Welcoming the Stranger

"And to any new fans we made along the way, I say welcome to our party!  

It's just starting to get going."

-Richard Marx

In the midst of running around today--I have gained a sixth grade English class this semester and have been given a classroom that needs to be set up before the kids enter--I popped back into the library to get a camera so I could then go take photos of Ms. Haderle's posters so that I can recreate them.  In teaching, we share, what can I say?  When I began my work as a librarian I gave all my awesome posters and stuff away to teachers who would use them.  So anyway,  there I am running around, and I pop into the library and a beautiful woman was waiting for me.

"Hi," she said.  "I'm Vanessa Adams.  I'm your new library aide."

Holy cow!  They district did it!  They actually (finally...) hired a library aide for us!  This is really exciting for a number of reasons, the first being that if I'm now going to be teaching for two periods a day, the library would be completely closed during that time without a library aide.   This conversation was heartbreaking for me--every time a teacher asked to bring in a class during periods 3 or 4 I had to turn them away!  This meant books were not getting into the hands of the students who had that teacher.

By the way, getting books into student hands is my number one priority.

This also means that I can divide my work up.  Instead of me doing all the library programming, creating workshops on technology, research, or literacy for teachers to bring their students,  the website, teaching two classes, helping anyone who needs to get into the book room, and all the other stuff--and checking in and out books and making sure the books are shelved, I don't have to worry about the book part any more.  She also said she can help with fixing broken books and starting to import the ones that have been patiently waiting to be put in the library.  These are things that I have let slide due to the overwhelming amount of other activities I do.

So, let me introduce you to Ms. Vanessa:

Ms. Vanessa comes to us from Broad Acres Elementary School and is very excited to be here and work with a new staff.  She loves kids and enjoys reading--and is really looking forward to reading middle school books rather than elementary books.  Her favorite book genre is fiction and family stories.  Her favorite book is Let the Circle Be Unbroken by Mildred Taylor.

Please come by and introduce yourself to Ms. Vanessa!  She is a much needed and very valuable resource to our school.

Happy Reading!

Love and the Time of Cholera

"All you need is love!"

-The Beatles

I am wearing my green Wild About Reading t-shirt today.  It says "Daniel Webster Middle School, Los Angeles, California" on the back.  I got it because I read a million words a few years back.

Everyone else is wearing red today, it seems.  Grinning students are carrying around stuffed bears and bunnies, more chocolate than they can eat, balloons, and roses of every color imaginable.  I saw a black-leather jacket clad dark haired boy give his equally dramatically dressed, heavily eye-linered friend three black roses.

The main office is filled with contraband items: cupcakes, cookies, balloons, etc. captured from loving celebrants who might get them back at the end of the day.  Ms. Meekins did not need to decorate this year!  Valentine's Day is in full swing.

I'm not even present to that.

What I am present to is the fact that thirty-seven students, faculty, and staff have managed to read one million words in the space of just one semester.  This is more than we have had at the end of first semester ever.  This is thrilling to me, especially in light that there were times when Accelerated Reader, the program that we use to track student reading, was down.

California state educational standards expect that by eighth grade, students ought to be reading one million words per year.  If you think about it, that's about the entire Harry Potter Series, with a Twilight or two thrown in.  Those are huge books!  And, if you continue to think about it, reading them all in one semester is quite an accomplishment.

On February 24 during lunch, we will have a reading celebration for all the thirty-seven.  Each person who met their goal will dine on pizza and bottled water as they are called up in front of the group one by one to much applause and given a certificate and a t-shirt.  We will take a group photograph that will go on our website and be displayed proudly in the library.  This is a big deal.

The following faculty members joined in the fun: Mr. Higgins, Ms. Orendorff, Mr. Brener, Ms. Strong, and, of course, yours truly (I WILL have a Wizard of Oz t-shirt).

I also want to give a shout out to one of our paraprofessionals who joined us in this endeavor.  Ms. Smith--who also sang and played the guitar for the show we put on for our students last semester--particularly stands out to me because she participates in school activities.  Paras don't usually get so involved, and this is Ms. Smith's third year joining us for pizza and a shirt.  Way to go, Ms. Smith!

So today I celebrate not by wearing red and eating chocolate (ok, tonight my husband is making me a special lamb dinner and I'm surprising him with cupcakes--but that's after school...) but by doing the prep work to reward our readers so that reading stays special and precious to them.  This work makes my heart feel good.  And that's really the point of today, right?

Happy Reading!

We Got It Covered!

"Ask, and it will be given to you."

The Christian Bible

In November I wrote a Donors Choose project for a Document Reader.   With the help of many gift certificates, in January I got it.  Well, it has arrived.

I am totally excited to have new media in the library.  For those of you who have not experienced the awesomeness that is a document reader, I ask you to think of the overhead projectors that teachers have used in their classrooms for the last 20 - 25 years.  An overhead projector is a light bulb that shines through dark writing on a piece of plastic, and then projects that onto a screen.  You need a bunch of sheets of plastics to use them, although I know teachers who just wrote on the glass.  What this means is that if you want to read something to a class that they can see, you need to create transparencies first, which wastes both time and plastic.

A document reader, however, is simply a camera that you attach to an LCD projector, that then projects whatever you put under it onto a screen.  Like homework that you're correcting.  Or a book that you're reading to the class--so that they can see the words.  Or an old copy of the Declaration of Independence that you don't want to pass around, because student hands are often sticky.  Or anything to make teaching more accessible to students.  It does not require you to create transparencies.  It requires you turn it on and then place something underneath a camera.

At this point, I've used it while teaching my two classes, during workshops and meetings, and with my after-school class.  I have literally used it every day I have had it.

I am thrilled that the Webster community--and anyone who contributed falls into that category--thought that this was important enough to place in our library.  Thank you.

Happy Reading!