Fancy seeing you here!

Whew! I don't know about you, but there has been quite a lot happening around here lately.

A quick run down of the last five years of blogging silence:

1. I finished up my Master of Library Science in May 2016.
2. I finished two years as a school librarian in Houston.
3. I then moved to Kuwait to be a school librarian (I'm still here after three years!).
4. I met the most incredible man who exceeded all my expectations for a life partner.
5. I married that same man! (Cue: Wedding March)
6. This interesting little sickness started spreading around the world...

So, quite a bit has happened! Those are just the highlights.

The library that I now run is for Early Childhood all the way through grade 12. It's absolutely tiny. If the entire space was used for just elementary it would still be considered tiny. I'm rather certain that mine is the smallest private academy library in the country. But I don't mind! I actually love that I get to see students across all ages! It gives me a chance to get to know their faces, some of their names (I can only hold on to so many!), and hopefully impact a fraction of those I come across. I really do love being a librarian.

One of my favorite accomplishments in this tiny library of mine has been the genrefication (I'm going to pretend that's a real word) of the middle and high school fiction books. Too often students would come to me asking for scary books, books like Harry Potter, etc., but it's difficult to know what they're looking for off hand. Some I can do easily! But not all. So my solution (which I also did in my Houston library) was to rearrange all of the novels by genre. So now I have 8 sections: realistic, humor, scary, mystery, historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and adventure! It really helps the students to focus in on one area of interest, instead of roaming all of the shelves not knowing what they're looking for at all!

I've done a few different reading competitions over the last three years in this library.
Year 1: "How Far Will You Read?"
Students kept a log of how many pages they read each week, and each page was "one mile". Every month, we'd tell the students how far their class had read from Kuwait. By the end of the school year, we had a couple of classes that had read enough pages to circumvent the globe twice!! It was a lot of fun!

Year 2: Journals!
Our school had a plethora of leftover notebooks from the year before. We begged them from admin, and we gave each student one to keep in her library folder. We gave grades 3 & 4 the following questions:

Grade 3 was required to answer three of the questions, and grade 4 was required to answer 4 (in complete sentences, of course!).
Grades 1 and 2 were significantly simpler. All they had to do was draw a picture of something in the book, and write the sentence "I did (not) like this book", and grade 2 had to tell me why (It was boring. It was funny.).

Year 3: Always be kind!
The first rule in all of my classrooms and libraries has always been the same: ALWAYS BE KIND! So, this year, we did the exact same thing as last year, but instead of providing the journals (the school didn't have any this school year) the girls bought their own. Grades 2-4 also had to include one sentence about kindness. It could have been something simple like, "Barbie was kind." Or they could have elaborated: Junie B. Jones was not kind because she yelled at Ricardo.

For the winners, we gave them prizes! We had prizes for the class that read the most/wrote the most journal entries in each grade level, the girl who read/wrote the most in each class, the girl who read/wrote the most in each grade level, the top class overall the grade levels, and the top girl over all grade levels. The prizes ranged from certificates, free book bags that we got from Scholastic, dum dum suckers, little journals and sparkly pens that I found at a stationary store around here, and each year, I ask my school to fund 20KD to the girl who reads the most out of the whole school (and 10KD for the girl who reads the most in her grade level). But the best prize is...

...THE FIELD TRIP!!! We take the winners to a bookstore near the school to shop for books (or other little knick knack things that they can afford...books are very expensive here!), we have lunch together, and then we spend some time playing on the playground near the restaurant. It's so much fun!! We normally take the overall class that wins, but this year's participation was pitiful! I don't know why the girls had so little motivation, but they did! So this year we decided that we'd only take the top 15-20 readers in the school, not necessarily an entire class. But then...

...the world shut down. We had been on vacation during the last week of February for the National Day holiday. That's when the first case was reported. And because everyone travels during holidays (Kuwait is tiiiiiiiny, y'all), they decided to be prudent and close the schools for another two weeks after that. And then another two weeks after that...and then for a month after that, and then an indefinite closure with an assumption that we'd go back in August for the new school year. So, no field trip this year.

I still have the gifts that I bought for the winners, so I hope to give them to them when we return in a few months.

For the next school year, I've been trying to figure out what to do for the reading competition. And I think I've got it! As the girls read through their books, they have to write down words that they don't know. Then, when they get to the library on their library day, we'll spend some time finding definitions to those words which they will then have to record in their notebooks (this is still only grades 2-4). Grade 1 will continue with their pictures and "I did (not) like this book." That is about the extent of their skill level right now.

Anyway, I think I've updated my librarian life pretty thoroughly for the moment. And since we're currently on 22 hour lockdown (we have two hours of outside time a day...woooo!!), I'll have plenty of time to continue later.

Score 1 for the Harry Potter Fan Club!! :)

Last week, I encouraged my 4th and 5th graders to try new books and used Harry Potter as an example:

"If all I'd ever read was Harry Potter, you know what I'd walk around calling people who weren't magical? ... Muggles. And I'd also try to cast spells on people. 'Wingardium leviosa! Expelliarmus!'"

Well, it became apparent that I love the Harry Potter books (probably because I said, "Y'all. I LOVE Harry Potter!!!") and today, my 5th graders nearly cleaned me out of them!! I was so excited!! Not necessarily because they were getting into HP, but because they were listening and taking my suggestions! We had to have a "guess a number between 1 and 100" moment for one book that I recommended (I only have one copy!), and there were at least 6 students who wanted in on it. Another girl actually waited for me to look up the author of one of the books that I recently read that's one of the Bluebonnet Award nominees. I'd recommended it to her and before she left, she was already in chapter 2 and said, "Miss Jordan! You're right! This book is really good!!"

Digital Citizenship and First Checkouts!

Last week was a great success! Still have some work to do on the classroom management of some classes, but it will get better.

Yesterday it was totally my fault. I'm giving my six year olds too much credit. They were kinders just last year!! So today we spent much more time on procedures for how checking out books were going to work. A couple of my sweethearts didn't get to check out books today because they made some very bad choices that involved obscene gestures (big no-no!). We watched this adorable video about Sammy the Shelfmarker and it helped my littles remember how to use the shelf markers to avoid making a mess on the shelves! My kinders will watch it next week, too. I think they will love it. It really is super cute!!

This week our lesson is on digital citizenship. The things I'm harping on most are to never use the internet as a harmful tool (cyberbullying), and to neeeeeeever give your personal information to strangers (especially online where creepers hang out [says the blogger...]). It's not a very fun lesson, but it is incredibly important. Especially for students this young. Start their training early!

My favorite part of this week so far has been seeing how excited my kids are about checking out books!! They're constantly asking for specific titles and get sad when they're already checked out. Not that them being sad makes me happy...it's their zeal that does! :) And I almost forgot!! I convinced a girl to try Nancy Drew!! She'd never read any of them and said that she liked mysteries, so I got her to check out the very first one: The Secret of the Old Clock! Makes my heart sing!

Anyway, on to the next day!!

And the verdict is...

...I love my job!!! Granted, I've only survived two days of it so far, and even though I have no idea how anyone can have an entire kindergarten or 1st grade class for an entire day, it has been so incredible.

An update on my plans for the first week:

The CHAMP poster is flipping awesome. I'm pretty darn proud of it. Now I just have to remember to use it EVERYDAY. It's a great visual reminder for my kids to know what their expectations are.

The book care poster has been a big hit with all grade levels! I make it a bit more fun by talking about how un-fun it would be to get back a book covered in dog slobber, and by declaring scissors and glue to be a library book's mortal enemies.

Now, the books... We're Going on a Book Hunt has been pretty good with the kinder group, but it's become apparent that I can't just read it to them. We HAVE to be up and moving and doing the motions. Also, I have to figure out something else they can do in our library time. Getting them to sit still for even five minutes has been a huuuuuuuuge challenge. God bless kindergarten teachers!!

1st grade has been really difficult (behavior issues and such), and I can't seem to figure out which book is best with them. They don't appear to respond very well to We're Going on a Book Hunt and Our Librarian Won't Tell Us Anything (the book I'm reading to 2nd and 3rd graders) is over their little heads. I'm going to have to figure something out!

Speaking of Our Librarian Won't Tell Us Anything...it's been a great hit! There's a little girl in the story who has a bit of an attitude problem, so acting that out has been great fun!

Joe Bright and the Seven Genre Dudes is the best one so far. My 4th and 5th graders love it! Plus, I do different voices for every character so it's extra cool. :)

I have a feeling I'll have all of these books memorized by Friday!

Posters!

Tomorrow's the big day!! I've already decided what books I'm going to read to my kiddos:

1. For the K's and 1st graders, We're Going on a Book Hunt by Pat Miller. It's an adorable book that's basically We're Going on a Bear Hunt, but it's about how to find a good book to read. It has motions and is really really cute!

2. For the 2nd and 3rd graders, I'm going to read Our Librarian Won't Tell Us Anything! by Toni Buzzeo. Also adorable! A new student at Liberty Elementary School (Go Panthers!) can't understand why his classmate keeps telling him that their librarian won't help them find what they're looking for. Turns out, the librarian just teaches the kids how to help themselves! (Another goal for this school year!!)

3. For the 4th and 5th graders, I've got Joe Bright and the Seven Genre Dudes by Jackie Mims Hopkins. It's so fun and gives the opportunity for tons of voices in storytelling! It's a Snow White kind of story (barely), where an enchanting storyteller gets jealous of the new famous storyteller in the kingdom and tries to sabotage his new fame. But don't worry...they end up partners!

The other thing I did today was create my posters! Our district uses CHAMPS as our behavior management program. It stands for Conversation, Help, Activity, Movement, Participation, and Success. I took off the Success part because I don't really get it, personally, so my poster just says CHAMP. :) I'm pretty proud of it! A lot of classes have different posters for each activity. I just put all of my options on one board and made check marks to velcro under the appropriate one. Here's a picture in case you're thoroughly confused.

I took everything to Office Depot to have printed in color, then took it home to assemble, then took it right back to Office Depot to have the whole thing laminated. Then I took it home to do the velcro and voilà! It's ready for our procedures lesson!

The other poster that I got ready for tomorrow was all about book care. I got the template from The Book Fairy Goddess on Teachers Pay Teachers. I am so happy I found it because creating my own would have taken foreeeeever. I'm not into that. It was $3 and totally worth it. The pictures are super cute and everything was already formatted. All I did was get it laminated and, again, velcro! I'm all for preserving things I'll use in the future, and since I plan to be a librarian for a long time, I wanted to save these!

One side shows things that we absolutely should do with our library books, the other side is...discouraged. :)

Happy almost first day of school!!!!

A Brand New Adventure

This is my first experience as a librarian!! I am beyond excited, but pretty nervous, too. I'm still working on my Master's, but I plan to finish my degree at the same time that I finish my first year as a school librarian! My campus has several bilingual classes, so I'll be able to use my Spanish! Unfortunately, I've lost a ton of it, so my kids could totally take advantage. But I'm still happy for the opportunity to practice!

Here are some things that I've observed so far through the last couple of weeks of trainings and professional development:

1. It is not nearly as glamorous or romantic as I'd always dreamed it would be, and the first day of school isn't even until Monday! In my mind, I'd end up as a small town public librarian, but I really love the pay and the summers off of working for a school. :) And to be completely honest, I love working with kids. They are completely and utterly frustrating sometimes, but they are precious and need wholesome guidance. A lot of the students I'll see won't have that at home.

2. It's easy to become a doormat. Especially during your first year. You don't want to ruffle feathers or seem like a controlling freak, but it's necessary to create boundaries with people you work with, and it kind of sucks. I've been warned by the former librarian and other teachers on campus that there are some that tend to interrupt the library lessons in order to check things out or fix a crisis. Unfortunately, I expect that, and not just because I've been warned about it. It's human nature to assume that your emergency is everyone else's highest priority. I'm just not looking forward letting others know that it's not necessarily true in my library.

3. Technology is more of my job than books. This one totally bums me out. I mean, I became a librarian for the actual meaning of the word (librarius, Latin for "relating to books"). Don't get me wrong, I 100% understand the importance of technology for today's kids. However, I really think there should be a class dedicated to that. When I was in elementary school, we had computer class where we learned word processing and typing. There wasn't much in the way of the internet because that was pretty new back then. Still, my computer skills are all credited to the classes that public schooling provided (and Mavis Beacon).

Here are my goals for the first month of school:

1. BE CONSISTENT. This is the hardest thing in my entire life. It doesn't matter if it's diets, relationships, or classroom management, consistency is the worst. And because elementary aged students require consistent classroom management, it's my goal to know my rules and procedures so well that as soon as someone tries to get out of line, I can nip it in the bud. Side note: this is a year-long goal, I just have to start small.

2. Find 3 parent volunteers. Because Texas thought it was a great idea to take aides out of elementary campuses (because high schools don't have enough able-bodied folk as it is...[so not bitter...]), I'm going to need help shelving all 1,400 books every week. We have a PTA that seems pretty active, so maybe I can bribe...er...convince some of them to help out!

3. Create fun centers for post-checkout activities. While some kids are browsing the shelves, the others need to be occupied in some way. Preferably in a fun way! Some centers I'm considering are puzzle centers, a reading "cave of wonders" (see my Pinterest board!), iPad activities, computer games...I have a lot to think about!

As previously stated, I am so excited to start this career and I fully accept the challenges that I am certain will arise! I doubt it will be the "dream come true" that I so often build up in my mind, but I get to work with kids, don't have to worry about grading things (which is AWESOME), and my classroom is huge and full of books!!