Positive Phone Calls

When I was a Deaf Ed teacher it was very easy for me to stay in touch with my students' parents. I never had more than 8 students at a time. And I was pretty close to all of them. It was easy to make a positive phone call. 

When texting became a thing it became even easier for me to stay in touch with my students' parents. None of them ever abused my phone number. They only contacted me when it was necessary. 

Now that I'm a librarian it's been harder for me to reach out to parents. I don't have students' phone numbers so if I do decide to call a parent I have to contact the teacher and/or the PEIM clerk to get a number. Which just seems like a lot of work. 

Yesterday and today I have had two students helping me inventory all the library books. Both students have had a rough year so I decided make a positive call home for both students. 

I talked to one parent this evening. I praised the student, said what a hard working he is, how interesting he was to talk to and how much fun I've had with him these last two days. Mom paused when I was done talking (I thought we had lost our connection!) and said "He's had a very rough year. It's so good to hear you say some nice things about him." I wanted to cry. Cry for him and his rough year. Cry for her and all the negative comments she's had to listen to about her baby, this boy that she loves. And I wanted to smack myself for not making more of these calls home. 

I haven't called the other students parents yet because I will need a translator but I can't wait to make another positive call home!

I challenge you to make a positive call home!

Letter to Myself #EduLS

This weeks Educator Learning Series (#EduLS) is to write a letter to yourself about this school year. I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and do my Slice of Life and my #EduLS all in the same blog post.

This has been an awesome year!  It's my second year in the library and I'm starting to feel like I have this job down.  I still have room for improvement of course but I'm much more comfortable in this librarian skin this year than last year.

I was on a flexible schedule this year and was able to really be a librarian.  I had student and faculty book clubs.  I was able to help the teachers more.  My displays were better.  My lessons were better. My library just flowed better.

My book club students and I brainstormed during our last meeting on how we could make the book clubs even better next year.  They want to research books to read, watch the movie if the book has one, they want me to send out reminder letters of upcoming meetings, and make posters of book club dates to put up around the school.  I thought these were all excellent ideas that we can easily implement next year.

I want to collaborate better next year.  I did better this year than I did last year but I still feel this is where I can improve the most.  I plan to pick one or two teachers to work with at the beginning of the year and hope to add a few more as the year progresses.  I hope that working with one or two that they will tell other teachers what we are doing together and word will spread and other teachers will be more willing to let me in and help.  I need to teach them what I have to offer, I need to stop expecting them to just know what I can offer.  Another idea I got from my librarian twitter chat (#txlchat) is to host a planning session in the library. I'll provide snacks and as I hear them talk about different lessons I can start pulling books, finding websites, finding apps, pulling up databases, etc for them.  I ran this by our curriculum specialist and she thought this was a great idea.

I have 20 magazine subscription this year.  According to TLA standards that's excellent!  But I want students to be able to check them out next year so I need to do some work on that.  I also want to organize them better.  Right now they are all just thrown in the magazine rack.  I'm going to label the slots with the magazine's name.  I want it so that students can see what I have better.

My library webpage is up and running.  I'm very proud of it!  Our high school librarian worked hard on her webpage last summer and was gracious enough to share the basic template with the rest of the librarians in the district.  I have everything done except the policy page.  Next year I would like to add some videos about new books, me reading books, and who knows what else.

I read 7 (I'm on my 8th) professional development/motivational book this year.  I've NEVER read so many PD books before in my life!  I am a better person and librarian because of these books.  I plan to continue this practice for forever!

Overall I'm very proud of what I've done in this library this year and can't wait to improve more next year!

Last Day of 6th Grade

The LAST DAY OF 6TH GRADE FOR MY DAUGHTER?!? How did that happen???  I thought it was such a cliche when people would tell me "Enjoy this time with Reagan, time flies!" How fast could time REALLY fly?

What a stupid question!  Time REALLY flies! 6th grade is over.  She'll be in 7th grade next year.  7th grade!

6 more years of grade school.

6 more summers at home.

6 more vacations.

6 more birthdays at home

6 more holidays at home.

6 more years where I make the rules.

6 more years I have to teacher her about life.

6 more years I have to teacher her about the world.

6 more years that she's just mine and my hubby's.

6 more years I don't have to share her.

6 more years.

6 years.

6

Time really flies.

First day of 6th grade

Last Day of 6th grade

BOGO Book Fair

I'm having my last Book Fair of the year.  I started today since Monday is Memorial Day and we don't have school.  I wanted it to be open 5 days and didn't want to go into the last week of school.

Yesterday my hubby came up and got the boxes down for me then had to run back to work so I did the rest of the set up.  My back and knee were killing me when I was done so I ran... well, it was probably more of a limp, drag my leg than a run but run sounds so much younger, to the Advil when I was done.  Sweet, sweet Advil!

Having a Book Fair the second to last week of school is crazy.  But I do crazy well so here I am the end of the year, close to loosing my mind, back tired, knee hurting and having a BOGO Book Fair. Fun times!

I keep reminding myself that I'll rest when I'm dead.

There hasn't been 3 Book Fairs on this campus in a while.  From what I could tell in my Scholastic Toolkit it's been at the very least since 2012.  2012 is as far back as I can see but I really think it was before that by the teachers' reaction.  All the teachers who have been on this campus before had never heard of a BOGO Book Fair.

This Book Fair is really for the teachers and the students.  I don't make any money from it although I do get Scholastic Dollars.  I've got my wish list started! I spend money well too!

So wish me luck and peace for my sanity and no aches for my body as I work this last Book Fair the second to last week of school!

NKOTB

New Kids On The Block!!!!

I've been to every concert they have had in Houston. My daddy & childhood BFF's dad took us when we were in junior high. They are good dads!

When NKOTB made their come back in 2008 I got my mommy's group (three of my besties) to go with me. We've been to three concerts together. Then one bestie moved. So three of us went to the next concert. 

And this year only two of us were able to go. We still had a great time!

Nelly opened the concert. I wish he'd stayed on stage a little longer. I really enjoyed his performance!

TLC was next. I'm not a huge fan but I did like their performance. 

This little boy nearly hit my bestie in the face a few times. 

It was really loud! So we stuffed cotton in our ears. #WeAreOld

And then NKOTB came out! They play old songs and new songs. It was a great mix! 

This is a picture of Donnie. We were having a moment. We made eye contact... through the big screen. It was very magical. 

I love me some Donnie! He's always been my favorite. I love those bad boys... it's why I married a preacher... Ha!

Till me meet again New Kids!

Cover to Cover

Do you read a book cover to cover? 

I do. 

Literally cover to cover. 

I read:

...the copyright page. I like to see if it has the one sentence summary. (Have you ever tried writing one of those? I was a LOT harder than I thought it would be!) I also like to see if it has the genres listed. 

...the dedication page. I wonder who are the people the book is dedicated too. Who are they in the author's life that get a book dedicated to them. I want a book dedicated to me. Just sayin'. 

...the table of contents. Although not in detail. I'm afraid one of the chapter titles might be a spoiler. 

...the story. Duh!

...acknowledgements. In one of Liana Moriarty she wrote something like "I want to thank my husband for sleeping beside me in the dark even knowing how my mind works." So true Moriarty, so true! Bless him for that! But if I hadn't read the acknowledgment I wouldn't have that little nugget to hold on too and laugh about. 

So my question that will change the world: 

Do you read a book cover to cover?

You never know what gem you might find between the covers. 

Wordless Pictures Books

The last 3 weeks that the library is open for business I decided to "read" a different wordless picture book each week and do a mini lesson.

WE HAD SO MUCH FUN!

I put the books under my Elmo.  I felt these types of books needed to be seen blown up on the Promethean Board.  I really wanted the students to be able to see the details in the pictures.

I didn't require them to raise their hands like normal.  These books just seemed like they were suppose to have students hollering out thoughts and ideas.  It was a bit chaotic but oh so much fun!  If they got too out of hand I would close the book and say quietly "I can't turn the page to find out what happens next until everyone is seated on their dot." (In one class I had a PreK nboy tell me I was pretty.  I said Thank you but you still need to sit on your dot.  These kids crack me up!)  Everyone would settle back down and we would continue on.

Before we started reading I explained that there were really no wrong or right answers. Since there were no words we each might "read" the pictures differently and we need to respect each others ideas.  This worked pretty well.  There's always a student who corrects other classmates.

We also discussed how some of these books looked like graphic novels and what the difference was between graphic novels and comic books were (it was good for some of the teachers to hear too!).

We also learned how to read a graphic novel.  The students enjoyed hearing how it was one of my former 6th grade Deaf Ed students who taught me how to read a graphic novel.

The first week in May I "read" Bow-Wow's Nightmare Neighbors by Mark Newgarden.  I started out asking what the title of this book was.  When they told me there was no title we discussed where else we might be able to look to find the title.  This brought in vocabulary for parts of a book.

The students loved the spookiness to the story.  They thought the naughty cats were hilarious!  

They brought up the book the next week.  We did a little compare and contrast with the other wordless picture books we read.

I also set up my Promethean Board as a station with Bow-Wow's website.  Two students were allowed to play on the board at a time since I only have two pens to work with.

The second week we read Tuesday by David Weisner.  This is not a true wordless picture book as it has some words in it but not many.

We started out predicting what the book was going to be about just looking at the cover.  We discussed what the title might mean and what time the clock read and what that hour meant.  Some students pointed out the hand in the corner and made guesses at who/what that hand might belong too.

Students REALLY enjoyed the ending of the book.  Spoiler alert! Stop reading this paragraph if you have not read this book!  They had so many ideas why the frogs flew at night on a Tuesday.  When we got to last four pages one page reads "Next Tuesday, 7:58 P.M."  The students all hollered "They're going to fly again!" But when I showed them next page the shadows were not frogs.  So they guessed what animal it might be.  The last page shows them pigs flying.  They all started screaming (definitely not an old school library!).  I settled them down with telling them I had two serious questions left.  Once they were quiet and seated back on their dots I asked "What do birds sometimes do while flying?"  I would get all kinds of answers until some one would get brave and say "Poop?" I would say "Yes... hmmmm, I wonder what would happen if a pig pooped from the sky."  We all gagged yelled grossed and had fun with a little bathroom humor... I'm not too old for a little bathroom humor!

This week I'm going to read The Girl and the Bicycle by Mark Pett. This is on the 2x2 list for 2015-2016.  I normally don't like to read next year's books this year but I wanted to stick with the wordless picture books.  So I broke my rule.

Students noticed the sepia coloring of the pictures and how the only colored item was the bicycle. We discussed why the bicycle might be green. They also focused in on how we could only see the month of the happy people. 

The older students predicted what was going to happened more than the younger students did. They also dug deeper into the emotions of the characters. 

For all the books I stuck to the following questions.  

What pictures helped you tell the story? What was your favorite part of your story? Have you had an experience like the one in the story?

I changed them up a little to fit each book a little better and each book/reaction/class brought on new questions I would ask them.  The new questions were generally generated from an idea that a student shared.

I really had fun with these books.  I hope you try them too!