GIFSL* 65: from top stand-up comedians. Yes, really!

Photo used under a Creative Commons license

I am happy to get ideas and inspiration from wherever I can find them, and so clicked through on a Twitter link to read Michael Bierut's design column on Seven Things Designers Can Learn From Stand Up Comics.

What did I find?  Seven things teacher librarians re-imagining their libraries and looking for design ideas and inspiration and all sorts of things can learn from stand up comics.  Really truly.

This is the brief version, with my own comments. 

1. It's all about the basics.  Librarywise, stuff being shelved and findable.  A welcoming, helpful atmosphere and friendly staaff.  A library that encourages and inspires.  Resources and services that the kids want and need.  You know.  So do the kids
2. Once you've mastered the basics, make the work your own.  Every school library, like every classroom, bears the stamp of the personality of the teacher/teacher librarian in charge of it and responsible for it.  The art and science of teaching is a juggle of personality and knowledge and human relations and all sorts of other alchemies.  I know, in another library space, that I wouldn't do exactly what I have done at my present school.  I know that another teacher librarian, in my current library, wouldn't do things the same either.  It's not about better or worse, but different.  Playing to your strengths, with the goal of making it as effective as you can for the kids.
3. Respect your audience.  That's kids, and teachers, and parents.  Kids, because sometimes they're so easy to respect, and sometimes difficult to respect: although I have found that exquisite, courteous interest from a teacher librarian can completely discombobulate a noxious student, opening the way to achieving a positive outcome for both.  Teachers can be irritating (late and lost resources, forgotten bookings etc) but like anything, there's a story both sides (teacher librarians can be irritating too: let me count the ways...or not; you know).  I'm not keen on a them and us mentality.  It's us, all teachers (whether teacher librarians or other classroom teachers) working together.
4. Know your tools.  The standard stuff - cataloguing and other organisational tools.  The teaching tools - methods and strategies and ideas.  More resources in print and digital form and more than we have ever had before.  The tools of character and style - patience, interest in kids, enthusiasm... We have a huge toolkit, as big and Tardis-like as the mother's bag in the Swiss Family Robinson (I've never forgotten that - whatever they needed, she'd popped in that sailcloth bag before the shipwreck).
5. Honour your craft.  Work hard, create challenges for yourself, aim to never coast and always improve.  Use your personal learning network, your willingness to be a lifelong learner hunting out new ideas from blogs, Twitter, email lists, the media, anywhere you can. 
6. Don't be afraid of failure.  Not everything I try works out.  Last week I planned an exciting lesson and realistically, on reviewing how it went, would barely give myself a pass grade.  And a prac teacher watched it.  So, why didn't it work as well as I'd planned and hoped?  How can I do better?  If we don't model coping with failure, valuing failure, using it as a launch pad, how can we expect kids to learn how important it is, learn to be resilient, learn to be brave?
7. Finally, never forget you have a special gift.  How much fun is it to work in a school library?  Huge fun!  Barack Obama in a speech to librarians some years ago, talked about libraries as being a magic threshold.  We not only get to cross that magic threshold each day, we get to influence the experience of everyone who crosses it too.  Teaching is an amazing gift - that alchemy when it works, the pleasure of the company of so many different, engaging personalities and dreams and ideas.  Lucky lucky lucky (as I remind myself on the days when I end up tired and dispirited; because tomorrow is another day, and plenty of good things happen even on the tough days).

Click on to read the article in full here, with Michael Bierut's designer observations rather than my teacher librarianish ones:
http://observersroom.designobserver.com/oblog/post/seven-things-designers-can-learn-from-stand-up-comics/27038/

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL= good ideas for school libraries.  An ongoing series on this blog.  Find more of them by clicking here.

GIFSL* 63: Cheap Bookmark Week (Thursday)

Kids have an ongoing fascination with name definitions - hardly surprising, as they are, as in the subliminal story of Possum Magic and a gazillion other books, discovering and refining who they are in the world.  I myself as a teacher librarian have had enormous fun solemnly assuring Kid A that the name of their best friend/ boyfriend/girlfriend could well mean "Viking vomit", but if they looked up this wonderful book it might be able to reassure them..... Oh miss, it DOESN'T mean that!

Parents have an enthusiasm (or used to, maybe most use the internet baby name sites now?) for baby name books, which become ripe for the culling when their baby-naming days are over.  Which is why you don't have to hunt extra extra hard to find a baby name book in an op shop/charity shop/garage sale.

This one cost me a whole $3.  571 pages.  Two bookmarks per page for most of it, four for others.

 That's over 500 bookmarks for peanuts (571 pages is of course half that number of actual paper pages) with a bit of guillotining.

Find New Characters At Your Library

There's a theme to which this could be tied, easy-peasy.  Book promotion ideas based around characters.  Have you met Severus Snape?  What about Harry Crewe?  and on and on with book characters as a way into encouraging students to try reading something new.

I know some teacher librarians prefer to laminate bookmarks - yes, it's more durable, lets you have two different sides stuck together and so forth.  I mostly don't laminate our bookmarks, for several reasons.  One is cost - we hand out hundreds of bookmarks in any given week, and laminating each would add significant cost; I'd rather be able to hand out as many as possible without worrying about how much they're costing, as I'm on a tight budget.  What I save on laminating can buy more books/resources.  Another is time - running the laminator, guillotining/trimming the results etc. all takes time.  A third is value - kids are kids are kids, and even if we give them a precious lovely laminated bookmark, I'm not so sure that most of them would treasure it as they ought.  Better a shorter-lifespan item that I don't have to stress about and they don't either (much easier to get a new bookmark with a new loan than have a 'dragon in pearls' interrogate them about the lovely bookmark they got last time, where is it, they should have brought it, well OK here's another but you take care of it this time, etc etc).  As I said in my first post, these are bookmarks I can hand out like confetti with a cheery smile on my face, and ones that can bring a smile to a kid's face because they're amusing/quirky/unexpected/fun.

I did have a couple of girls who were enquiring about when our next 'new' bookmarks would be out - and nobody was more surprised than me to find that they had a complete collection of the themed cardboard bookmarks I devise - Valentine's Day, Harmony Day, ANZAC Day, thrillers, holiday borrowing, winter reading etc.... It was heartwarming to know they liked them that much.  But for most of our kids, a bookmark isn't valued/collected like that.  But they do use them and appreciate the gesture/convenience/courtesy/kindness/fun of them, and that's the most important thing. 

These bookmarks aren't just on a stand on the counter, we put one with every loan - wand the loan, stamp the due date, dezap the security tag and add a bookmark, that's our loan routine, whichever of us is doing it.  It's an active gesture.  Here you are.  Enjoy.  Here's a bookmark to help you (and amuse/interest you too - I've never had one that just has the name of the library on it and no more.  It's too valuable real estate not to make it work harder and smarter).  These bookmarks are part of our library's PR.

Tune in tomorrow for one of my favourite cheap bookmark ideas (if you know about it, you'll be able to jump the gun on your colleagues who don't....)

Cheers

Ruth

Isaac Asimov on libraries: a space ship & a gateway

In 1971, an enterprising children's librarian in Troy, Michigan, wrote to dozens of important people to ask for a letter to the town's children, celebrating the opening of the new library.

Isaac Asimov was one of the 97 respondents.  Isn't this great?

You can read more about the Letters to the Children of Troy here, a few on Flickr here and there are pdfs of all the letters here.  Some names I know, like Edward Ardizzone and First Lady Pat Nixon, and others I don't, but it will be fun to take time to read them and see what they say about books and libraries and reading.  And then see how I can use these ideas forty years later for the library here.

Cheers

Ruth

PS.  This is the letter from Dr Seuss.  Both letters are from the Flickr set linked above.

Found this via Twitter.

The secret life of libraries

(The Mitchell Library in Sydney:: photo used under Creative Commons license)

From various sources on my Twitter stream, I have been following the stories about library closures in the UK.  The Guardian has a thoughtful, thought-provoking and sometimes rather amusing article about the secret life of libraries; it's by Bella Bathurst.  They have always had a dusty image – and never more so than now – but libraries are at the heart of our communities. With the axe about to fall, Bella Bathurst reveals just what we're about to lose.

Some more quotes:

Discussing the types of books stolen in various parts of the country, she observes: among all communities and in all parts of Britain, our old passion for self-improvement remains vivid.
...
But the cuts also underscore a deeper confusion about what libraries are: what they do, who they serve, and – in an age where the notion of books itself seems mortally flawed – why we still need them. What's the point of buildings filled with print? Isn't all our wisdom electronic now? Shouldn't libraries die at their appointed time, like workhouses and temperance halls?
...
The great untold truth of libraries is that people need them not because they're about study and solitude, but because they're about connection.
...

(Seattle Public Library::photo used under Creative Commons license)

...reading seems to be becoming an increasingly alien concept for children. "The pace of life is different now, and people expect art to happen to them. Music and film do that, a CD will do that, but you have to make a book happen to you. It's between you and it. People can be changed by books, and that's scary. When I was working in the school library, I'd sometimes put a book in a kid's hands and I'd feel excited for them, because I knew that it might be the book that changed their life. And once in a while, you'd see that happen, you'd see a kind of light come on behind their eyes. Even if it's something like 0.4% of the population that that ever happens to, it's got to be worth it, hasn't it?"

The article concludes thus:
The libraries' most powerful asset is the conversation they provide – between books and readers, between children and parents, between individuals and the collective world. Take them away and those voices turn inwards or vanish. Turns out that libraries have nothing at all to do with silence.


It's a terrific article, very much worth reading in its entirety.  I want to think some more about its ideas, such as connection, and conversation, and art happening, the sort of engagement involved in the act of reading.  This week, as every week, I will have the joy and pleasure and sheer bloody fun of putting a book in the hands of a kid and watching their eyes light up, or (they are teenagers after all) their body language just relax that small bit that is (in reality) a decibels-loud acknowledgement that the book and the transaction and the library were good things for them.  And so many of them have fabulous smiles, don't they?
 
Cheers
 
Ruth

GIFSL* 58: Enchantment and your school library

@brainpicker on Twitter, and the associated blog Brain Pickings, provide a constant supply of inspiration and ideas on a huge range of topics.  Not narrowcast "teacher librarian-focused stuff", but all sorts of things from left field and out there and what about?, and hey, here's something to think about.  I love foraging among the wider world to bring back good things to inform my teaching (eg. this blog! - see the intro reference to a flypaper mind).

Take this infographic from a recently published business book, Enchantment: the art of changing hearts, minds and actions, by Guy Kawasaki.  Not something I've tripped over in education circles, but a great lens to use in thinking about our business as teacher librarians, promoting our libraries and their services.

Read the whole blog entry on Brain Pickings here, including links to an enchantment aptitude test, an interview with the author, and more. 

As school library staffing is being challenged, our work as teacher librarians evaluated, the ill-informed happy to spout that 'it's all on the internet now' and so forth, this infographic is, to me, valuable professional reflection for considering what I do and why and how, and how I can do it better.

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL: good ideas for school libraries

What is a good book? Nancy Pearl's answer

Nancy Pearl, yup, the one that's the model for the librarian action doll, was recently named Librarian of the Year.  In Library Journal's article about this, Nancy discusses her idea of 'a good book'.  I've highlighted a couple of bits that particularly caught my attention.

What is a “good book”?



As part of the author tour for her newest book, Book Lust To Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers (Sasquatch Bks.; LJ Xpress Reviews, 10/8/10), Pearl went to Westport, CT, to “talk about good books” to librarians and library patrons. “By good,” she says, “I don’t mean any literary canon, but just books that you might enjoy. A good book is a book someone likes and a bad book is one they don’t like. When someone doesn’t like a book, it doesn’t mean they will never like it. They don’t like it for that moment,” says Pearl.


“We shouldn’t be afraid to suggest a wide variety of books to people. I think libraries are the last democratic institution, small ‘d’ democratic. It wasn’t always that way. Librarians were gatekeepers.... When it comes to readers’ advisory, though, I think we need to validate a patron’s reading,” Pearl says.


“When people ask, ‘What should I read next?’ we should always try to give them three books. One should be pretty close to the one they loved. The second should be a little bit different, a bit of a stretch. The third book is the real stretch book, the reach book. The book they never would have found because it is nonfiction and they only look at Westerns,” Pearl says.

“People come into the library and head straight to the section where they have found the most pleasure.... It is our job to take them around to the rest,” she ­continues.

“I do believe that the more well-written books you read, the less tolerance you are going to have for bad writing, but the hardest thing to define is a well-written book. When someone tells you they liked a book because ‘I love well-written books,’ they usually mean books like award winners, for instance the Pulitzers. Those books win awards for the writing. You don’t have to understand what somebody means by ‘well-written,’ but you have to go beyond the awards we all know and see which books won the Governor General’s Award in Canada, or [Britain’s] Man Booker Prize. No one who reads for the story will say, ‘I like well-written books.’ They will talk about page-turners, books you stay up too late to finish,” Pearl ­concludes.

Lots of food for thought there.  I'm going to try that three book idea... I think I've been more likely, when kids ask, to find three similar rather than that three book progression.  Not always, but often enough that I should be trying to extend myself, as well as my readers.  Always good to get a new perspective!  Read the complete article here.
 
Cheers
 
Ruth

PS.

A few more thought-provoking quotes from the article:

...she is a passionate and diligent advocate for old and important library ideas: literacy, reading, entertainment, enjoyment.... She is neither snobbish about the old ways nor disdainful of new ideas. Ask her about audio or ebooks or gaming, and you’ll get an earful about the importance of stories told in their myriad forms,” says Janes.
*
says Pearl. “My fear is that we don’t recognize or will forget that library service is like a three-legged stool: information, outreach and programming, and reading.”
*
The book will never disappear as a piece of narrative fiction or nonfiction, according to Pearl, but it is obvious that the format, the way it is delivered, is changing. She knows people will always need escape, stories, and ways to look at the world through the experiences of others.


“I think the more you read, the better person you become, because you can see how other people respond, the way they think, and the way they behave in various circumstances,” Pearl asserts.
*
“When you read a book, it is just you and the author. Even when people read the same title, everybody reads a different book.... When you listen to a book, a third person enters the equation,” Pearl says. “It is a different experience.”

GIFSL* no.56: Valentine's Day 2011

What's a teacher librarian to do to fancy up the library for Valentine's Day? (note: as ever, not just for pretty's sake, but to change the space, add excitement and buzz and encourage reading, to get them through the door.)

Cast your peepers over this idea:

That's made from free stuff, folks.  Catalogue/magazine pages.  The tutorial (and source of the picture) is here  but it's not at all a hard idea to play with.  Is it?  Maybe you've got kids who'd like to help?  Maybe you could have some with the names of favourite books/characters on them?  Maybe...

Go play.  Have fun.  Make your library special for your kids, so they say WOW and love being there.  Isn't that how it should be? And won't that be fun for you too?

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = good ideas for school libraries

What is a Library? (1)

Libraries are about books, but they're also about much more than books. They're about ideas and invention and imagination and play and curiosity and wonder and hope. Yes, libraries are all about hope. They are houses of possibilities.



Phil Shapiro, Towards a National Transition Plan for Libraries, in PCWorld
So, each one of your working days you and I walk into a house of possibilities.  So what can you (and I) do today to make it so, and make it better?

Think I might find a way of displaying this quote in my library (could be handy for one of my library pieces in the regular school newsletter, too).  I notice, on reflection, that some of the words are in my word walls already - imagine, wonder, hope.  Good.

In this article, Phil Shapiro is canvassing ideas about public libraries in the future - what they're for, how they might look, design considerations.  Worth reading.

Cheers

Ruth

Parent-Teacher Night: reflections, and 10 questions for your child's teacher

We've just had a parent-teacher night here.  I make a point of attending, as a member of the teaching staff.  I may not, in advance, have many (or any) appointments with parents - kids tend to make them with their class teachers.  But I'm not lonely.  A number of parents stop by to say hello - I was year adviser to one of their older children, or am mentor to one of their senior students now, so I hear how the older ones are going, talk about the ones still at school.  Some I'm able to help find other staff members (the kids may know what each of their teachers looks like, but parents need the name tags on the tables). 

And my colleagues see me there, part of the teaching staff, spending my afternoon and evening at school the same as they are.  Good library PR.  A couple of them refer parents to me, or include me in a discussion.  The principal knows I choose to attend; a couple of times he's brought parents to meet me who may have asked about or been appreciative of the library.  As I said, good library PR.  I also have home-made muffins and make a cuppa for the teachers in the faculty to which I belong - they're deep in interview after interview, and I can escape for a few minutes to make a cuppa and bring it to them at their desks.

I've had some teacher librarian colleagues rubbish the idea of attending parent-teacher night, for various reasons.  Me, I know it's my time, I know I probably don't HAVE to be there, but I choose to be there and am happy to demonstrate my professional commitment.  I've had a couple of colleagues ask, bewildered, why are you here?  But they know I am, and will be.  It's my choice, as a teacher.

Years ago I got one of the best bits of advice about parent-teacher night from an English teacher (who I now can recognise was one of my most important mentors in teaching): the parents want to hear something positive about their kids - whoever their kid may be.  It works for me.  It doesn't mean you can't get down to brass tacks when there are problems that need addressing, but it's a useful mindset for a productive, appreciated discussion.

Darcy Moore's excellent blog has a brilliant entry on ten questions he wishes parents would ask him:

How would your child’s teachers fare if asked these questions:


1. What is your educational philosophy?

2. How are you assisting our child to become a self-directed learner?

3. What professional reading are you undertaking at the moment?

4. What are you reading for fun?


5. How do you use technology as a tool to leverage learning in the classroom?

6. What online resources have you created for your class?

7. How do you assist students to learn about digital citizenship?

8. What professional networks and associations are you involved with regularly?


9. What observations can you offer about our child’s happiness at school?

10. What reflections can you make about our child’s growth as a learner and citizen this year?

Useful for one's own reflection/professional development.  Do read the full blog entry and comments (it's a blog worth following, as are his Tweets).
 
Cheers
 
Ruth

Libraries and librarians as sponsors of literacy

An excellent slideshow presentation from Buffy J. Hamilton.

Libraries and Librarians As Sponsors of Literacy

View more presentations from Buffy Hamilton.

Plenty of food for thought, for teachers as well as teacher librarians.  Found via Twitter.

Cheers

Ruth

Designed for Learning: school libraries

As you may know, I've been doing some presenting at conferences and staff development days on "Re-imagining your school library".  (Will be at MANTLE in May).

This 27 minute video (can't embed it, so click here to watch it) is from CILIP in the UK, and is all about the design and functions of 21st century libraries - showing spaces and possibilities, how students and library users find these, what they want, how library staff and teachers find these, what they want.... full of ideas, and SO positive about the IMPORTANCE of school libraries now and into the future as learning spaces.

Watch it.  Definitely.

I'm going to have to watch it more than once, to unpack the ideas and think about how to use them.

Cheers

Ruth

Found via Twitter @sandynay

GIFSL* 53: Signage: Welcome to fiction

Here's the fiction section one recent afternoon, at the end of the day.  A class has just been in for reading and borrowing, which explains the books on the table.  I'm always pleased to see them disarranged like this, not neatly as I set them out at the start of the period, because it means they've been looked at, picked over, and, for some, borrowed.  (That's why I didn't tidy them before taking the photo - the 'birdseed' caught some 'birds', ha!).  The array put out depends on the class/year group and if the teacher is focusing on a particular genre or topic.

I wanted to improve that back wall.  The Harry Potter hanging cubes were looking a bit faded from being there for a couple of years, and I still had a couple of Welcome signs from a foray to Reverse Garbage - the same aqua style as that in the reading retreat downstairs, near the library entrance foyer.  Took them home for a wash (as they used to be street signs, hanging in Sydney streets with traffic and weather and so forth) and one of my school assistants sewed hanging sleeves on the back top of each.  Two dowel rods, a couple of hooks...

Better, I think.  I like the message for our library users, and the repetition of it.

I utterly understand that this was a lucky find, and you may not be able to have exactly the same banners.  But they are makeable, with fabric; or you could use preprimed canvases, such as those we've used for our major area signs.  And keep your eyes open for things with library potential, because there are lots to be found, in places like Reverse Garbage, and op shops, and garage sales, and things you see in other libraries, and the world all around.

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL good ideas for school libraries

When I'm reading, I do one thing...

The blog Smart Bitches, Trashy Books is a most useful source for information and discussion about e-books and e-reading devices.  In a January entry, Sarah said this:

But when I'm reading, I do one thing and one thing only...

...and while that may seem bleeding obvious, it's also pertinent, relevant and insightful.  When the kids we teach are accustomed to - expect to? - do multiple things at once, enabled by computers and technology and the internet and so forth, reading remains something that requires focus and attention.  Strikes me that this has usefulness beyond the fun/pleasure of reading: it gives kids a different experience, an opportunity to learn a different skill.  Another skill, along with multitasking.  Getting lost in a book - always excellent.  Being able to focus, also useful.

Here's an extract from the entry, Reading, Writing and Technology: Changing Readers and Reading:

If Cashmore is correct in his predictions for multifunction devices, and if, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - and Flannery O’Connor - insist, everything that rises must converge, the possibility of more functional programs targeted at diverse activities meant for a single device means that readers will have a lot to choose from when they actually sit down to read. As new multi-function devices are appearing in the realm of nearly possible and almost on sale like ships on the horizon line, I find myself looking again and again at how I read, what I read, and whether it’s changed at all.

The following aspect of my reading habits has not changed: reading is one of the very few times I do Only One Thing. Anyone with a uterus knows what I’m talking about: I multitask. Most of the time, I’m researching, writing, using Twitter, writing email, and listening to music. Or, I’m washing bottles and plates, making lunches, serving and preparing dinner, talking to Hubby, refereeing fights over Lego Sir Topham Hat, and possibly also snacking. I never do just one thing at a time... 


But when I’m reading, I do one thing and one thing only because I can’t read and focus on anything else.

For that reason, I adore the comfort and simplicity of a dedicated electronic reading device. I don’t want to have things beeping and alerting me and tempting me to Google whether the price has dropped on that giant thing I wanted. I want to do the one thing that restores my mental batteries and gives me the utter mental isolation and thoughtful peace I crave when I’m exhausted: just reading, nothing but reading, and only, exceptionally reading.

One thing we've been working on in relation to this in our library is the creation of our reading lounge areas, so kids can relax, be comfortable and get lost in reading.  We now have enough comfortable, soft seats for every student in a class of thirty to be sitting in one.  A few still prefer the floor, and we still have the floor cushions; but with every student seated comfortably, they settle down, relax and read far more effectively.  See? It's not just 'decorating'.   Comfort is a tool and a strategy.

At break times, I'm a bit of a mean cow: the reading lounge areas are for [book] reading - the laptoppers are welcome to settle at the tables/desks, but I move them on from the reading lounges, so the screens and moving images and (often) discussions are not a distraction.  (It's also ergonomically a bit smarter for the laptoppers, too).

Cheers

Ruth

Stocktake, and lemons from lemonade

...so much to do, so little time (the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, if I'm not mistaken...).

In the lemons from lemonade department, on the first day of stocktake we had an invasion of workmen to fix roof leaks - scaffolding, bingety-bangety, oh me oh my and can you please move those three tall double-sided (full) fiction shelf units?

So we did.

And put them somewhere else, temporarily, you know.

Only we looked at where we'd put them, and said, AHA! (actually, I said I had an idle thought, and my school assistants, who know exactly what that means, looked at me with a mixture of suspicion and anticipation...)

If we put them there, we can put the comfy seats upstairs over here, and wouldn't it be great to have another reading retreat, if we can scrounge some more chairs, and look how the sightlines work, and yes we'll have to move all the fiction books, but that will freshen it up too, different things in different places, kids will find books they haven't found before....

Lemons from lemonade.  The roof leak is fixed and painted, I'm thinking out ways to scrounge more chairs, we've moved the fiction books into this new configuration, and heigh-ho, stocktake goes on.  (I'll take photos when it's set up properly).  My school assistants and I are happy with the prospects and opportunities of the new arrangement of furniture.

Tomorrow is the Year 6 into 7 orientation, and all of those kids come through the library so it's a chance to say hello, welcome them to the library, get their photos taken for their library cards, and get an initial peg on what that cohort is like.

The usual busy end-of-year!  Hope yours is going well too.

Cheers

Ruth

Work Experience

We have a work experience Year 10 student this week.  I remember a rotten work experience experience at a local library when I was in Year 10, so I don't want this to be the same for this student (he's interested in librarian rather than teacher librarian work, but things couldn't be squared with the local/TAFE/uni libraries, so he's come here).  Already we've scooted over basic loans/returns, the gist of stocktake (which we aren't doing yet, but it came up in conversation), library philosophy (eg. the Darien Statements), book banning and the big question: if he's after a forty year career in libraries, will they last that long? (and all the associated interesting why/why nots, in this digital age of Googling, Google Books and so forth).
.
It's taking up some time - not something I'd want to accommodate every week - but it's also good in that it's making me articulate various library things I may otherwise just think about, and giving input to me from what he sees and thinks and wonders about libraries.  This morning he wrote me a few paragraphs about libraries - why he wants to work in them, what he sees as their purpose, etc - and I'll get him to write about the same topics again at week's end, hoping that I'll have expanded his ideas and understanding in that time.
.
Cheers

Ruth
.

The happy life of teacher librarians: Busy

Today I:

• invented television (well, not quite, but you could not get past the crowd in the foyer this morning) (pics next week, OK?  We're still refining it...)
• were busy with classes all day (except last period, which was quiet, and a grace moment to draw breath)
• found books by cover description, story description, doyourememberItoldyouaboutitlastweekmiss description, findmesomethingelseIlikebecauseyoudidlasttimeandIdid, scattered them on tables for browsing, found them on shelves to 'hand-sell', went from adventure to insects to Into the Wild to The Endless Steppe  to alovestorywithadventuresmiss..
• read more NaNo stories (my favourite phrase from one girl's tale: "We belong together - you are the cheese and I am the macaroni" - PRICELESS! - and watched them being written (I'm behind and have to catch up, so I have at least five kids who are going to ask me on Monday if I'm on target with my word count - hope this will goad me to write enough!)
• thought about the bookmarks for the latest theme (mentioned yesterday) but didn't quite get to them - and then luckily found some NaNo ones from last year which will do till I get the new ones designed)
• typed the last two paragraphs of a student's scholarship application (because I type at around 80wpm and he doesn't and the bell had gone and another student was waiting for the computer) and suggested some polishing he was pleased with
• was delighted to tell a kid from sport yesterday that the score he made was so improved that he'll be in the next group up next week - a quiet kid, he was so pleased!
• printed off a copy of my article in the current Scan, about re-imagining your library, to give to my Principal
• agreed to host a student for a week of work experience (couldn't get him in to the local council or tertiary library, unfortunately, and he really wants to experience library work)
• watched students enjoying the library, the cushions, the comforts, the books, the place...
• enjoyed the company of kids and teachers, their energy and laughter and individuality, scooting around the library during class time and lunchtime
• got to use one of my phrases for miscreants a number of times: when I catch a kid doing The Wrong Thing (and it's not a major evil and they're a kid who'll play along with this and respect the opportunity), I ask, do you want the short version or the long version?  Short, they usually say.  Don't! I say, and they and I know exactly what I mean without my going into a long spiel about what they and I know they shouldn't do.  And we exchange a look of agreement, and the matter is dealt with and done in a civilised way.  And I generally don't have to repeat myself, at least not with that kid.
• ate half of my lunch by day's end (and was glad for the weekly whole-staff morning tea)
• told a student how to be really boring when replying to inquisitive friends about something she can't talk about.  Demonstrated, too, and won a grin from her, and I hope a sense that the situation wasn't as dire as she had thought.
• checked our borrowing stats - we're still running at over 75% higher than the average of the last three years - woohoo!
• knew that I'm going to have to get stuck in to my NaNo novel or I won't get to 50,000 words by the end of November
• cheered for colleague Sue Pitt who was quoted in an article in the Daily Telegraph today about the Twilight phenomenon

(I'm sure the list above is not complete..Why not write out yours, and see all the fun you've had today?). 
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...and now it's the weekend.  Enjoy!
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Cheers
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Ruth
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PS. I forgot, I also wondered behind which of the built-in cupboards in my office a mouse has so inconsiderately died.  I know it's there, as its soul remains, at least on an olfactory level...and they always expire in inaccessible places...
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The happy life of teacher librarians: love your work

I know I bang on with the phrase, 'the happy life of teacher librarians'. I have of course all sorts of agendas for this, but one is to say, look, it can be HEAPS of fun to be a teacher librarian. An article by Charles Waterstreet in the Sydney Morning Herald on the weekend had an apt section quoting Kahlil Gibran:

...when pursuing a career, one should always choose one that coincides with passions, and not just with convenience, the wishes of parents or perhaps even financial security. If you have a job, then love the one you have.


The great Lebanese-born philosopher and poet Kahlil Gibran said it best:

Work is love made visible.


And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.


If you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.


And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.


And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

If we show by our actions and words and the atmosphere we create in our libraries every day that we are happy to be there, it cannot but make our libraries better places to work, better places to visit, more effective in our schools (and it kills off the disappointingly persistent cliche of the cranky librarian).  One of the most important things any teacher brings to a classroom is their enthusiasm for being there.  I know I'm not perfect on this - it's something I have to remember every day.

And thus one can continue working on the happy life of teacher librarians.

(Here endeth...)

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 44: : Duchamp seating for the masses...

Did you know that the artist Marcel Duchamp spent some of his working life as a librarian?  And that his 'readymade' work of art, Fountain, has (as more than one art teacher commented) a counterpart (homage? echo?) in my office?

No, not an exact replica.  Sheesh.  But this:

...is part of my office furniture that gets regular use.  I own these - bought them over time from op shops, junk shops, garage sales, wherever.  While I have a chair in my office for visitors, I quickly learned that you only need three or five kids telling you things and wanting to talk about cabbages and kings, or schoolwork, or the outrage of Disney buying Marvel, or whatever, to know that standard size chairs aren't the answer.  With these, my small office can seat five extra kids - and when they're not in use, the stools are Duchamped from the overhead beam.  Practical Art! (I'm happy to acknowledge that it was one of my school assistants who had the inspiration of hanging these up).

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I know not every teacher librarian has an office - but I do know that my glass box at the library entrance has become part of how I teach and work.  Can't count the number of times every day, every week, throughout the year, that I have conversations here, hunt things on the computer here, think through projects, advise, listen, offer tissues, dispense advice, dispense discipline, solve problems, encourage, mentor.... door open, door closed (sometimes it's so valuable to be able to close the door).  

I have a few oddities hung on the wall, too, personalising the space and providing conversation starters with kids and staff.  Sadly, I'm given to lying about them (yup, that old photo is Great Aunt Grace...).  Maybe one day I'll tell you about the photo that's part of the biggest lie - I've had a LOT of fun with that (and so have the kids who've worked it out and then participated in its perpetuation...!!)

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It's part of our work, though, isn't it?  The daily meeting and greeting and listening and engaging in lots of small ways, sometimes educational, sometimes welfare, often both.  Those mismatched stools earn their keep.

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = Good Ideas for School Libraries

The human strengths of libraries

From this wise, thought-provoking blog entry by Kathryn Greenhill:

I think our strengths over large ubiquitous sites like Amazon, Google and Wikipedia are – or should be:

• our deep, human knowledge of the people in our community who use us 
• our deep, human knowledge of people in our community who do not use us  
• our deep, human knowledge of the specific information resources needed by our community  
• our deep, human knowledge of how our community wants to find and discover information 
• our deep, human knowledge of locally produced information  
• our human ability to provide many different services to the same individual by our knowledge of them as people 
• our human ability to anticipate desires and to delight our local community  
• our buildings as a social hub for our local community

 Some of my own thoughts: the kids who come in to say hello, or who want someone to say hello to them.  The kids who want to share the book they love, the thing that's happened, something they've made, something to be celebrated or mourned or shared or asked about.  All the body language and tone of voice stuff that's not the exact words being uttered, but how they're being said, and maybe why, and therefore how we might/could/should react.  The place our library can have in the school's community and events (I'm just gearing up for our regular contribution to Spirit Week at the end of this term).  All those corridor/hallway interactions with staff that can lead to more in relation to the library.
 
I love how blog entries like this one from Kathryn Greenhill help me to think about my work, and how to do it better.  Go read the whole thing.
 
Cheers
 
Ruth 

School Library Annual Report

Given that there are inevitable differences between a private school in another country and a government school in Oz, nevertheless there is food for thought in Dianne McKenzie's annual report for her school in Hong Kong.  Blog entry is here, including a ten point rationale; link to the annual report is here.  Whether or not you launch full-fledged into this, just going through the thinking/writing process for yourself would be a useful exercise and a way to begin.

Right now, we're in the middle of our school year: not, perhaps, a bad time at all to take stock of progress so far and make plans for the second half of the school year.  I know we've achieved some things we planned, AND some things we didn't plan but ran with anyway (flexible is good); and still have things to do.  It's good to reflect on achievements, consider the things that didn't work so well, and move on forward.

Cheers

Ruth