Battle of the Books!

Today I had my first Battle of the Books meeting. The turn out from lunch was really small, only 5 students per lunch. That was a bit disheartening. I had made up title\author mix up sheets, some bookmarks with the books all on them and a sign up sheet. So, we'll see how it goes. Several students checked out the books though! So I'm hoping they will get even more excited about it all! Maybe get friends involved! That would be nice. I am off for the evening, might add later, might not! Mr. M asked for a document camera for room 114 so I knew I had one, but didn't have time to do it, so I put in a tech ring and our amazing techs came and took it over to the room and got it all up and running! Yeah for delegating!

Much Easier!

I thought yesterday would tap me out! And I even did go to bed early, but today was much easier! I had to find the 'Order in the Library' game and it wouldn't come up on Google Chrome, but I finally just went to Internet Explorer and it came up on there! Thank goodness! A few of my aides just whipped right through all eleven levels, so that made me hopeful that I may have some of them that can do non-fiction! I managed to get one coding book covered for a student who had asked for it and when he came in at lunch was happy I had finally gotten it done. Got in 14 new country books from Scholastic with my Scholastic money from the last book fair. One wasn't glued properly, so I asked for a new one and they are sending a new one! That was good. Got them all stamped, repackaged and off to LMSS for processing. Put a couple of new books on my Titlewave order that came from an email from LibraryConLive I attended. Checked in science books from Mr. R today while my aide that period 'Ordered' the library. Put away some math books in the back. Oriented the aides that were not there yesterday. Printed up a nice document on the 4 S's - Sorting, Shelving, Shifting and Shelf Reading. We'll see how it goes! Had both lunches in today. Ms. M came in with her class and had them working on their books with the white boards and crafting a graphic representation of their books! It was so cool! One group was in the main library, and the other was in the old computer lab. Loving the use of the space and watching the students getting their literary game on!! Will have the PE students in starting at the end of March to do a health study in the library, and that will be awesome! They are just trying to figure out how to make the space work for 50 students at a time! I'm sure they will come up with something! A very good day and I don't think I need to go to bed early today, thank goodness!

Second Semester

Today we began a new semester and I have 12 new aides! Thank goodness not all of them showed up! I also have two students in, one using the library as a study hall, the other on a PE substitute because he's on crutches from this weekend. Poor thing. So, I spent the day working with the new aides, getting them their expectations, their shelving assignments and we also had six classes of math books to check out and two book talks with checking in and out to do. So I was very busy. I didn't get to my breaks until after school was over for the day. Tomorrow should be easier! Ms. K wanted a talk on sports books - heavens! I never read those, but I could walk around the library and show the students some of the authors that do sports and talk about that! Not too shabby! Tomorrow should be a bit better, as we crank into it. Got some good resources from two of the other LMA's. One on shelving, another on responsibly using the check out computers. So I will print those up probably tomorrow. Tired, so just went home after work. Goodnight!

Semester End

Gave all my aides an extra treat today from my 'little stuffs' boxes. Just stuff that's been collected here at school. Also some stuff I gleaned from my mom's house. She had so much little stuffs that people had given her over the years, it seemed a nice tribute to let my aides pick one if they wanted to bring home. Got all the books put away today. So when my new aides start on Monday I can work on training them. Sent home some books. Asked for other books. Cleaned up the textbook transfers that came for specific students but I never saw them. Sent off other requested books. Started to clean up my office. Getting ready for our district Battle of the Books! We will start on Wednesday! Helped out at the wrestling match again tonight, running the time clock and scores. Went soooo late! Didn't head home until 6!

Ursula K. LeGuin

I was so sad to hear of her passing. I knew she lived just north of us up in Portland. What happens when an icon dies? There is a piece of us that aches, the stories end. I've read many of her books and will be sure they stay on my shelves. Today had some lovely bits. I gave two book talks. Trotted out the cart with all the new hardbacks on it for students to peruse. Gathered in more books for Mrs. B, sending out requests for Bud, Not Buddy. She was very excited to know if we could get those in. She found a new curriculum to go with that and was excited to see if we could find enough copies. Had to take away four cell phones during lunch today. Got in a few more book reviews for my binder. Tomorrow is the last day of the semester. Got in attendance sheets for Mrs. D for their new math books to check out 'Kercheski' style, so I had to enlarge them and get them ready to check out. Managed to get one class done, so will work on the rest tomorrow. Put away all the non-fiction I had to do and by the end of 7th had a whole half shelf again to put away! I'll do that tomorrow! Had more students down in the library today. As classes wrap up their work, some teachers sent students down who were done. I finally had to send out a notice to remind them that if they send students down, they need to come down with work. A few students were quite at loose ends and would have profited by a worksheet or two for focus! Then after school, we had the after school program come in and I looked up to see one of our older books (Jungle Book from 1968) go flying through the air. I was so angry at those students!!! I handed referrals to the fellow that runs the program and said I'd back him up. I was angry. Good thing I needed to go and work out and do yoga! Some days....some kids.

Back to 1975

I decided to clean out old files today, prompted by cleaning out my mom's files and bringing in the hanging file folders that she had that were pretty and colorful. I found a file with some old budgets in them. In 1975 we had nearly $9,000 dollars to spend on what was then important for the library. About $4,200 of that was designated for just new library books! That's more than my entire budget! Mr. G looked up a money calculator and found that in today's $$ that would be nearly $19,000 worth of books we could buy, just for Leslie. Wow. I sent that to all the other LMA's as well as Mr. G and they were all shocked! And I found that in 1980 we only had 490 students at Leslie! Then we got talking about other things. I shared that I have my aides write up a book review for every 6 week grading period and sent a picture of how that looks to them all. Then I shared my last book order list with another school who asked for it and I didn't even have to ask for help from Titlewave!! I was so proud! Got all the new hardbacks all ready to be checked out, but I've kept them in my office for the moment so that I can share them with the classes coming in for book talks tomorrow. Had a great interaction with a student today. I asked him to write his book review and he wanted to do it with his grandmother he said because she'd be really good. I showed him a very basic book report from another student, so he wrote three short sentences. So I asked him to write a sentence about the main character, and he did. Then I asked him to write a part in the book he really liked and he did! It really did turn out nicely and I really complimented him. Then on the other hand, one of my other aides never did a report last 6 weeks, so I asked her to and she hemmed and hawed. So I handed her one of our new graphic novels and told her it took me about 20 minutes to read and she could do a report on it. So she did read for awhile. Nearly every day, an aide from another class comes in and they sit and talk all the time. So soon, my aide was dancing the macarana, and had closed the book and just blew me off. I was hurt. It's not like my class is hard. She does a great job with checking in and out books. But I still felt dismissed. Only two days are left in the semester and then they'll all be gone. Had some other interesting times with students today, 6th period was a perfect storm of students when I had been thinking it would be nice and quiet! That didn't happen. A student ended up getting written up, I told another student to leave the library and go back to class (the student was not doing the work they were sent with and sat tipping back the chair from the table, talking to two other students that had come in as well, doing bird whistles...) Another student in with a one-on-one picked up book after book and then rather than setting them back the way they were, laid them down in a row...not the best combination. Then another student started blowing up balloons and drawing on them when we are not supposed to have latex balloons in the school. I asked and another teacher asked her to hand them over so we could get them disposed of and she wouldn't....Arggghhh! At least I had my new books to sooth my crazy nerves and helping out scoring and timing our wrestling match!

New Books

Yes, my precious! New booksies for our lovely shelves!! Yes, I worked on them nearly all day. Putting in the due date slips, putting in the tattle tape, writing in Lexiles that I had to look up and starting to put them out on the rack. Fiction and Non-Fiction both went out and got checked out! That made me happy! More to do tomorrow! Love my job!

Joy!!

Talked with staff on how they might be able to use this kit with their students. Then I got a request to for a book review on a book that is rated 10+ from our PA of LMSS so I picked it off the shelf and started to read. It was a quick read, pretty amazing, Girl Rising and I didn't see any trouble with keeping it. Yes, some parts were hard to read, but not overtly graphic. I think he was happy with my assessment and it only took a couple of hours to read. Just as I finished --- \0/ oh Joy!! 4 boxes of new books arrived!!! I was so happy! I got them all unpacked and inventoried and started to get them ready to go out to the school!! Happy end of the week! And I will get to play with them more on Monday!! Huzzah!!

Last Workshop

Finished up the last of the overdue notices today and got them sent out to teachers and a lot of books did come in! Hopefully more will come in tomorrow! Instructed my aides on the importance of making sure books do get checked in, I've found about 6 books these last 2 days that were on the shelf, but not checked in. Ms. B asked for about 6 titles to come in for reading groups so I spent some time today finding out where they all were (only 1 had everything she wanted at Leslie) and sent our requests for them. Some I was lucky that had whole class sets so they were able to get me what she needed from one source! She had looked at some of our old Prentice Hall books, so I started to pull them off the shelf, and most were not even in the catalogue. So I started to put those in and do a bit of repair as well. They are old, but some are all right. So I am taking those and putting together maybe two class sets of them to keep. I already surplused one that was coming out its binding! Then off to our last STEM Workshop. It was fun, though I wish I'd been there yesterday. The things they were working on were really interesting! A car with lights and siren, lit up clothing, lights that came on when water got too high. It was fun and I got to come back with $112 worth of supplies for my students to work with and curriculum to get them started! It is a whole cabinet with drawers for parts. I had to be careful with it, putting it in the front seat with a seatbelt and putting my plastic tablecloth over the drawers so they wouldn't slide out and drop parts all over on the way home! A great time! I can't wait to figure out the stuff I couldn't figure out and do some of the other lessons other groups were doing! Maker Mondays may be coming soon to Leslie!

Notices

Today I printed out notices for all our overdue books - 354 people have overdue books! That's half our student body! I was surprised at the amount of students that did not have homerooms on their slips! I thought I had most of them already, but there were quite a few! Cutting them in half (I printed two to a piece of paper) and then the computer sorted all the ones that had home rooms by home rooms! That was a nice surprise! But the stack I needed to look up and put in their home rooms was quite the stash. I spent nearly all day getting those done, in between other assorted little duties like answering emails, checking out A Monster Calls books (they had to be done a different way). Had both lunches in. Got in the CPR schedules and reminded our two teachers that they were more than welcome to come into the library and use it for the training, so hopefully they will embrace that and you know, first responders are totally OK in my part of the building! Always good to have them around! Notices will go out tomorrow. Had some personal business to take care of with my hubby, so I left at 2:30. Was hopefully going to make my workshop, but by the time we got done, it didn't make sense to go all the way up to Keizer for 20, 25 minutes of class with a commute of 45 minutes round trip. So, I didn't go. Last class will be tomorrow, so I will go for that last one. 

Everything

Just a bit of everything went on today. Pulling books for a teacher, finishing boxing up the reference discards, lots of emails, shipping out books to schools and LMSS. Calling LMSS, getting phone calls. Figuring out how to check out books to a retired teacher who is helping out but the program won't let me. Off again to the STEM Workshop which I think had to be the best part of my day. It is such a great program!

Forgotten Friday

Totally got home and forgot about posting for Friday. I had a class in working on the databases, but the students got so hung up on trying to make a password, I don't think many of them got things done! But some did, and it was great to show them all the things they could do and search out using the sidebar limiters and prompts. I did do some work on that in the morning to prepare for that. Got all my new books I had sitting on the back shelf stamped and listed and boxed up to send to LMSS for processing. Got notifications that my new books are in at LMSS so now I just have to wait for Santa to bring them down my chimney! Was glad to go straight home from work tonight! We had a student driven incident and were warned about an event that was posted on social media yesterday that may impact our school as we were leaving. That's all I can remember at this time! 

Reviews, Questions and Locks

Today we had our official lock down drill. I had my aides in with another student and another teacher in the library. We all went into the safe room and they were all actually quiet enough I could hear our principal saying that the drill was over! Huzzah! I finished all the questions for the battle and sent those out and then I had not yet put in the reviews from my aides from the last grading period so I did that as well today. Worked on the Explora site so I can show Ms. M's class tomorrow. Had both lunches in and then took off about 2:45 to head back up to Whiteaker for our STEM Maker workshop. I made a cool circuit with a noise. And a light that went on. I hope we get a good set of things for our Leslie students to use when this is all done next week!

8th Grade Gone

Our 8th Graders were all on a field trip this morning, so the halls were so nice and uncrowded! It was a treat! On the other hand, some of my aides were gone! That made some things a bit more interesting! Had two book talks today which I loved! Did a lot of reading out of the books! Some of them got checked out! Always a plus in my eyes! Had both lunches in and worked on the content question spreadsheet today. The library was pretty quiet for the rest of the day, and I talked with a teacher about showing her students how to use the amazing resources we have online so she wants me to do a training for her students on Friday we decided. Should be fun! Then I headed up to Whiteaker again for my Maker space workshop! It is a great class. 

Reset

I got all my Battle of Books icons up today and changed out the pony wall for books. I think my favorite icon is The Turning of the Tide, love the little Saga boat I made with its book cover sail! Put away books today. Had Mr. C's computer classes in to play a game! It was kind of like an RP game, but all about coding, so the students had a great time with that! I decided to start to delete old trashed emails. Somehow I had over 3,000 trashed emails, so it was time to permanently delete! I got to about 1,400 of them. Looking up names, or typical titles got rid of a ton! Some names were from people who have not been at Leslie for a couple of years, so time to go! Or from book companies advertising their lines of books, time to go! It was cleansing! Then off early today to head up to Whiteaker for the STEM maker kits workshop! I was selected to attend out of a ton of people along with about 15 other people and it was so much fun! We had a curriculum to follow and it was so much fun! I didn't want to stop! We have five more meetings, two still this week then three next week. It was great! Our kids will love it!

Bulletin Board

Yes, I decided to work on our Battle of the Books bulletin board today making up something for each book and then printing up book covers for each of the ten we will be doing. Finished up the spreadsheet I was working on. Did a few other things as well though my mind is choosing not to remember them right now! Did have both lunches in, sent off some books to other schools. Put away all my books I needed to. A really nice day though there was still sorrow in round and about today.

Team

We had a great team in the library today to address the support our students needed. So the library was very shut down for our usual work. I spent a lot of time on the computer today working on some books - anything by Rick Riordan and a spreadsheet of questions for Battle of the Books. There were a lot of students in all day. So sad, our student did pass away.

Reminders

Today was actually a fair day despite the emotional tugs and reminders that life is so precious. One of the first things I did today was set the new due date stamp and realized that in two weeks it would be my mom's birthday, the first one without her. That was a somber thought, but a good one for how much I miss her and how she impacted my life. The rest of the day I worked on putting all my books away - there's a lot because everything from last year is now due! I also worked on putting up new books on the non-fiction shelves and straightening up those sections. Pulled books for a teacher on a huge variety of different books, got them checked out to her. Worked on a Scholastic order for new books that I'll use to continue to update our other country books. One student asked for a book on Columbia (the country, not our river!) and we had none! That's right, none! So I put one on my order. Books on women's education around the world, climate change, black holes, endangered animals, how to eat in space...some interesting topics! I had two book talks to do on the Lexile levels, so I did a presentation on MARC records and told them about the mother of MARC,  Henriette Avram, and showed them a MARC record from our library and where they have to put in a Lexile number which our LMSS staff will have to input. Our old program had the Lexiles downloaded automatically, but our new program they decided was too expensive to do that. (Insert rolling eye smiley here...) Then I showed the students how to look up their lexiles in our system. I got to spend time walking around, helping them find the lexiles of the books they found on the shelves that didn't have one on them or on the record. Then we had an urgent email sent for a staff meeting right after school. One of our students is clinging to life, and probably won't make it. So sad, so young. I managed to keep from crying, but not by much. The library will be a place tomorrow for the crisis team. I went into our back room that I made so nice last year and really straightened it up for an extra private place for students to be able to talk with counselors. Sent out an email that the library would be closed tomorrow except for students needing a place to talk to the team. Did one lamination. Then I came home to learn that my cousin here in town passed away, a sudden heart attack they think. He was only 52. Too many reminders today that life is so precious. We need to treat each moment, each person for the truly wonderful gifts they are to this world.

Scared to Let it Out

Got all our new books ready to be checked out today. All tagged in their book notes, and I'm so excited except for one book. I don't want to let it go out into the world! I'm afraid it will never come back! It's the new Star Wars Coding Projects by John Woodcock and DK publishing. It is so cool! I let Mr. C, our computer science teacher poke around in it for a couple of days and he gave it back today. So that means, yes, I have to send it out into the wide world (insert crying smiley here...). I'm thinking that if I just put it on the computer shelf, no one will notice! Other news! One of our 5th grade boys that comes over for 1st period, spends 2nd period waiting for his ride in the library and Mr. M brought in a Chromebook for us to have available for him to use his time here more effectively. He was very happy when he came in and saw that yes, we had the computer here for him on my office back counter. I also had a student today that wanted to check out an audiobook and we got him all set up, then I noticed he already had one checked out. I was sad to let him know that he could only have one audiobook at a time and as soon as he brought that one in (The Lightning Thief) he could get a new one. The library was a hugely busy place today with four classes in to check in/out books and two of those were book talks, and four other classes in the old computer lab working on group country projects. So much going on, kids excited about their books, kids getting excited about different countries. Lots of books to put away and things to straighten up, but that's what the library is all about! A very good day!

We’re Back!

It was a very nice break and finally rousing to the call of the alarm clock, it was back to work today! And best news of the new year...New Books arrived!! My first order from PermaBound was delivered this morning, so I was super excited!! This order was for replacing books that are literally falling apart or just disappeared. I still had to Tattle Strip them, put in a Due Date slip, get their Lexile and then I put a notice on them that said they were special books - from Perma, they cost more than a paperback or hardcover and I can call and get a replacement if they are damaged. If they aren’t returned, I have to buy a new one. So we’ll see how that works! I’m also going to put a notice on each book for check out that the aides have to read to the student checking out! Again, we’ll see how that goes! Had three classes in today checking out. Getting lots of books in because they are all due! A busy great day to be back in the library! Happy New Year!