Bookish Eclectic

I have cleaned and cleaned, and I am still nowhere near done. I am beginning to review resources, weeding, and developing ideas to get more teachers and students into the library. The few days I have been in to watch the kids rotate through, no one ever makes it to non-fiction. The English teachers are the only ones I have seen in the space so far, and they want their students to read fiction. Honors students are not brought in to choose books. They typically stick to the classics and don't have enough time to step outside that box. Challenge number one is that it has snowed so much that we haven't had school for more than a few days. Challenge two: I am new, and teachers aren't used to coming in or collaborating. Challenge three is that the library is set up more for adults than students. Challenge four, the prevailing idea has been that students don't read anyway, so spending money on new books is a waste. Challenge five, and maybe the one that will be the...

 For several years, I have chosen a word to focus on rather than coming up with a New Year's resolution. Last year, my word was balance. I worked on finding a better balance between professional, hobby, and home life and learning to say no. I wasn't always the best at it. Work was especially difficult. To put it into perspective, now that I am leaving and moving on to another county, they are looking for three people to run the club I ran alone. Despite my requests for help, I was never given a reliable person to assist me, but apparently, it takes at least three people to fill my shoes. While that is kind of flattering, it does speak to the lack of balance that I had.  This year, learning a new position in a new school, I have chosen the word "develop." The word has several aspects, but it seemed especially fitting because I will be the teacher responsible for the Yearbook and the Media Center. The media coordinator before me took most of the photos for t...

 Wow, I really suck at blogging, or at least I did last year. I will not say that 2023 was bad, but I will say that a lot changed, and I did not do a good job of taking care of myself. My mother-in-law passed away, bringing a lot of new lessons and decisions for my significant other and me. My master's program was difficult and challenging in the best of ways. We had a new school librarian that I could learn from. I kept dancing as my troupe attempted to become a little more professional. I did not do a lot of crafting or creating. I struggled through the school year, but I did my best to support my students and gracefully (gracefully?) address school politics when they challenged my own moral compass. There are many quotes about 2023 being about surviving, and they really speak to how last year went. Writing was not one of my major concerns since I was doing so much with ECU, but here we are, starting fresh again in a new year. Neil DeGrasse Tyson shared a TikTok (find...

     Keeping a blog up and running while teaching and trying to keep my life together has been a challenge. To be honest, most of my writing in the past few months has been dedicated to lesson plans, recommendations, and the creation of resources for a new curriculum. Several things have been tweaked since January when I last wrote. The Hafla fell through for a lot of different reasons, though our troupe does have a new project in the works. Our play was canceled. The world around us has hiccoughed.      The exciting news now though is that I have officially been accepted to the Masters of Library Science program at East Carolina Univerity. It is the only university that is accredited by the American Library Association in my state, and the program is online so I can continue teaching full-time. I am excited to get started, and I am walking myself through the process to make sure I am as organized and pulled together as I can be.      I have ...