Celtic Christmas

Yes, today was playing Pandora all day on my Celtic Christmas mix. I love it. It almost covered the craziness of the students on a triple threat day. Winter Solstice day, Full Moon and the last day of school for the year! It was quite the day. I think I survived. Had my PA come and pick up the 3D printer and our K’NEX build set. I pulled out all the remotes that had been stuffed in drawers since probably before I came and deleted the ones with barcodes, made sure batteries were out and got them all in a box. Both lunches in and I thought A lunch would do me in, but I survived and B lunch was actually good today in comparison. Ah, the joys of the last school day! I took a couple of trips out to my car with stuffs. We also had locker clean out and got in lots of books. They did it the last 15 minutes of school and I got in a couple of carts worth of books. A few I hadn’t seen in awhile! I will get them checked in when we get back. Glad to go home and rest. See you in 16 days!

Cleaning Drawers

Today I cleaned out some old drawers that I had put stuff in a long time ago and decided today was a good day to revisit them. I found old sheets of barcodes for workbooks that had never been used, so I deleted them. I knew that was one thing they were trying to do at LMSS. I also threw away a ton of old, two to three years old notes on various things I no longer need. Also cleaned out another drawer of thank you’s and envelopes and put them all together. Found a bunch of notepads. I took a bunch of the cards and all the notepads but one and took them up to the staff room for anyone to take if they wanted. I also found some old book illustrations postcards and since I had enough to cover all our Language Arts people I wrote them all a note and told them something to the tune of ‘you help me pick out ..... books for our students’. I hope they like it.Had both lunches in. Got another box and filled it and added to my surplus pile. One more day, seven periods!

Pushing Through

Still light headed, still very achy, but managed to get through the day. I think I did too much yesterday, so paced myself a bit more today. Have all my carts empty and ready for locker clean out on Friday. Laminated some posters for a teacher who has been patiently waiting. Started going through best books of 2018 for middle schoolers lists and checked up on them to see if they are on order or if I think our students would like them. Goodreads had over 500! No, I didn’t finish their list! But I did get some good books added onto my order. Put away all the non-fiction today and cleaned off ten or so non-fiction books that really need to go mainly because I need the room and I don’t need three copies of a book no one checks out. Had our last STEAM day during lunches today and it was cool to see our students finish their water driven engine! I put it into the sink in the back workroom and we poured water on the paddles and it worked! It was so very cool! Good Job A lunch students! I am really proud of what they did. Then we had to take all the K’NEX and get them packed up and counted to go back to LMSS. I also had a substitute teacher come in today and he is one of the good ones. He’s just got that teacher presence that staff and students respect. He had some time and came in to talk about a few issues going on with him, and I had time to listen and I think he really needed that gift of having someone just listen. I think that sometimes the best thing we can do to our staff is to listen and I was happy to give him that gift. Stayed all the way, but it was close!

Whispers of Thank You’s

I think it’s part of the ‘Kindness’ week thing we are doing? I had several students come up to me today and say in loud whispers ‘Thank you!’ It was very interesting! I would not think I would get anything like that, probably more reserved for teachers but still it was nice! One said he was thankful I was their librarian (I didn’t try to tell him I wasn’t a real librarian, it wasn’t the moment for that!) and another said thank you for all the books I had for them. That was nice! I had a notice that we are doing a locker clean out on Friday, so I had to have carts ready. Drats. Most of my carts have withdrawn books on them! Yikes! So I put books on shelves where I already had withdrawn books and made signs so I’d remember which shelves had withdrawn books on them! I emptied just over three carts of books so I’d have carts for Friday. We also have a student who says they turned in their iPad in August, but no one can find it. So I did a final check today on the iPads I have back in the AEM cart and none of them had the barcode that is missing. I wish I had found it. One of the schools is looking for science book ‘C’ in Spanish and I had ten copies so I transferred them over and sent them off. Sent off four other book requests. Had to do an inventory on our poster maker paper. Mr. T asked if 4th period tomorrow he could bring down his Peer Helper group, and I said yes, looked good! Then I remembered that we were having an assembly tomorrow! So I asked him if he’d rather do Thursday with a full period and he said yes please! He even called me later to thank me again. I found two ‘lost’ books that were on the shelf today for students. Covered a book that for some reason didn’t get covered when I did all the books last week! How did that one slip by? I cleaned off the top shelf under the windows (dead rolly pollys made that happen) and redisplayed books that were in the wrong area or just needed a book up (I like to have three per set of shelves). I actually went home early. Made it ‘sick’ absence for the last 45 minutes of my day so I could get home and rest up. The office was fine with that. Even at lunch they were so nice and didn’t want to send students down, but I had cut my normal 30 to 20, so they let just 20 come down. They are so good to me!

Sick

I am so achy and hurting and can barely move that I called in sick today. Hope all went well.

Icosahedron?

Not sure I've ever heard that one before! But our PA put out a notice on this cool holiday ornament that students could make so I set up a little makerstation for it for next week. I will admit it took awhile to color in the 20 different circles for the ornament, but a very grateful change from all the book lifting this week! It was pretty quiet. I put away all the books Mrs. M and I had pulled for her class yesterday. Helped students find books. Made posters for the leadership kids. Labeled all my new monitors so hopefully they will get back to TIS one day when we're done with them. Had a teacher sign up to check out books Monday. Answered an email about Three Cups of Tea. I have several copies but one school had 22! So they are getting rid of most of them and then we had a discussion on wasn't there some kind of controversy about all that. I found a like to a Tom Brokaw interview and another LMA posted the same link! Ha! We are all ready for winter break! 35 periods to go!

Ni ‘lassui, Mellon

Had to laugh at our lastest Insider video for the district. It was all done by our language services division and was all in different languages with subtitles. At the end, the main host, said ‘Ni ‘lassui, mellon’ which he thought was ‘thank you, friend’ in Elvish! Ha! Loved it! We had classes in today with Mrs. M, and she was doing an activity with traditional stories, fables and legends in many cultures. We had pulled some yesterday, and I went in this morning and got some more out for her classes. It was time to permanently delete my deleted emails stack. I had over 3,600. So I pull up an organization and delete all those, and do that over and over again. I got down to about half that. I deleted more Prentice Hall Lit books and even took the lost ones, checked them in and then deleted those. Then I had to shift shelves. I moved 124 of the Prentice Hall Lit books. Moved over 550 Language Network books and nearly 300 Junior Great books. I’m sore! I even took some aspirin this afternoon since my left hand was really aching. I got all the Prentice Hall Lit books all on the ‘these are deleted shelves.’ Then at the end of the day one of our techs came in with the monitors and keyboards I had asked for back in September! I was so excited! I’m going to get some Raspberry Pi components to use with them! I sent in my order this afternoon for them! A great day, but I’m tired. 

Back on the Shelf

Today I worked on more withdrawing for the Language Arts side of inventory. I ran out of room, drats, again and then I realized I could go ahead and withdraw books and just put them back on the shelf with a label that they were done and just waiting for boxes. So I did all of our Daybooks and Sourcebooks that were on the surplus list. They were all over the place. Some had barcodes, some didn’t. Some were ‘lost’ so I checked them in and then withdrew them. I just ended up being very methodical about it all. Then I thought I got all the Prentice Hall Lit Silver books done, and no! I wasn’t. There are still over a hundred in the back of the student store. Rats! I was thinking I had knocked out three sets today. But no! I’m sure they will be fine sitting there until I get to them! Worked on some things with emails with the rest of the LMA’s like how many days until our overdues turn to lost. Automatic emails. Books on Tape Cassette. Seven more student contact days!

Transparent

I had recently seen Ken Burns’ Civil War series and in there he had talked about the old photographic glass plates and how people had used them for windows in greenhouses. In my book club we had just read The Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig and one of the characters has a greenhouse, again made with the glass plate negatives! So today as I was pulling apart old notebooks of teacher resources I came across these transparencies and decided to cut them to size and then cling them to our windows. I love it! So incredibly cool! I wish I had more! Got six binders pulled apart. One was big enough for a student, the others I put up in the staff room for anyone that could use them. I also did a bit of research on our overload of teacher science resources to get ready to get rid of some for when we do the science inventory. Then I realized that I won’t be here for that one! I’ll be retired! So I’ll content myself with getting the three inventories straightened away that I will be here for!

Monday Monday

I was given a gift of five boxes, so I packed them. Laminated some things for one of our counselors so he could finish a bulletin board. Finished prepping the last of the new books I got in with tattle strips and date due slips and covered the three paperbacks. Sent up a DVD drive to a teacher. Sent two books to other schools that requested them. I refused one request because I didn’t have a copy. I deleted some old dictionaries. I have plenty of nicer ones and they were so ragged I would be ashamed to send them to a class. Sent our surplus list to a high school and they were grateful. I checked books that are in our inventory against our surplus list to find more to withdraw since I had packed boxes. Had both lunches in. A pretty normal day.

No Jury Duty

I was actually disappointed! Rats! Again, I don’t get to serve. I have never had to yet. Came in and worked more in the back, back room on the rack behind the door. I nearly got everything cleaned out and got the dictionaries all reset on the shelves and they look so much better. I also pulled some that were really old and grody. Haven’t withdrawn them yet, but hopefully if my elves and boxes come it’ll happen! I took some time to self care today and read a book (it was a quick read!). Had both lunches in for the last day of Hour of Code. Concert was fabulous last night. Have a good weekend all!

Elves and Boxes

Had my PA in today to check out what was going on and how I was doing. So I showed him all the Language Arts books I had withdrawn and he was pretty shocked by how much there was. I told him that I really needed some boxes and elves to pack and move them out for Garten, ha! We talked Makerspaces, what else I envision for the library, including my roller castors for the shelves, taking out the pony wall, removing the kiosk computers and installing an overhead projector, maybe even a flat screen. There is still so much to withdraw. We also talked about resources such as things we’d do for Makerspaces and yet they would be resources for the school to use. I also tried to get out the rest of the books inside the back, back textbook room, but didn’t get them all. Concert tonight and maybe Jury Duty tomorrow. We’ll see!

Wednesday Withdrawals

And I did a bunch today. Had six plastic tubs of books that I let our IC know I had and she took them and found them all new homes in different classes. Some to Read180, some to System44, some to DLC. I was so happy to see them get a new life after sitting on a shelf for the four years I’ve been here. Mr. A brought in his classes for a test review today. That was really amazing. Had both lunches in for Hour of Code today. Withdrew an entire tables worth of English books. I had to move the boxes out of the way so I could stack these Language Arts books. Some of them were from 1998. That’s a lot!! I just got almost all the carts cleared of withdrawn library books, now they are all filled with LA books. Now I just need boxes. And I’m not even done yet. There was a lot of cleaning out that needed done and still a ton more to go. I’ll show all this to my PA tomorrow when he comes in. I think he may be a bit shocked!

LA Withdrawal

Today I had my aides pull out the Writers 2000 books that were in the back on two carts and withdrew them all. Also some Reader’s Handbooks. These are all on our surplus list and it’s either inventory them or withdraw them. So, I might as well withdraw them. There’s so many textbooks I need to withdraw, but since this year the focus is on Language Arts, that’s the one I’m focusing on this year. I only have about one cart of library books down here left to pack up, but three carts of the textbooks I’m working on. They are all so heavy, I’ve been using smaller boxes to put them into and then doing half textbooks and half library books to save the weight. Had more students work on coding today. Had six classes in to pick up new math textbooks. I had aides do the classes they were here for, but I did two classes that came in when I had no aides. Had only a few students in for A lunch and coding since I had to wait to let them in until I had finished checking out the math books. Had about eight students in during B lunch working on coding, so that was awesome! A good day, lots accomplished.

Snow Time

Well, on my display it’s Snow Time! And it’s cold enough at night to snow! But we have three weeks left to go and time to change things. I also got the Chrome cart to do Hour of Code this week, so that’s available for the students during lunch this week. I had about four for A lunch and three did it for B lunch. But fun to see the students working on the crafts, playing games, reading on their phones and one was doing Duolingo! Some just reading. A good time was had by all! I did the decoration for December, and made the poster for Hour of Code. Put in an announcement for Hour of Code as well. Finished a book for book talks. Packed more books for surplus. Worked the textbooks that the students didn’t have quite right and for my own OCD that they all have to face the same way. Just my personal quirk on that! Had one of the LMA’s want boy adventure book series that didn’t involve any magic (one of his students is not supposed to read those) so I walked around my fiction and came up with about ten series to hopefully catch his eye. Got two kudos from Mr. R on my getting him his science books, only for him to realize he gave me the wrong one, and I turned it around in enough time for his first period class. That was nice of him! 

November 30th

Worked on the new books getting them ready to go out. Had a class in today and had to get tables reset from the class last night and get out some dictionaries for them. Had to kick students out of the bathroom for locking the stall doors from the inside. One of them called back at me  'F*** you B****'!!!"  Had a discussion about language from our LMA group on a book. I made a comment and one of the ladies privately emailed me and was pretty PA about how a book I had (she took time to look that up??) had a European comment and was quite nasty and perhaps I'd better find my white out because she was going to let me know of all the other words I might want to censor from the book. Really??? I wrote her and said Please don't. I'm really fragile at the moment and I don't know what the impact is between reading and hearing (the original discussion was on an audio book from England, not the American version we have on the shelf). and I was fine with whatever the group went with. Did not hear back from her. When a Counselor brought in a student who needed some quiet time I begged him if I could have some too??? Took all the books I had pulled from our back lit room to edit them to reflect that they were in the 'lit' group rather than out on the floor. And put them away. I was so ready for the day to be over! I don't see next week being any better!

November 29th

Oh my! Totally forgot! It was a pretty mind numbing day! Spent most of the day getting out an old set of English books, Write 2000 and taking them apart. I noticed that the teacher notebooks were really big, and we just happened to need more 3 inch binders for our AVID program. So I pulled them apart, withdrew them (been on the surplus list for a long time) and managed to get about 11 notebooks for our students for them. A really great way to spend the day, culling old resources to make new resources for our students. A big win/win for everyone.