3 Weeks to Go

We have officially three weeks of school left before the end of the year. Huzzah! Today I checked in The Adoration of Jenna Fox and checked out Freakonomics. Helped two students on our search computers and showed them how they work. Tore down the old calendar and worked on putting up the new one which is nearly done, just needs a few extra tweaks. Pulled books for that. Took down all the Nanowrimo posters. Did a lot of magazine processing since I was on vacation in Italy last week visiting my lovely granddaughter! Processed in ten teacher magazines and twelve for the library. We got in new books and I had an aide unpack one set and I will work on the other tomorrow. Pulled Nineteen Minutes for the class that will come in tomorrow and brought back out Sentence Combining for Ms. L.

$30,212,000,003,033.00

Wish we had that kind of budget in the library! But I made a simple mistake of putting money into a student print account, and then going to scan in a book I was checking to see if we should withdraw it and the code got put into his account! Good thing I caught it! We all had a laugh about it and thought he'd be able to print off that until he was like, 100! We fixed it! So, I withdrew a set of books that our substitute had pulled off our Least Circulated Items list and packed them up. Mrs. H went through them to make sure it was all right to pull them. I also started going down the fiction book section and did all the W,Y & Z authors and pulled those off for her to approve also. Did some repairs, and very busy putting in money for print accounts since grades are due as well as senior papers! Worked the CIS this morning for the seniors and also had to juggle the video announcements along with the book fair dvd and Channel One this morning.

The Last Three Days

Well, a lot has gone on these last three days. Four class sets of books checked out, the Scholastic Book Fair arrived. Money into print accounts, books repaired (yes, The American Experience!), books checked in and out, monitored the computer lab. What can I say? It's been busy! One of my favorite things, I got to repair an old annotated version of The Wizard of Oz. Awesome book with the old illustrations, very, very nice, but ours was breaking out of the cover, so I took about three days to work on it a bit here, and glue a bit there and today I finally got to put it back on the shelf in much better shape than before. I found a kid in the computer lab that was supposed to be at in-school, so I sent him off. Worked on a very old dictionary repairing it.Processed in some more teacher magazines and magazines for the library. I was happy to see our October issue of Smithsonian showed up! I watched the Book Fair several times when things got busy and helped push in the big silver display cases and did some unpacking. Just a lot of helping students, lots of constant little business stuff to do.

Safety First

Today I brought in my camera and took pictures of our computer labs and the cords and wires we have all over the place. Mrs. H needs to compile pictures and what needs to be done for the safety committee and really wants to get the labs in good order. She's tripped several times going back and forth helping students, and Mrs. P has also tripped over some of the cords. It's just not a good situation. I hope the pictures will help. I spent most of the day repairing The American Experience books. Checked in and out some things, put some money in print accounts, helped a couple of kids log into the computers, monitored the computer lab and got ready some Geometry Connections Volume 2 ready for check out tomorrow. Asked a teacher if they were coming in for the books I pulled last week, and they won't come now until after Thanksgiving break. Another teacher asked for Freakonomics and Nineteen Minutes for her kids for after break as well.

Veteran's Assembly

Friday - November 13th: This morning Mrs. H decided to close the library for the Veteran's Assembly. I sent in a picture of my son who is a Sprague graduate in the Army and my daughter and son-in-law who were both in the Air Force. They didn't have enough pictures to show, but they did have everyone stand up that had a family member currently serving. There were a lot. When one of our speakers asked for a show of hands on how many had a family member who had served or was serving, it seemed like nearly everyone raised a hand. I was glad we attended. Since assemblies are not mandatory, some people got mad that we didn't have the library open as a space for them to use during that time. That is terrible that people couldn't even come for a half an hour of honoring those who have made our freedoms possible. I checked in books that were left on my desk, took money from Jill from the kids that give her money to put in their print accounts and locked that away. Ms. B needed a book last night and I had already shut down so I entered that information this morning. Finished covering Nineteen Minutes and let Mrs. G know that they were set to go. I opened up the new labels we got in to process some magazines and they were the wrong format! Mrs. H found the number for the correct kind and ordered some for us. Processed three teacher magazines and Mad, Imagine, The New Yorker, Thrasher, Sports Illustrated and Popular Photo for the library. The magazines were a real mess today, which is good because that means people are using them but I had to straighten the rack and the spinner rack out twice today. I also went into the office and had to sign for my plan for Thanksgiving week which was easy for me since I'll be on vacation anyways! Did a bit of repairing and got to put back on the shelf an old 2nd edition copy of The Two Towers! That was classic!

Manga Club

Today Mrs. H had to leave early so I watched over the Manga Club until Mrs. D could arrive. They are an amazing group, full of energy. I covered books while I hung out with them. Requested a quote from Goodheart Wilcox on the Fashion Marketing and Merchandising books for Mrs. S. I got that quote in and got it ready for Mrs. H to send to the office. Mrs. H had brought in all our new books we picked up yesterday at Borders. We get a great discount and I love getting the chance to buy books for the school. I brought in my laptop so we could check and see which books we needed, did we have this title? and checked out what we needed in some of the series. Some things Borders didn't have so we added them into the Baker and Taylor order. Checked in and put away the Demco order for book repair tape. A student brought in an Environmental Science book that had the back cover torn off. I told him he'd get a repair charge and he was all right with that. I went into the main frame to bill him, and it locked me out again!!! Handed out workbooks, got in a 2 textbooks out slip all signed so I checked out a second book to the student, helped an aide with some shelving questions. I found some misshelved books today as well and put them away. Got almost all the Nineteen Minutes covered. They'll be done tomorrow!

Covering Minutes

Right away a student asks for a movie, and we have to find out that he doesn't want to watch it in our back room, but wants to check it out and take it home, so we do that for him. Updated the staff email from my mailbox and deleted out frequent contacts as well. Got a class set of Sentence Combining ready for Ms. L, but they didn't come in. Maybe on Friday. Processed four teacher magazines and Time, Newsweek, Discover, PC World and People for us. Ran the barcodes for Nineteen Minutes and had a student finish stamping them, put in the barcode and number the books. Redid the Industrial Arts shelves for the new Automotive Excellence Volume 2 books and then checked out a class set to Mr. L. He sent aides up to take them down to him. Checked out two transferring students and cleared them off Trac-it and the library. I noticed that Mad magazine wasn't coming monthly, so I looked it up and they are now only quarterly! No wonder! I recounted our print money for Mrs. H and took it into the bookkeeper. And I started covering the Nineteen Minutes books today.

Nineteen Canaries of Excellence

Well, all right. So there were three books we got in today for processing, Nineteen Minutes, Hitler's Canary and Automotive Excellence Volume 2. As well as some label protecters. I processed in all the Hitler's Canary (just 8), and the Automotive Excellence (50 plus 4 teacher materials). We started to work on Nineteen Minutes. I let Mrs. H know we had gotten in all the copies for that PO# so she could tell our bookkeeper to close it. I had the aides begin breaking in the spines and stamping so that was a help in getting those done. I gave Ms. O the Lincoln's portraits I had gotten in from the State Library Tour, and also found her a copy of one of Lincoln's inaugural speeches that I found on an archive site. She will put them up around school during February. I couldn't find the one I'd done with Washington's speech, and I know I had it. Laminated the covers for Hitler's Canary and did some other stuff that was back there as well. Put money into accounts. Let Ms. W know that yes, I would be going to Italy over Thanksgiving week (yeah!).

Helping the ASVAB

Advisory today and I once again ran the CIS in the blue lab. We had seniors today and they were searching for scholarships. The last part of the day I helped out with the ASVAB scoring just by handing out all the summary reports to the class that came in. Did more repair work with The American Experience books. Checked in and out books, and also got to talk with an exchange student who is here from Italy! That was very cool since I'm going there over Thanksgiving week. Checked in books from a couple of students that are leaving us. Talked with a counselor about waiving fees and passed that along to Mrs. H. Had a student get a cart ready for Monday with First Aid books. A good week with lots of repairs getting done. Huzzah!

Yaawwnnnn...

Today was a rough day. I felt like yawning all afternoon. Must be the weather system moving in. Spent most of the day repairing The American Experience. I helped a student make double sided copies for his teacher and another student was finishing up some posters for his teacher, and wanted them laminated. Since Mrs. M had turned the laminator on, I went ahead and ran them through, then did the rest of the piles that were waiting. Processed two magazines, The New Yorker and Sports Illustrated. Yaawwnnn....

New Cover

The pictures are of my Nanowrimo stuff. The 2 posters are outside my textbook window out in the hall, so you can see into the library too! The other is our long little board outside the workroom door with a quote from the founder of Nanowrimo and in the glass of the door you can see a sticker that this is a noveling place! I started the day working on repairs, but that soon went out the window! Mrs. H was working with two different classes on diversity projects and with Mrs. M gone, I was fielding questions, checking out books, requesting books from other schools and that kept me busy for that entire period. I had a student come in and ask to laminate a bunch of posters for recycling and since the laminator was on, I went ahead and did all his right then, and then did a pile of stuff that had been waiting. We had a student return a book without its cover, Rooftop, so I made a cover for it, and Mrs. H had a cover we needed to work on along with a new bar code for The Jungle, so she showed me how to bar code the books and I did both of those and laminated the covers and I think they turned out well. Monitored the computer lab this afternoon, processed in the new teacher edition of the Chemistry text, checked out Old Man and the Sea for Mrs. P's class. Then back to go through The American Experience I had worked on yesterday and see what they needed worked on today.

I Have a Cat!

Today I came in to see a wrapped package by my desk. When I opened it, there was an original art picture from Mrs. M! It's a cat and I love him! She is so talented! I had brought in an easel for my art and now he is proudly displayed on my shelf. (See picture on my previous post!) I checked in the books on my chair, looked for more writer resources for my NaNo kids and discovered two of our books on writing are gone - ! Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott has flown the coop, and Thunder and Lightning by Natalie Goldberg hasn't even left a scorch mark on the shelf! I looked around a bit, but nothing. I worked on my new cart of American Experience books and got them all into their first gluing today and then switched to some of our ChemCom books that just need some basic corner gluing and edging. They didn't replace those in the adoption in 2008, so they will be around awhile.

Art Around

Found some books piled on my chair when I came in today, so I checked them all in plus a few other books on my desk. Processed two teacher magazines and Transworld Skateboarding, Asimov's, Time, Newsweek and The New Yorker for the library. Another school wants to borrow The Stranger so I queried the appropriate departments and if I don't hear from them tomorrow I will lend it out. We haven't used it since 2004. Mrs. H had a new list of art books, so I checked to see if the district had any, and we actually had one of them, and the district had three others. Not bad! Then I got out all these art prints that I'd gone through the other day and placed them all up around the library on top of the book shelves. I thought it looked spectacular, and Mrs. H really liked it too. Mr. C came in after school and loved it. I took down the art project from last year, japanese messages on tin that kids didn't come in and take home and put them up on a shelf above where the art posters are. I also put money into print accounts, put together our display cases with art books in them and did more repairs. I had all my last cart of books to repair done, so I loaded up another cart. We had a request for Old Man and the Sea for two classes on Wednesday, so I let her know that was fine, and that for 1st period they'd need to get them from Mrs. M since I'm not in yet. I also forwarded that to Mrs. M so she'd be prepared. My Nano kids came in and I have four now signed up with one still playing soccer who will join us when that season ends. They each got onto the website and a couple even began to write. All five have received workbooks (thanks to the marvelous Mrs. H) and I'm excited to see how they do! Two returning Nanoers, and three new ones! :) I stayed with them until 4, and after my 'work' hours, I volunteered to paint over the dewey book illustration Mrs. T had started before they transferred her out of Sprague. She never got around to finish it, and so we finally decided to just paint over it. It will need another coat, but the first coat covered fairly nicely.