists about them after following them down the hall and up the stairs. It makes me sad when I see students acting that way. Put all those brain cells to work for good!!! I had laminated some book covers for a teacher so she sent an aide down for me to teach how we put the laminated covers back on. She did a really great job of it! Really made an effort to cover and get our paperbacks ready to check out today and got a whole stack of them done. Loved having my aides with me today as those four classes checked in/out books today. All my aides love doing that the best! Only four more work days for 'Blind Date' with a book and I think my aides are tired of wrapping books, but the students really love to open a book up and see what it is. Some are 'Oh, Cool!!' Others are "Can I turn this in??" So, I tell them they need to read at least 5 pages and keep it overnight. That's the rule!! Otherwise they'd unwrap quicker than we can wrap! Off to mail Valentine's Day cards to my granddaughters!

Twosday

Saw that on an ad and liked it and I have an aide with that name, but spelled the correct way! None of my scheduled classes came in today except one! So I had my aides finish up the 8th grade math books for Ms. D and they took the cart up with the 7th grade ones. I'll have them take up the 8th grade tomorrow. I got to put together books on immigration for Ms. K and did a book talk on them that was really fun. The Arrival is one of my favorites and someone checked it out! Also got a new box of books!! My Scholastic order I just sent in last week is back already!! That is exciting! My aides also covered more books today and I got the new books ready to be checked out. Some already had holds on them, so I've put those aside! Did some laminating after school. Got to help score a wrestling match again after school, so just two more to go next week! So fun to see the students in a different venue!

Monday, Monday

It was a very busy Monday. We had in three classes from Ms. S to check in and out books. We also had in Mrs. M with her classes (two of them) for a booktalk. Since I had done my display (see picture above!) I decided to talk about our Black History Month and highlight books on slavery. They listened, but didn't check out very many of the books I picked out, but a few. Her last class 6th period wiped out my 'Blind Dates with Books' rack. I think there were only about 4 books left by the end of class! I love getting a set of books together for the booktalks! It really is fun to see what I can have fit for the class and to give them a scope of what's out there. Got math books ready for Ms. D and took them down to her so she'd have them for tomorrow. Covered books, emails, lots of normal everyday activities. I love my job!

Friday

So yeah, this was supposed to be Friday but I wasn't feeling well and well, just forgot! A nice quiet day in the library was had by all and the students loved our blind date with books! All our books got put away by the end of the day, so that was great! I did some wrapping along with my aides and got a new aide as well for second period. So I now have ten aides! Oh my! Will change my non-fiction display to the bringing in of the slaves on Monday, a kind of walk through history. Sent out some books to other schools. Our IC gave me a list of diversity books and I went through our library catalogue and we had so many more than I thought! She was super excited. We also worked to pull books by and about African Americans from the Everybody books and our myths and legends section for a teacher and came up with 40 to take up to her room on a cart! That was exciting! Biggest challenge? Remembering to take attendance! I almost got them all done today in the initial 15 minutes of class but one! I will get better, I'm sure, or at least hoping!

Super LMA

Yes, I did feel like that today! I had two classes come in to have a book talk on different themes. I found a couple of websites that did themes, then found some books where I could attach a theme to them to show the students. Then I had a ton of students coming in looking for dystopian books and after I ran through my favorite six or so titles, I decided I needed to look up lists, so I knew I had some, but needed to look up others and got together a pretty good list of the books we have on hand. Then I had my aides working on more wrapping for our 'blind dates with books' which I started after my last book talk today. I also did a book talk for the Read 180 kids and was very happy our PA had handed out a list a few months ago on our high interest, low reading level books, so that went very well. I was all over the library today and put in about 5.5 miles walking time! Love it when the kids are excited to check out books and had to laugh this afternoon as our after school students were all into picking out a 'blind date' book! Also had my Battle of the Books students in today for both lunches and that went really well.

Wrapping Up

Today I had my aides work on our 'Blind Date with a Book' by wrapping up books for students to check out. Rules are: If you pick a wrapped book, you MUST check it out and keep it overnight. I got PO's for my book orders and the orders were sent in. !!! 💘  I did a book talk and my aides did pretty good on putting away books. We'll see how it goes! Covered quite a few of my new paperbacks today. That made me happy. A new day dawns for tomorrow! What will it bring?