Cleaning Up

 I spent a lot of time this morning putting away books. So many books had been checked in, but I hadn't put any back the last two days, so today was putting books back. Cleaning cobwebs and bug bodies, bits of things, who knows what on the shelving by the windows. Then I was thinking about Halloween and how students ask a lot for horror, scary, and creepy books, so I started to pull up those books to put on the shelves and started making a list off the computer program of those books so when students ask, I can pull it up. Plus I got to 'vet' the books on the list. Such as horrors of war are different from horrors of cemeteries. I did a lot of copy and paste, but still, a lot of work. Had both lunches in and ended up bringing out the other box of beads because so many students wanted to use them. We had our reading support classes come in today, three sets of them and a class from the DLC that went very nicely. At the end of the day Ms. C's class came in because her room was sweltering as again we have HVAC issues in the building. I do enjoy it when teachers come and 'teach' in the library. I get a real sense of what's going on in classes. Makes my heart happy.

142 to 417

 Tuesday - worked on the Schoolwide boxes all day since tomorrow we have our staff meeting and I can have them all ready for teachers to take. I took all the books and put them in alphabetical by title and worked on the spreadsheet and sent that out to teachers so they'd be prepared tomorrow. I ended up with 142 actual titles and 417 books! That's a lot of booty to give to teachers! I'm so excited for them! Had both lunches in. 

  Wednesday - Staff meeting and teachers loved having all the books right out there where they could pick and choose! One teacher came back later and took a box of books and later this afternoon came in to let me know how much her kids loved having new books and were so excited to have them! That made me feel good! I took my stack of Chromebooks that had been turned in with issues and got them all logged in today for tech to come and pick them up. I had 32 that need some loving care by our amazing techs. I cracked up a couple of the library folks when we were talking about getting dates for turning books from overdue to lost and we were saying we needed something out of this world. So I found a Star Date converter. Today, October 27, 2021 was Star Date 47634.44  it made our nerdy sides happy. I handed out Zombi kits to our kids today. I thought they could work on it during lunch, but there were no needles for them to sew them together! So I gave it to them to take home. Chromebook issues all day - most common remark was 'I left mine at home!' Lots going on!

8 Hours

 Who knew? I was cut down to 7.5 hours back under our old principal, and now I find that I am supposed to be working 8 hours a day. No one ever let me know and I don't know how long ago that happened. Just last month? Oh well! Today was activity day so I wore my Bocce Ball shirt and brought in a Bocce ball.  Lots of Chromebook issues today as usual. Signed a teacher up for library time. Went through a ton of emails from last week. Totally forgot to get drug books for Ms. S! Must do tomorrow! Got in my Scholastic book I ordered. Talked with my new Scholastic rep. Checked in a lot of books and put a lot away. Saved some for my aides. Had both lunches in. Worked a tiny bit on the Schoolwide book sorting. A busy day, lots of little pieces and then scoring Volleyball! We won, but just by two points! It was two games to two games and the 5th game we won 25 to 23. Soooo close and some amazing plays on both sides. A dark rainy drive home.

Second Down

 Well, mostly. I do have a Teams meeting tomorrow for about an hour, but then I'm off until Monday! Huzzah! Today I worked on seeing if I really could pack up withdrawn books and put the boxes on top of the Chromecarts and I think it'll work. I finished packing up the Junior Great Books and I thought I had done all the Language Networks, but I guess not. There were a few down below the JGB's. I found that paper boxes are perfect to hold the science books as well. I took the Schoolwide books I wanted to keep (with permission! She said that anything to get the books into the hands of students was good!) so I prepped those to send into LMSS for processing. That took awhile. As did moving Chromecarts around to get to books and to get them in places I could get boxes on top of them. Chromebook stuffs again today. Both lunches in. Had classes come in the last half of the day just to finish up work. Did check in and out books today as well! Glad to head home and it'll still be light when I get there!

One Down, One to Go

 We only have two days of school this week. Which is kind of cool! I wish all weeks were just two days of work! I finished up the Schoolwide boxes today. Started to alphabetize the books on the spreadsheet and thought that might be something someone else could do during conferences. So I stopped. Had both lunches in. Chromebook stuff. Thought about how I might be able to start withdrawing the science books and box them up and put the boxes on top of all the Chromebook carts, I know I can get at least 2 boxes on each cart, so we'll give that a shot! Then off to volleyball and we won all five games! A fantastic end to the day!

Pallets and Schoolwide

 Thursday it was raining! I had to wait for it to stop, then waited for lunches to be over and for the pallets to dry out a little bit. Then I started to load them up. 70 boxes. I had a bit of help from my aides, but I didn't let them pick up the boxes, I didn't want them to get hurt. They helped push the special hand truck I have which really helped me a lot! I did some withdrawing of Schoolwide in the morning, then load, load, load all afternoon. Was so glad to get all those boxes out of the back room, which may fit all the Chromecarts out of the Library workroom Chromecarts so that space will be open again.

Friday I took the few boxes I couldn't get on the pallets and stacked them and I was able to get all the Library workroom Chromecarts into the back. While I did that, one Chromecart was a bit heavier than the others, and it was still filled with Chromebooks bC*! (before Covid). I put in a tech service ticket and told them that if they wanted the Chromebooks they'd have to take the Chromecart along with them! I hope they do! But probably not... I pulled all the boxes of Schoolwide out of the back so I could load more Chromecarts in that aisle. So I worked on those most of the day. I only have five more to go on Monday! Both lunches were in. Lots of Chromebook work again. We talked today about how much time we spend on Chromebooks, but we don't hardly do textbooks any more. We did a survey for work on the work for Chromebooks. So we'll see how that goes. I documented every charger out today and why I checked out extra Chromebooks or gave out another charger. Ready for the weekend!

More Schoolwide

 We had our morning meeting today and most of it is for teachers, so I kind of half listen, look over from time to time and do multitasking! Got all the new stuff on the cart for lunches today. Chromebook help, always. Worked on getting the Schoolwide boxes done, still not done. Got the notice that our surplus books will be picked up on Friday, so tomorrow will be a day to load up pallets. Had both lunches in and put a notice on the library doors for my lunch that said 'Library Closed. Open at 12:54' which is when the B lunch starts. I can almost get in my whole lunch that way between the student lunches and no one came into the library! I think that was the first time I didn't have students wanting help! I did turn off all the lights, so hopefully they thought I was gone. One of the LMA's said she has to go eat in her car to eat undisturbed! Jeans and a t-shirt tomorrow for the pallet load. It will be so good to get those boxes out and I'm already thinking I can at least get the Chromecarts in there and out of the library workroom. We'll see!

Saved by the Puzzle

 There is one little girl who comes in every day during A lunch to work on the puzzle and B lunch finished it yesterday. So we pulled it apart a bit and I put it out today for her to finish it (again!). And when she came in, someone, I didn't see who, had already finished it. She was so sad, couldn't believe it. I felt so bad, I went over there and it was done!! No one there fessed up. So I told her that she could pick out the next puzzle. She was like, 'you have more?' and so I took her and her friend into my office and opened up the closet and let them pick out the next one. She was happy. I was so glad I could give her a special treat. Today I started to pull apart the Schoolwide resources. So I had to throw away the teacher binder papers. Saved the binders for someone. Withdrew the boxes. Saved the books. That took just about the rest of the day. Got in my Makerspace stuff I ordered. So excited for a student who has asked every day if the new stuff is in yet so tomorrow I can say YES! Then I remembered that I have a 3D pen, so I ordered some more filament. I also got some glue sticks from my office. The usual Chromebook issues. Was a good day and I got to drive straight home! 

New Picture of the Library!

 

I am so happy with the way the library looks after the bit of remodeling I got to do! I had to take a picture last week and finally got it loaded today! Looking good Leslie Library! So the header picture is from the back of the library and this is from the left window side. Love it! Today I finished packing all the empty boxes I had and got all the Language Network books gone and some of the Junior Great Books. I now have 77 boxes ready to be picked up and sent Garten a notice today that they were ready and to contact me for a day to pick up. Both lunches in, More Chromebook issues. I put away all the books that were on the shelving cart. Had a new aide in today working with the EGC team and it went really well. Sent in an email on the Schoolwide kits. I had one of the curriculum people in and she said to go ahead and take them apart, but I just wanted confirmation before I started that. And began to look at the science books...so many. Each set has over 300 books (A - O) and we're only going to keep maybe a class set of each. We do use some quite frequently, so I will keep those. But others we have hardly used at all or ever. And they are on the surplus list. I also got to score Volleyball tonight! We did not do very well at all. Our team was miscuing and just not playing like they have. There were some really great rallies though! Then time to head home!

SLJ - DoD

 Today was the School Library Journal Day of Dialogue.  Some amazing authors and their stories of why and how they wrote what they did. I ordered some of the books that weren't already on my list from this summer and entered into lots of exhibits and picked up some nice 'tote' bag items to look at later. Had both lunches in. Still Chromebook issues floating around. I also got a notice from our PA that we had money to spend on our 'weeding' non-fiction for this year. $400! So I spent the afternoon after the conference looking at books for our 400 section. It's not much of a section! I thought, 'I'll get a new Dictionary/Thesaurus' and the one we had was 2008, and the one I thought to buy was also 2008! That would be silly! There were a few that I was excited about like the Welsh to English dictionary, but it was over 400 pages! Not going to happen! But I think I will buy the Latin/English dictionary. I loved it when I took Latin and realized how many words came from Latin. It really increased my vocabulary and my comprehension of why some words were spelled that way. 

As for yesterday, I did some packing, some reading. Had both lunches in and it was so blasé. I did find a website to pick a word for the year that will be the word you live by, and that was pretty cool. I sent it out to the Language Arts teachers for maybe a writing prompt. That's all I can remember! 

Time Capsule News

 Oh my goodness! What a shock to learn that when Leslie moved to its new location, they actually opened up the Time Capsule! One of my aides found an article about it. They took some things out, put some other stuff in and then sealed it back up. I am kind of sad about that 😞 so we'll see what our principal decides to do. I found a picture in the 1971 yearbook. And another in the hallway just across from the library, then my aide found the article online. It was fun to sleuth around and see what we could find. I took an old notebook of transparencies and pulled them all apart. Then had an aide do the other one. That took forever. Had both lunches in and had the math team come and get their new books. Somehow I missed a teacher. I have no idea how that happened. I was short about two books for her class and I felt really bad and have no idea how I missed getting her on the list for the new books. She looked very disappointed. She came down 6th period and I grabbed the books out of boxes, got them all on a cart, then my two aides and I took off the wrapping from each book and got it done really quickly, then I had them take the cart to the teacher. I felt bad. Had more Chromebook work today. Worked on reading Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Boy. Really good stuff in there.

Time Capsule

 As I walked in the door this morning, I glanced at the little plaque on the wall about the time capsule from the old Leslie. I had to stop when I saw that it was to be opened this November! The 5th to be exact! I let our principal know. Now I'm kind of excited about what it all is! We had our tech guy in today and he recovered another 10 computers to come back on. He only had to take about 20 back to his office to get worked on. I did ten, he did ten, so we recovered half of what was there and we could get back into circulation. That was great as I answered questions and got that settled. I packed more boxes today and got rid of the last big cart of books that I had withdrawn last year. Then I started on packing up the Language Network books, they weigh 2.15 pounds each! That's a hefty little book! I had unpacked all those big math books, so I started using those boxes to pack them. I had both lunches in, took my lunch during Advisory. Then I started working on the teacher resources for those. They are big spiral bound books. So I had to cut off the spiral end and then roll them through the holes to the end. I noticed the section papers were nice and thick. Not quite cardstock, but good enough to make book marks out of them, so I did! They made a lot. I got through about eight of those. I put the rest of the papers and ends into our recycling bins. I had my 6th period aide work on the book marks as I worked on the old transparencies books. Back in the day when teachers all used overhead projectors (!), and started pulling those apart. There is paper between each transparency, so I am saving all of those and throwing away the actual transparency. I'll keep the notebook as well for someone to use. A pretty good day for a Monday.

Flame and Carts

 So many carts have been brought into my back rooms, all the computers for the kids, new math stuff, my discard books, I've been sending my principal other ideas for the carts. Holding for bodies. Storage for clothes for kids that need some. More than I want to remember! Then I remembered that all our metal from the Beachie Creek fire went to Cherry City metal, why not take them all there? So we'll see. I really think the clutter is becoming a safety issue. I also requested new date due slips, have to get approval then I'll submit that to reprographics. I also requested some new things from Amazon to use for the maker cart. NO paint or bottles of glue though! Not on the new carpet!! But papers for things, bookmarks, origami paper, beads. I think the kids will really love that. We had Advisory today and the students that come into the library are with our Behavior Specialists, so they are challenged kids. One of them was sitting at the table waiting for things to start, pulls out a bic lighter, and TURNS IT ON! A flame 8 INCHES high shoots from it. I must admit, I was freaked, demanded the lighter (he claimed it wasn't his, he had just found it outside) and when one of the Behavior staff walked in I handed it to him. I think he left with the kid and we had to have our school security fellow sit with the boys for the rest of Advisory and then our Assistant Principal came in too. Always interesting in the library. Oh, and I also had five classes in the library checking in and out books today, both lunches in. And why are students obsessed with having a Bible? I have more requests for the Holy Bible than I can imagine. All by boys. I actually got one of my two back today. I also opened a book that had a love note in it for the girl who had checked it out. Luckily in pencil, but deeply etched. Young love.