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!