today's tech thought*

Part of my job (I think) is being aware of new technology, deciding if its worthwhile, and passing on that information. Within the last 10 minutes I have made two technology discoveries.

While attempting to read Book Thief on my Sony Reader while at the same time eating peanuts (after de-shelling them) during the commercials of a Project Runway rerun I observed that:

1) A designer on Project Runway was using a digital sketchpad, which just seems much more efficient than pencil/paper (think: designer can save, zoom, upload, and modify designs much more easily)

2) Digital readers allow for hands-free reading. If you are not a bookworm like me, you might wonder at the need for hands-free reading, and exhibit A would be the countless books on my bookshelf that have bright orange Cheeto fingerprints on the pages. Snacking and good books go hand in hands-free hand. 

*if modern marketing can destroy the English language by allowing companies to be named Krispy Kreme, Qwest, and anything Korner, then I stand by my right to abuse capitalization protocol in the title of this post.

15 Feb 2010

Elementary Internship Day 1 (sort-of):

Today is President's Day, so it is an unofficial beginning. However, as always happens when I check my school mail on the weekend, my mind is mindful of the upcoming week.  Most importantly, my principal e-mailed out the 2010-2011 school year budget allocations she had received via e-mail from the district.  I was very surprised to see the projected enrollment is up from this year, with our bumper crop of kindergarteners* this year moving up to first grade, making room for yet another bumper crop of kindergarteners*. 

I was the proud recipient of the duty of "Prep Schedule Creator" at the beginning of the year, totally by default (and let me tell you, that in itself could be the inspiration of many darkly-colored PG-13 blog posts) so immediately after my being pleasantly surprised about the up in allocations is the realization that we may need more specialist allocation (as it is, we're almost all 0.8 FTE), and I know that within a few days I'll be asked to start rough-drafting what the schedule will look like for next year. Yeesh, I wonder if I can push that off until April.

*Confused as to the proper spelling of multiple kindergarten students, as seen in the above blog. Spell check suggested either kindergartners or kindergardeners. I may have to resort to "kindergarten students" but that is just so long.

Home Stretch

I'm about a month in to my final quarter for completing my library media certification, as well as nearing the end of my 3rd year as a probationary teacher in Minneapolis (which means if all goes well I'll have tenure after this year. . . actually when I receive my contract for the 10-11 school year). A big part of that is journalling and reflecting on my experience, which will explain the sudden jump in blog posts starting now. My elementary internship will take place at my own school, under myself (which might seem weird but I do have a lot to learn from myself). I tend to have a running dialogue in my brain throughout the day, which, yes, often becomes outside of my brain in the form of talking to myself. So I am not much daunted by the idea of reflecting. I am more daunted about finding 3 solid weeks (120 hours) in which to complete my self-internship. If I were smart I'd wait until April, but it would be nice to be done sooner rather than later, as I'm already a bit shocked that March is only 2 weeks away. 

So, in other words, I'm officially starting my elementary internship with this post. I should have started last week, there was a lot going on. But it was sort of a practice week, in a way, I upped that mental dialogue and discovered a lingering cynical aftertaste that bothers me.

Loss

Losing a loved author is truly like losing a friend. Many great authors seem to put a bit of their own soul into their books, so any fan can gain an understanding of who that author is as a person, possibly more than they know many of their own friends or relatives. Of course the depth of the soul-leaving is heightened when a memoir writer like Frank McCourt passes away. 

J.D. Salinger passed away a few days ago at the age of 91, and although he was not one of my favorite authors, I respected his work and point of view. So losing J.D. Salinger was like losing a wise professor who probably didn't know my name, wouldn't recognize me if we passed on the street, but whose lectures made an impact on my point of view and flavored the lecture style of all my other professors. 

Opinionated

Now, I've always known that I have strong opinions, that I have a hard time not sharing and defending, however when it comes to my opinions on my own profession and on my daily routine (otherwise known as reflections) I have been oddly outwardly silent. But all of the sudden I have a post-it with a list of blog topics and reflections, and I actually find myself scripting posts throughout my day. 

And of course I have an opinion why.

This is my third year as a school librarian.* My first year, I was sick and pregnant and rather shell-shocked by the career switch to school librarian from 7th grade math teacher. My second year I was overwhelmed by having 2 kids, switching to a school with a longer job description, and starting the Library Media Education certification progress through MN State University, Mankato. So now it's my third year. I'm still sick a lot, I still have two kids, I work more than I did last year, and I'm just entering my fifth-straight quarter and internship at MNSU. I've learned a few things about my profession and myself in the last three years. I'll spare you all but the most important; I love my job. 

If I wasn't a teacher, I couldn't bear to leave my kids with their grandma during the week. No, that's not true. I didn't feel that way when I was a math teacher. If I didn't have the pleasure of working in a school Media Center, I couldn't bear to leave my kids during the week, nor could I push myself to finish my LME certification. I enjoy my classes because I enjoy the topics. I enjoy my long list of job responsibilities because I enjoy the tasks (and, no, my principal isn't reading this). And although I did have a few shirts sporting the irrational number Pi, never before would I have loved to have my profession advertised so much to be drooling over the merchandise on this website.

I'm quite smugly proud to be a librarian, and I'm finally growing into the librarian mantle. 

*note: school librarian vs. library media specialist is a topic listed on said post-it note

From here to there

I've had to really work on transitions, especially with the younger kids. Classically, transition from one activity to another is the hardest time for students to stay on-task, so I've really been working on how to minimize the stress of moving from here to there to wherever in the media center. When I had a full-time assistant a few years ago, I could manage student behavior during book check-out time while my assistant handled the checking-out (and most of the library maintenance). This year, with budget cuts I only have an assistant in the media center for 2 hours each day, inconveniently during the times that I have older students. 

I'm finally realizing that I have to be supremely structured about book check-out time, otherwise chaos ensues. My chance to observe my colleague Juanita James (at Pillsbury) enabled me to see how she handles her time with no help whatsoever. Once she got her kids settled in the project for the day, she dismissed groups to go check out books and bopped back and forth from working students to the circulation desk. I tried this a bit with my 4th graders last year, and it was fairly effective, however the layout of my media center with the computer lab a good piece away from the bookshelves made it nearly impossible to flutter between two groups of kids. So, I've trained. And had to create projects that make it easy for students to work independently (or get help from classmates) while I check out books. 

Sometimes that's more detailed than it seems necessary. For example, today I had to break up a group of first graders into thirds so that I could show them where books in their reading level were stored, and rely on my superb grouping skills (taking a third of the sassy kids with me in each group) so that the remaining workers were relatively well behaved.  It actually felt less chaotic than usual, and enabled me to help kids find books they like on a more individual basis, which I haven't had time to do before.  

Its definitely a work-in-progress, but I'm seeing progress.

Contemporary Angst

I'm reading The Bell Jar again. The intro by Frances McCullough struck me with some very interesting points. Plath's novel would not be half as interesting (or sad) if she hadn't killed herself shortly after its publication. Similarly, Anne Frank's Diary wouldn't be nearly as fascinating (or sad) if she had survived the Holocaust. It may, in fact, never have seen eyes other than Anne's aging ones.

Sometimes outside influences or knowledge of a story or author greatly influence our take on the story itself. 

That may be the same reason I have no interest in seeing any movies starring Tom Cruise. Outside information has tainted my view of his portrayed characters.

I do like the sad books. The ones that don't seem sad, that is (and there IS a difference). 

Sad books that don't seem sad 

(you know you should be sad, but are enjoying yourself too much):

The Bell Jar -Plath

The Diary of Anne Frank -Frank

White Oleander -Fisch

Angela's Ashes -McCourt

The Glass Castle -Walls

Cold Mountain -Frazier