Halloween Day

Read two books today! OK, one was really short, the other a novel in verse. Didn’t really take too long. Ordered in a new set of K’nex for our next STEAM projects. Had to glue a KEVA block that split. I put in some book glue and set it in my book press! Hopefully it will be good to go back tomorrow! Sent books back to schools. Had a teacher that needed 40 science books. Another needed two class sets of math books. Of course I was trying not to lift today. Ran the Scholastic video during lunches today. Ordered another replacement book. Had to help students use the copier. I have so much I want to do to get the withdrawn books packed up but don’t want to lift the boxes!! The students were actually pretty good today. I was expecting them to be completely wired because of Halloween, but they weren’t. Maybe the low pressure system over us and the very dark cloudy day helped with that! We’ll see how tomorrow goes!

Repair Day

I have a few books that need some repair, so I started to go and pull each book and make the decision if I wanted to repair it, replace it, or just get rid of it. When I had a book that had multiple copies, I went out and hunted them all down making sure they were either checked out, declared lost, or on the shelf. Then I took the broken book and made sure that it was designated as ‘out for repairs.’ Had two students come in with logging into Axis360 program. One was a boy that came in and he finally realized he was spelling Salem wrong. Glad we finally got that figured out. Then I had another student who we tried to change her password and the computer said ‘Access Denied.’ That was nothing I’d seen before! So we called technology and I was on the phone with them for quite awhile and he finally found the piece he needed to change so we could change her password. So I’m hoping she’ll come in tomorrow morning. I’ll look up her first period class and tell her. Had my aides get books for Mr. R - they pulled the books and I had to dash out the door because they didn’t check them out to him. Then they brought the old ones back and checked them in. Had students in for STEAM lunch today. I worked on an announcement about STEAM for next month and that the Scholastic Book Fair is coming. I set up our online fair dates. Then I tried to find the link for the middle school books. I had a page for all the individual book talks, but I wanted them all together, and I finally found it. I’ll probably play it during lunches. I also realized that we will only be selling at school for only 4 days. We’ll only be open for the week after Veteran’s Day holiday and then it’s Thanksgiving break. I’m not sure how that is going to happen and affect my sales. 

Reading Day

I keep doing too much lifting and such and really need my chest to heal. So I designated today as a reading day. I read so much out of work for work that I decided it was all right if I read books for book talks while I’m at work and it’s quiet. So I read my eBook today and once I resized the font for my computer at work, it went pretty well. I still had other things to do! Had to find a book that belonged to another school and was sitting on our shelf. Reset student passwords. Had both lunches in. Checked out calculators for Ms. C after I had to re-enter their barcodes since the computer said they were ‘not found.’ Had to take a book call slip up to a room since I don’t have aides that period. Answered a call from a mom who thought her daughters had maybe turned in a Salem Public Library book to me. I explained that yes, they occasionally turned up and I would take them down and turn them in within a couple of days if they came to me. Had another student email me that she no longer had the book that was overdue. I checked for it, and didn’t find it so let her know that it was still lost. Another student had a notice for a math book so we went in back and leafed through the math books of that title and didn’t find it. So, lots of little things here and there. Loved watching the clouds and rain out move across the valley today.

Classy eBooks

I got invited to go into a classroom today and talk about our eBooks! I was so excited! I hardly ever get out of the library! I went into the classroom for four periods today. I had so much fun! I finished one eBook today and started another. It was amazing!! The 57 Bus. Wow. I could hardly stop reading it. Now I only need to get into the app here at home! While I was gone, I had a class come in and use the library so I felt comfortable doing leaving the library. Had a great Friday, with our pink out day. Wearing pink to highlight breast cancer. I’m not sure about next week with Halloween. Today was pretty crazy since we started with pink donuts donated by Roth’s. They were gone before school even started. Our students really supported the fund raiser!

Rainy Thursday

Today was pretty quiet compared to yesterday, but still a good day to get things done. I finished up an order with Titlewave. I had asked our PA about using my ASB funds for subscriptions and he said, ah, no, they were to be used for replacements, so I pulled replacement books from the order I had going, created a new replacement order and then submitted my new order without replacements for approval. I got an email later saying the order had been approved. So I’m hoping they arrive before winter break for our students. Had students come in to get the text copy of a book that they were listening to. Answered emails. Put away non-fiction books. Pulled a few books that we had duplicate copies of. Looked up to see that I had withdrawn nearly 1,800 books from our collection. That’s a lot! Way more than what I thought! Got new 11 x 17 copy paper finally for our music people to use. They were happy. Read my eBook. Finished a paper copy that I had read part of and ended up checking out to a student and it got returned. And there was something else, but I had it in my brain and it just left. Oh well, maybe it’ll come around before bedtime!

Spines & CPR

It wasn’t a quiet day in the library, but watching our 8th graders work on hands only CPR was a real treat. Our Salem Firefighters came in and talked with the students, then had them work on the dummies until they all had a chance and learned to do it right. I answered emails, finished up my long overdue window! I started it right when school started up and then drifted in and out of ideas and decided that since today we wouldn’t have much traffic, I really needed to finish it! I had brought in stuff from my scrapbooking stuff at home and I think my ‘spines’ turned out really nice. I got inspired by a teacher who was talking about windows and mirrors as you read a book, so I started with that. Went through some ordering pieces on PermaBound and Titlewave. Worked on my reading for our Pathway that will come up Thanksgiving week. Read my eBook - Playing Atari with Saddam Hussein - don’t know if I will ever get used to reading those. I will have to hug my print book tonight. When the firefighters came in I decided that I’d take a picture of the dummies having some reading time before the students came in. Ha! Even a dummy can read!

STEAM Day

Tuesday is our STEAM day in the library during lunches, so I spent some time today getting ready the sets of circuitry for the students. I get really excited about it! Worked on book orders today. Our librarians had done a talk during the Inservice on great high and middle school books and they shared those titles with us. So the titles showed up in the Titlewave orders. I went through the list and marked off the books I already have then went through the ones I didn’t to decide if I wanted to get them or not. I also sent out an email to the other middle school LMS’s to make sure they looked that over as well. Finished another book spine for my window. I really need to finish that off! I was excited because I only needed to do one more spine, then I decided I needed to take the math one and cut it in half because it was yellow and so much bigger than all the others! So, now I need to do two more! Though my ‘windows’ spine turned out really cool! I had our PermaBound rep in. He is a real amazing guy and I’m working on replacing my very well used books - like Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, graphic novels. Tried to take it easy today, my chest is so sore from popping my sternum. I did something last night to irritate it and I nearly called in sick I was so hurting last night. 

No Kitty

It was a sad day, the first day I didn’t start my workday with my kitty, Pippin helping me get ready. We lost him this weekend and I kept looking down to see if he was waiting for his morning treats. I had him for 15 years. They day was kind of a blur, and I was so hurting in my chest from my kayak debacle on the 13th. By the time I got home Monday night I could barely move without pain. I managed to get through the day, but sadness overload it all. Amazing how what goes on in your personal life can effect your work day. Everything got done, but this is now Tuesday night and I can’t even really remember what I did. Glad that one is over. 

eBook eXhaustion

I had six classes in today for teaching them how to use our eBook resource. I had so much fun doing that! I showed them how to get there, signed in, to check out a book. It was so cool to see students reading off their Chromebooks and I also had students that downloaded the app on their phones to check out and read!! I am so excited!! We checked out a ton of books and even had students put books on hold and audio books on their phones! An amazing day and I am just in heaven getting our students to read!!!

Go Earthquake

We had our earthquake drill today and it was nice and really a perfect day outside to practice. I had my sunglasses all ready to go since I had heard that since it was 10/18 we would have the drill around 10:18am. All went well. We ducked under tables and I had a couple of extra students in making copies. After our building was declared unsafe, we were directed outside. It was lovely. I think they should have sent us all home since the building was unsafe. But oh well, back in we were miraculously safe to return. I got my Classroom Go set from the American Go Foundation today! I was so happy! Look at all the swag! I had no idea that they would send that much stuff! I am one happy girl! Now I just need to learn how to play! They had a DVD so I tried to play that and it didn’t work very well, so I went on the website and watched a couple of the tutorials on it. I did two book talks for classes today, 6th and 7th period. Wrote out a thank you card with some old Leslie Lion cards to thank them. I had classes coming in tomorrow for our eBooks and I’m excited about it! I’m going to have all the students actually check out books tomorrow on our program. Then I had a teacher come in at the end of the day, and we looked through our books and I found an old class set from Gary Soto, Taking Sides and she took a book to go through it tonight and then she asked for a class teaching guide, so we looked online and it was a bit confusing, so I thought, wait a minute, that’s an old book and in the file cabinet in the back back room, I had a drawer that has study guides in it and YES! It had a study guide in there for that book! My PA also came in today and I showed him my Go set and he picked up the 3D printer one of our teachers had and was done with. A fabulous day and I get to go home and take a walk and kick through crunchy leaves 🍁.