Thank heavens most kids eventually grow up

I have to remind myself of that regularly. And when I say grow up, I mean, mature into responsible adults. And I'm glad that my teachers remembered that about me.

I'm so glad my chemistry teacher didn't remind me twenty years later that she had overheard me whisper a comparison about the size of her small feet and the size of her boobs-- that I wasn't sure how she was able to keep her balance. I'm still not convinced she heard me, since the person I was whispering that rude comment to couldn't even hear me. But she made me think that she could, and I was mortified about it for years. We went to the same church, though, and as adults we became friends.

We all do such stupid things at times as kids. And I'm so grateful that most teachers remember that fact and demonstrate grace towards us. It was such an epiphany for me when I eventually learned that teachers were real people, too. It makes me smile to recall the looks on some of my students' faces when they'd see me at the grocery store or church. Like I'd escaped from school, somehow-- you know, the place where I lived. Sometimes they didn't even recognize me when they ran into me out of my natural habitat-- the library.

I was always in awe of my English teachers in high school. English was my favorite subject, and a big reason was because I had some wonderful instructors-- Mrs. Franklin, Mrs. Macomber, and Mrs. Allen. The first two moved away years ago, but I still see Mrs. Allen when I go home to visit. She was one of the hostesses for my wedding shower thirty-five years ago, and three months ago she was in charge of the kitchen at the church where they fed everyone after my mother's funeral. Kind lady, and I love her for it.

And like most teachers, I've seen my share of immature behavior from kids, too. It devastated me to see one of my favorite students steal a pen from my office. I've also caught students stealing at the book fair and they still lied to my face about it. A student cussed at me in Spanish in front of a class of thirty students, and when I met with his parents about it, they believed their son over me. I took a boy to the office for beating up on another boy in one of my classes, and his mother pulled him out of school to keep us from disciplining him. Last I heard, he was on trial for rape, so he didn't grow up well. Some students rolled their eyes or back-talked me when I expected them to do their work. And there are more examples, but I try not to dwell on the bad behavior.

Those incidents were the exception, though, and not the rule, and it's gratifying to see so many students grow up to be hard-working, responsible adults. And even some of the worst-behaved students in school turned out to be amazing adults.

We educators wipe the slate clean each day and each year with the knowledge and hope that most of these kids grow up eventually.

Because we did.

Sometimes Education is just Hard Work

If we've trained our children to learn only in the most colorful, entertaining, and sensory-tickling environments, we've short-changed them in preparing them for life. Much of life's responsibilities are simply mundane. Cleaning the porcelain furniture, mowing the lawn, pulling weeds, taking out the garbage, changing diapers, washing the bird poop off the car, vacuuming--no, picking white dog hair out of a black carpet, dusting everything, washing dishes, mopping the floor, making the bed, etc., and that's just part of the responsibilities at home.

Most every career or paying job has its moments of mundane tasks, too. Everyone needs to work a few bad jobs just so they will be able to recognize a good job when it comes along. I used to mow lawns and babysit before I got my first withholding paycheck job at a Dairy Queen after school during my senior year in high school. For two summers during college, I worked watermelons-- the first year in the office, and the second outside as a straw boss on the conveyor line. I've done secretarial work, I've taught in public and private and home schools, and I've partnered in a retail store.

The best job I ever had was as a part-time library director during my children's middle and high school years. I didn't miss a thing, and still had something left at the end of the day to pursue other interests. One of the easiest jobs I ever had was as a college library assistant, but emotionally, it was one of the dreariest because I wasn't allowed to do anything but check out books and tell students where the bookstore and bathroom were. And that came after I had managed every aspect of a public library for nine years. But since I didn't have a master's degree in library science, I wasn't allowed to do real library work.

One of the most demanding jobs I ever had was working as a paraprofessional at a high school while I worked on my master's degree in the evenings so I could eventually do real library work in a public school. Two of the worst years I ever had was teaching in public school where there was very little support for newbies, and trying to work in spite of an impossible schedule and working situation under some people who never should've been around children or the educational system in the first place. But that experience helped me to recognize a better school environment later where the staff received a lot of support from each other and their administrators.

In every job situation I learned something, even if it was for no other reasons than surviving the job or garnering some good writing fodder.

Somewhere along the line, children need to learn how to work hard in spite of difficult or mundane surroundings, because most will experience those very things in some jobs later on. A big part of preparing them for life is teaching them how to persevere, how to get back up after they're knocked down, and to not let a soul-consuming work environment destroy them.

Years ago my dad shared an old fable with me when I was going through a tough time. A king wanted an inscription put on a ring that would speak the truth in any situation-- to make him happy when he was sad, and to keep him humble when he was on top of the world. After much searching, his wise men brought him a ring with the inscription, This, too, shall pass. I can't tell you how many times I thought of that through the years.

Learning should be fun, fulfilling, mind-expanding, and at times just plain ol' mundane or hard work if we want to prepare children for life. To teach them that life and work is composed of both periods of ups and downs and how to navigate through it all is the truth.

Ups or downs, good or bad, happy or sad, hard or easy, more or less, healthy or sick, or any other dichotomy of life, this, too, shall pass.

Education Overkill

overkill - noun 2. : an excess of something (as a quantity or an action) beyond what is required or suitable for a particular purpose. [Merriam-Webster Online]

I hope you will please read this post with an open mind and understanding that my intent is to improve the public education system. A less dramatic title that would be just as fitting is Less is More.

I don't envy the task of the classroom teachers. The few years I taught just about did me in, and I thought I'd never set foot on a campus again. So I write this knowing that teachers have one of the toughest jobs out there. And I've worked with so many hard-working teachers who loved the students they taught and wanted only the best for them.

When a system fails to prepare kids for life, which these days is mistakenly and nearsightedly linked with less than stellar and especially failing standardized test scores, the knee-jerk reaction of the powers that be-- within education and without-- is to conjure up more accountability and tests and methods and paperwork and more micro-managing and pressure on top of the already over-burdened shoulders of teacher. Teachers are carrying a disproportionate amount of the responsibility. Parents and students should bear their fair share, too.

"Are the TEKS you're teaching today posted on your whiteboard for any administrator to see when they walk into your classroom today?" And my personal favorite-- coming up with new acronyms and buzz words for a new or improved or  latest educational trends that will solve everyone's problems, which involves more training and more training and more training... often with the same results: that the system is failing to prepare kids for life. They have a transcript that says they passed what the State required them to pass, but somehow it doesn't segue into real life. And very few school systems are even looking at the students after they graduate.

My children were home-schooled their 3rd - 6th grades, and they could do in under two hours the equivalent of a day's work in public school. After they finished their book work, they played in the barn or worked with their 4-H show animals or video-taped mock news and weather reports or dozens of other activities they thought up on their own. The main thing they learned during their early school years was to take responsibility for their learning. 

They had learned how to learn. 

Without a complicated list of TEKS. 
Without a full-time teacher working with them. 

Most of their school work involved sitting down at the dining table, opening their books, reading the instructions themselves, and doing their work. When they couldn't figure something out for themselves, they came to me.  I didn't stand over them watching everything they did. I didn't constantly have to goose or threaten them to finish. They weren't overwhelmed with tons of school work daily or homework in the evening. In homeschool, when you finished your book work, you were finished for the day. And even with as little time as they spent doing bookwork, they still learned the skills they needed to function successfully in life. They entered public school in the seventh grade and graduated high school #2 and #1 in their respective grades.

When I started homeschooling my children, it was almost unheard of, and definitely a radical idea. A lady stopped me at the post office one day and asked me, "Who gave you permission to do this?" like we must've been breaking the law or something. It shook up the status quo of how a child was supposed to be educated, which was not my intention. I even had to change my pre-conceived notions of what education entailed, and it became such a freeing thought to realize that learning could take place without a chalk board (this dates me) and a teacher's desk in front of my kids.

The most exciting thing about learning at home was that the classroom walls disappeared and my kids could learn anywhere-- at the post office, at the grocery store, at the local airport, at the cemetery, at the fast food or convenience store counter, etc. 

Learning/education and life melded. 

The thing that bothered my kids the most when they entered public school in the 7th grade was seeing how much time was wasted on things during the school day that had nothing to do with learning and getting their work done. 

I asked some teachers how much time they thought they actually spent on teaching and facilitating learning, and the answers were from 1/4 to 1/2 of the entire school day. Shish. I saw a report that stated teachers only spend 25% of their school day actually teaching. The rest of their time is taken up with classroom/individual discipline, changing classes, calling roll, waiting for everyone to finish, documentation, parent/teacher communication, writing lesson plans, grading student work, developing relationships with the students, and those infinitely long days of Benchmark practice testing and studying the results and re-teaching those weak areas. 

Our government has a way of turning good intentions for education into a monstrosity of inefficiency, redundancy, and innovation-killing bureaucracy. The most important decisions about what happens in the classroom are made by folks with little knowledge and experience in the classroom, or they've been out of the classroom for so long, they are out of touch. And on that note, here a few more thoughts for the powers that be:

• Let active teachers have more say in making decisions about public education and what goes on in the classroom.
• Instead of piling on more pressure for teachers to teach exorbitant amounts of information that most students will not retain unless it applies to them directly in life, teach less, and teach it well.
• Teach students to take responsibility for their learning.
• Simplify the TEKS; don't micro-manage every little thing a teacher does in the classroom.
• Take the shackles off the teachers and administrators to innovate; give schools the freedom to climb out of the box of preconceived notions about what every school and classroom should look and sound like.
• Bring real life learning and application to education. Give students challenges to solve world or state or community or school problems. Or economic or social or humanity problems. 
• Let teachers slow down. Let them breathe. 
• Defend and support your teachers.
• Defend and support and keep your librarians. They are information specialists who are extremely important when it comes to teaching students how to evaluate information in this information age. Just look at the media, and especially social media to see this skill is sorely needed.
• Pair new teachers with veteran teachers. Don't leave rookies stuck out on a limb to learn everything by trial and error.
• Unless teachers are newbies, let go of some of that eternal inservice training and give teachers more time to prepare their own classrooms and lessons that apply to their subject.
• Let students who grasp something quicker teach other students who need more time.
• The teacher learns more than the students, so let students help teach.
• Give students real responsibility and leadership in school, not just more busy work to keep them out of trouble. 
• A fellow teacher from Great Britain told me her school gave students two recesses -  morning and afternoon- even through high school. I think they're on to something there. Otherwise, students create their own time for socializing and resting their brains-- usually during classroom time.
• We have to have smaller student to teacher ratios for teachers to be able to truly know each student and accurately assess their knowledge and skills beyond the multiple choice mentality. Another fellow teacher educated outside of our country told me he saw his first multiple choice test in college.
• We have to un-school kids' thinking about school-- that it's not this necessary evil we're forcing them to endure until they can really get out and live. School is preparing them for life, and knowledge, skills, and habits they learn or fail to learn in school will directly affect their quality of life later. Most of them don't get that.
• Grades don't mean a darn thing if students fail to retain the knowledge or skill. 

I've written more than I should for most readers to get this far without giving up. And I don't mean to over-simplify a very complicated issue. But the system could use some simplifying during the over-hauling process. : )

SEKS in the Classroom

It's so important for all of us to get someone to proofread our writing before putting it out there publicly, whether in print or online, and I have several nightmare scenarios to back that up. This is the most recent one.

I've always had an aversion to the infinite redundancy and constraints put on teachers by the education bureaucracies. Like a typical government agency, public education loves never-ending assessments, reports, paperwork, documentation, red tape, protocol, and of course, the overly complicated, educationese-worded  TEKS (pronounced 'teeks'): Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills lists for each grade level in the State of Texas. I'm sure every state has its own version of the TEKS or common core standards.

One day I decided to pare down these lengthy lists to a single page, and came up with sixteen fairly broad essential elements for the secular schools, and twenty-three essential elements for a Christian education. Then I wrestled over what to call this list, and I leaned toward something that would put the responsibility for learning primarily on the student's shoulders. This list could be posted on a classroom wall or in a student's notebook, so I thought the title, YEKS: Your Essential Knowledge & Skills would be good. But the acronym sounded kind of yucky or terrifying when you actually say YEKS.

Grammatically, though, the TEKS acronym is erroneously pronounced 'teeks' when it should actually sound like 'tex,' but I had the 'teeks' enunciation branded into my brain when I finally came up with SEKS: A Student's Essential Knowledge & Skills as the title. I thought SEKS, pronounced 'seeks' made a great analogy of students seeking knowledge.  I added the  new title and  immediately posted it in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store, trying to keep the ego in check since I had single-handedly simplified teaching expectations and curriculum requirements in a single day.

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Fortunately, my daughter came over to the house a couple of hours after that, and I showed her a copy of SEKS: A Student's Essential Knowledge & Skills, and sat up straight, ready for her to pat me on the back. 

Instead, she looked up and smiled at me. I smiled back.

"Are you sure about that title?" she asked.

"Yes, I think SEKS (pronounced 'seeks') is a great acronym for what this list represents," I said proudly. "Students are seeking knowledge."

She grinned even wider. "Don't you think they might pronounce it differently than you do?"

I stared at the title for a while, and when it finally dawned on me what she was referring to, I was horrified. I literally ran across the house to my computer to take it off the Internet store. I had visions of this poster showing up on Jay Leno's Tonight Show's headline segment, but fortunately, no one had found it yet.

We're back to the YEKS title until I come up with something different. 

The Information Dark Ages...Again

Years ago I asked my grandmother questions about her early life, and she put me off, saying her life wasn't interesting at all. But I kept asking, and she finally told me some stories that blew my socks off. I was shocked to learn that as a very young girl, she and her family came to Texas in two covered wagons. That was one of many stories she told me about her not so interesting life, but what astonished me the most was that during her short lifetime, man went from traveling in covered wagons to walking on the moon. How could that happen so fast?

The role of librarians and information-handling has made just as wide a leap in progression this past century-- from the manual organization and processing of books within the physical shelves and four walls of the library with the librarian as the gatekeeper of information... evolving to instant and virtual access to books and unfathomable amounts of information via the World Wide Web. The walls of the library have expanded to global proportions; books and information are no longer fenced in shelves and card catalogs and the knowledge of the librarian. It's free range information now.

Librarians have progressively changed with the times and are now trained as information specialists and information drivers' ed instructors, if you will, when it comes to teaching students how to navigate and evaluate copious amounts of information. But unfortunately, the perception of the role of librarians has not evolved with the actual skills of 21st Century librarians, and too many highly-skilled librarians are being labeled and discarded as 20th Century dinosaurs.

What is falling by the wayside with the elimination of librarians is the quality control of information and the teaching of information evaluation. Since librarians were replaced with paraprofessionals in the libraries of my previous school district, I'm not sure anyone is teaching the students this important skill now.

I see a dangerous correlation between the Dark Ages of ignorance with the information illiteracy of today when it comes to manipulating people's thoughts and actions. If students and people in general don't know how to evaluate information sources, they are liable to believe anything that comes down the pike-- via Internet or the media. The Asiana pilot names hoax is a prime example of this. How many hoax information emails and Facebook posts are still being circulated as truth? It's understandable, but not excusable, that many adults who came into the computer age after their formal school years missed learning how to evaluate an information source, but what is even more inexcusable is too many schools are still churning out information illiterates who are prone to making bad choices based on bad information. They will always be at risk of manipulation in any area of their lives if they don't know how to recognize the difference between misinformation and truth.

When librarians are removed from education, the quality of information and information literacy suffers. Our students have access to more information since the turn of this century than all of the combined information from recorded history up until then. But that doesn't mean they are knowledgeable and competent when it comes to information evaluation, and I'd have to say the same for too many parents and educators who think Google is the new librarian. Google is an enormous ocean of good, bad, truthful, biased, and downright dishonest information, and to say Google takes the place of libraries and librarians now is like intellectually living on the Titanic thinking all is well in the information world.

To say Google takes the place of libraries and librarians is like intellectually traveling on the Titanic thinking all is well in the information world.

I'm sounding a distress signal here. Hope somebody picks it up before it's too late.

Library Services from Long, Long Ago

Long, long ago would be more than a life time from most students' perspective, but for some of us old dinosaurs it wasn't that long ago when libraries used check out cards to keep track of whoever checked out what book. That might be a fun mini-lesson one day in the library-- to show how books were checked out pre-Internet and automation-- before computers and online catalogs.

I remember when the library had one piece of equipment to use to process new books: a typewriter. And we had a cadillac: the beautiful IBM Selectric typewriter. But now it's so old my spell check doesn't even recognize it.

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I thought I was very high tech when I added two more 'type elements' or 'typeballs' which gave me two more different fonts, for a total of three fonts! Now we have dozens, if not hundreds of fonts to choose from at the click of a mouse. It's hard to believe how technology in the library has changed in such a short period of time.

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We used the typewriter to type out the check-out cards and all the cards for the card catalog. For you young librarians, the card catalog looked like this:

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The card catalog was a cabinet of multiple long, narrow drawers containing thousands of index-size cards for each book author, title, and subject cards primarily for nonfiction books. The cabinet itself was usually built of oak or some other beautiful wood. Each drawer was labeled and organized alphabetically. Tell your students that this is how library patrons found the books or information they were seeking. Manually. Tediously. Slow. 

It took a LOT of typing to prepare those cards, and we were so relieved when computers came on the scene, along with software that printed out the catalog cards for us after we typed in the necessary information. But filing them in the card catalog was still done manually, tediously. Slow.

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Part of the old check-out process involved patrons pulling out a card from a pocket inside the front or back cover or flyleaf page and writing their name or library number on it. The librarian would stamp the due date on the pocket or due date sheet so the patron would know when the book was due. The card would also get stamped and filed. When the book was returned, the card was inserted in the pocket and then shelved. 

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When privacy became an issue, we were told that we had to take a black marker and mark out all of the names on the check-out cards so no one would know who had checked out a book. It was heartbreaking for me to mark out the signatures of patrons who had passed or moved away; it felt like I was erasing history. I even saw the progression of the ages of my own children on those check-out cards-- from writing their first wobbly letters to neatly printing their names and later dates writing in cursive. After a while I put down the marker. If people wanted privacy, they could use their library numbers. But automation eventually solved the privacy issue.   

Automating a library collection was tedious, but the results could be compared to switching from a horse and buggy to a jet airplane. And the most recent new trend in library services is checking out e-books from home or anyplace else using a mobile device. I love visiting the library, but sometimes it's more convenient to bring the library to me.  I have fond memories of those old check-out cards, but I'm thrilled to be riding on that jet.

Information Litterers

In this age of information most of us are living in, it's important to learn how to wisely navigate through it without falling prey to misinformation garbage.

Some information refuse that you need to be aware of and recognize when you see it are:

• Chain letters. Remember those from the snail mail days? I probably received my first one in elementary school, and I didn't know what it was, other than the message scared me to death. And post Internet days, the contagious things mutated and infected the biggest information spreader of our day: email and Facebook accounts. We've all received email forwards that attempt to emotionally manipulate you to keep forwarding it or suffer the consequences of bad luck, financial ruin, sickness, or even death. On the flip-side are the emails that promise good luck or a windfall of money, or even evoke Jesus' name to make it sound more authentic. Chain emails or posts are rubbish and don't deserve a second look, and shame on whomever sits around creating these forms of psychological blackmail. Don't fall for them, and don't keep littering your friends' email and Facebook accounts with them. 

• Hearsay. Much of the "news media" is a misnomer these days. When they all are locked in a ratings competition and have to satisfy their advertising sponsors, they tend to cover the most titillating and provocative stories to draw in the most viewers. No telling what important information we're missing because it's not sensational enough. And in the race to break a story first, too many news shows make it a habit of presenting hearsay as facts until someone eventually corrects them.  Too few are involved in actual in-depth, investigative reporting, and the majority sound like minions repeating the same stories over and over. 

• Bias. Too many news shows give a slanted presentation of news that fit their political or social beliefs, so viewers fail to get an objective report showing both sides of an issue. To remedy that, it's important for all of us to watch the news from different sources (liberal, conservative, Christian, etc.) to get all sides of a story or issue. And throw in a foreign news source, too, to see what's going on in the world and hear about issues from their point of view. In the past ten years, my son has traveled around the world and even lived and worked in Syria, Iraq, and the Sudan. He often gave us a different perspective about those countries than what we saw on the news. He watches Al Jazeera news regularly to see what's going on in the world. 

• Slander. How many times have we forwarded an email rumor about someone without checking the facts? In a single click, we can trash someone's reputation, and an email slander tends to live in perpetuity. But if we all make the attempt to correctly dispose of these when we do get one by replying to all that it's a hoax or rumor, that will help clean up the misinformation on the virtual highway. Election years are the worst times to see those types of ads, emails, and news stories. No matter which side of the aisle we're on, it's helping no one, especially our communities and country, by perpetuating slander about anyone. Truth must be upheld and defended, without question. We cannot survive without it. The following are good sites to check out a rumor or hoax:  Urban Legends and Snopes. And Snopes even had a hoax circulating that it couldn't be trusted because it was 'owned by a flaming liberal' and was 'in the tank for Obama,' so even the Websites trying to expose hoaxes aren't immune to misinformation and slander.

• Demands to Forward an Email or Share a Post. I don't know why some people refuse to let good information stand on its own. Someone may start a great piece on the information highway, but then someone else feels obligated to tack on a threat or attempt to shame us if we don't forward it on, citing our lack of love for Jesus or patriotism or compassion if we don't. If I choose to forward something, I remove that tacky part of the email because I think the information should speak for itself, and I for sure didn't send it on because someone psychologically forced me to. But most times I delete an email if it has that tagged-on message just because it aggravates the life out of me.

• Friendship Assurance. We should know who our friends are without having to ask them to repost something or send the same email back to show they're our friends. Maintaining a true friendship happens outside of FB or any other social networking site we're on, and if we're depending on one of those reposted messages to tell us, we need to revisit the definition of friendship. 

• TMI Facebook Clutter. I know I'm stomping on some toes here, but think about why we're on Facebook. Everyone loves seeing updates and photos on friends and family and what they're up to, but when people use FB primarily to post ads selling things or political views, most of which don't change anyone's mind, then it's Facebook clutter. I like good information that makes me think and reflect or inspires me; keep those coming. And I've used so many good recipes I've copied off of FB shares. But do any of us call everyone in our contact list to tell them every little detail of our day? If not, why do we feel obligated to do that on FB? Anyone with 300+ friends knows how time-consuming it is to scroll through hundreds of posts every day to get to the ones we really value and want to see, so it's a good practice for us all to be discriminating about our posts. 

• Hoaxes & Get-rich-quick Emails. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Companies do not pay you to forward emails. Your friend probably isn't stranded penniless in Spain and needs you to wire money. And the email from the stranger in Africa who says he will split his bazillions of dollars with you if you'll send him money to get his money out of his country is such an obvious scam, but they keep sending them because some people actually fall for it. And NEVER give out any passwords or financial or personal information through the email. I received a hoax email saying it was from PayPal about a charge I didn't make, and it looked completely legit-- even the logo and address. But I looked it up and learned that there was one little clue that meant it wasn't from PayPal: they didn't use my whole name in the greeting. Use your search engine or the links under "Slander" to find out about these hoaxes. 

The important thing is to be wise about information. Diversify your information sources so you know you are getting a more balanced view. Take information with a healthy dose of skepticism, knowing that Rumor, Bias, Slander, Hoax, and TMI are alive and well in the electronic and virtual worlds, and we need to learn to recognize and dispose of them properly every chance we get. 

Fish Sticks in the Toilet Paper Aisle

Wha-at?

We've all changed our minds at one time or other about something we've put in our grocery carts, but then some folks just stick the unwanted item anywhere because they don't want to take the time to put it back where it belongs. I actually saw a box of fish sticks sitting on a package of toilet paper in the grocery store one day. That's just plain lazy and irresponsible. And in that case it costs the store money when the fish sticks thaw out and they have to throw them away. If I change my mind about something and I don't have time to take it back or I'm already in the check-out line, I just give the item to the cashier. They've never frowned at me or slapped me or fussed a me for doing that. And that way it will be returned to its rightful place.

I sometimes tell that fish stick story during students' first visit to the library to teach them about misplaced books in the library. If they stick a book just anywhere in the shelves, it's a lost book, and it may take some time before it's found and returned to its correct place. The most aggravating consequence of books lost in the library is when a student needs a book that the catalog says is "in," but it's not where it's supposed to be. Sometimes I can do a quick search of a section and find it, but often a lost book is far from where it's supposed to be.

I tell students if they change their mind about a book, they can return it to its correct place in the shelves, or they can set the book in a designated area like a book cart or on a table, or they can hand it to me at the circulation desk. That way the book won't be lost in the library.

I guess that's one advantage of having a virtual library. No more books out of place. No more germs spread with each check-out. No more torn pages or gum stuck on the covers. No more shelving books or dusting shelves. But then a virtual library doesn't look or smell or feel the same as a room of wonderful, tangible books, does it. : )

Look Back, Reflect and Improve

I was at least half a year or more working as a public library director and still doing things the way they had been done for years when I finally stopped and questioned the really odd library hours. They were inconsistent from day to day, and most people couldn't remember them. For three of the five days it was open during the week, I had to shut everything down for a ninety minute lunch break, which I hated because it broke the momentum and meant stopping whatever I was working on. Often I just worked through lunch, but the library was closed.

I finally asked one of the long-time board members why the hours were so strange, and he thought about it for a moment and said, "I think they were set around Mrs. So and So's bridge playing." The librarian he was referring to was at least three librarians ago, or a good ten years since that librarian worked there. I had to stop and laugh, but then I was dumbfounded that nobody questioned the inconvenient schedule or thought about making the library hours more user-friendly.

I started logging the number of people that came to the library throughout the day, and I learned that an average of one patron and the mailman came in during the morning hours before 11:00 a.m. And we were closed 90 minutes for lunch and closed at 5:30 sharp in the evenings, so most of the working folks missed out unless they remembered to come Saturday mornings.

I changed the library hours to open at 11:00 a.m. and close at 6:00 p.m., and we stayed open during lunchtime. The mailman used the book drop to deliver our mail, so that wasn't a problem. On Wednesday evenings we stayed open until 8:00 p.m. The Saturday hours - 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon remained the same. I showed the board of directors that we were still paying the utilities for those three 90 minute lunch breaks while the library was closed, and eliminating the morning hours and working through lunch enabled us to save enough on utilities to cover the utilities used by a GED/Adult Education Class we sponsored three evenings a week.

The point is, we should make the time to stop and question what we're doing. Too often we follow routine and tradition because it's always been done that way. When inventory and all of the end of the year responsibilities are done, take a few minutes to stop and think back over the school year.  Ask yourself questions like:

• What worked well with our library services this past year?
• What areas seemed to not work smoothly?
• Could the library be arranged and organized better?
• What part of library services caused the most stress?
• Did the schedule work well?
• Does our technology need updating? 
• Do we need more equipment?
• Is our collection meeting the staff and students' needs?
• Is the lighting adequate?
• Does the library look inviting?

Those are just some examples of questions you could ask yourself, and there are many more. Every library is different. Maybe you know something isn't quite right, but you're not even sure of the question, much less the answer. Something that's proved very helpful for me to improve my libraries is to visit other libraries and see what they're doing right. If you can't visit physically, visit virtually. And every librarian I've met has been more than willing to share their ideas and successes.  

The beginning and end of a school year are the busiest for librarians, so if you can't find the time at the end, make some time over the summer to reflect and think about how you can do things better in your library. The library is not a static entity. It's constantly growing and shedding and changing with the times. And we should, too. 

The Library of American Libraries

My daughter and her family and I traveled to DC to see her brother/my son recently. This was my third trip, but I'd never visited the inside the Capitol or the Library of Congress, so after the Capitol tour, we traversed the underground tunnel to the LoC.

When we surfaced at the LoC, we saw that we'd traveled a longer distance underground than we realized.

All these years, I assumed the Library of Congress looked like any other old library with historical-looking wooden shelving, except that the LoC collection housed a gazillion books.

I was shocked to see that it looked more like something out of a castle or church in Europe. Somebody definitely designed it as a temple dedicated to knowledge.

   

And this was just the first room!

Unfortunately, we never saw the stacks, and they allowed us to walk quickly across a balcony overlooking the reading room, but we didn't get to stop and take pictures. 

Some quick facts about the Library of Congress:

• The collection was founded in 1800 and is considered the nation's library
• The Library of Congress is housed in a three-building complex across from the Capitol
• The collection contains almost 100 million items in 460 different languages
• The first LoC's 3,000 volumes burned in 1814 when the British troops invaded Washington and burned the Capitol, where the collection was housed
• Thomas Jefferson offered to sell his library of 6,487 books acquired over fifty years for $23,950, which the Congress eventually accepted
• A fire in 1851 destroyed 2/3 of the collection of 35,000, including many of Jefferson's books. 
• The remainder of Jefferson's books are on display under glass in the LoC
• The LoC was originally created for Congressional use only, but with President Lincoln's appointment of Librarian Ainsworth Spofford, the LoC was opened to the public

Before we visited the Library Gift Shop, we were quickly evacuated out the back of the building after someone (probably a tourist) had left an unattended package at the front of the building.  I don't envy the huge job law enforcement has trying to keep everyone safe in and around all the government buildings and massive museums in DC.

We visited the Library of Congress and other than Jefferson's glass-covered collection, we didn't see one shelf of books, but looking at the aerial photo of the Jefferson Building from the LoC Web site, we barely scratched the surface.

End of the Year Inventory

Library Elves by Nessa Dee

Inventory. Some librarians think of it as a curse. Other libraries have done away with it altogether. But for some twisted reason, I love inventory time in the library. Maybe it's because for a brief moment in time, the library shelves are in perfect order and all is right with the world. I imagine only a librarian would understand that logic.

But it's more than just putting books in order and attempting to account for every item in the library. Wrongs get righted. The lost is found. Mistakes are corrected. And when a parent tells me that Junior told her that he returned that book, I can confidently say that the book is not on the shelves in the library. Before I send out those invoices for lost books, I know for a fact those books aren't on the shelves because I was the one that put them in order and afterwards, I checked the shelves for those missing books-- usually multiple times. I don't let student aides or inexperienced volunteers do it because I don't want to invoice a book that may be shelved in the wrong place.

Every library is different, but this is basically what I did for inventory towards the end of the school year:

1. Decide when the library will be closed for inventory. Our school district had seven campus libraries and because we were on our own (no aides), we needed a minimum of two weeks before school ended to do inventory. 
2. Several weeks before the library closes, advertise the rounding up of library books (posters, intercom announcements, Web site, parent notes, written notices to students) as well as the date all books are due. I allowed teachers to continue to check out materials up until the last few days of school if they needed them, but not every librarian chooses to do that.
3. On the library windows the day after the library closes, I post the names of students who still have books out. It's okay to post names, but not the book titles with the names. In our school, students could not attend the end of the year field day or a field trip if their library record was not cleared, so most get serious about finding and returning those books.  Good luck if there is no leverage to get those books back. 
4. Print out a list of overdue books to keep at the desk to refer to; mark off students' names when they've cleared their records on the list and on the window list. Make notes if you need to - for example, if a teacher returns a lost book found on campus, etc.
5. Put all the library books in order. This usually takes me two days. 
6. Using your overdue list, check the shelves to make sure the books aren't there. Sometimes returned books miss getting scanned and are sitting on the shelves, but are still on someone's library record. Check the book in and take their name off the sign and list.
7. Call or send (mail or email) invoices to parents for lost books. I prefer sending a written, documentable record. Steps 1-7 take up most of the first week.
8. We used Follett's Destiny program, which made the actual inventory very easy to do. Once you start the inventory in Destiny, it sorts the collection into two categories: accounted for (the books checked out and on patrons' records), and unaccounted for (everything else). You can use a hand-held device to scan the bar codes of all the items in the library, and then download the records every so often into your circ desk computer, or what I prefer is to put a laptop on a rolling cart, log in to your administration account, and use the circ desk scanner to scan the items directly into Destiny's inventory program. Once an item is scanned, it is moved to the 'accounted for' category. 
9. How long it takes to scan depends on the number of items in your collection and the number of times you are interrupted. It usually took around three days to scan everything in the library. Students and volunteers can help with the scanning, which frees you to do other tasks. You can print out a list afterwards of the unaccounted books, which include the books that were missed during the scanning process, which you can correct, as well as actual lost books. After you've scanned everything, what is remaining in the 'unaccounted for' side are the lost items.
10. If your principal requires a report at the end of the year, you can include the results of the inventory.
11. Some librarians go ahead and remove the lost books' records from the catalog at this point, but I usually waited until the fall because books were often returned to the school over the summer or at the beginning of the school year, and that saved me from having to create new records for them. 
12. Our libraries also helped with equipment inventory, so we helped the tech staff check in all of the teachers' equipment, too.

Inventory is a great time to take a quick look at the collection, too. I sometimes found discrepancies when it came to the call numbers on the book spine and what was in the catalog record. If I couldn't take care of that immediately, I made a note so I could get back to it. And with all of the books in, plus the new ones ordered during the school year, you may find that you are out of room in some areas of the shelves and need to do some shifting and re-arranging. 

I never had enough time at the end of the year to do everything I wanted and needed to do in the library. I used to work until I thought I finished everything, but there was always more to do when it came to library work. I finally learned that it's like housework-- it's never ending and will be there in the morning. But unlike housework, I enjoyed library work. : )

Inexpensive Cut-outs for Decorating the Library

On the previous post I showed a couple of the cut-out designs I'd used to decorate the walls above the shelves. The roll of brown paper was given to me, so all it took was an Exacto knife, some cardboard to protect the floor or table where you do your cutting, and some time.     

       

Here are some more of the simple cut-out designs I used in our library, each which fit one of the subjects found in the shelves beneath it.

 

 

I also loved to hit the garage sales for interesting and inexpensive items to place on top of the shelves pertaining to some of the subjects of the books within those sections of shelves. 

  

Look at your Signage

If you can, try to empty your head of the familiarity of your library and walk through it as if for the first time to see if your library is user-friendly with good signage. Okay, if that's too hard, grab a student or person unfamiliar with your library and give them several different items to find and ask them to walk through and locate them just by reading the signs. Then ask them to be honest in their assessment. Was it easy to find what they were searching for? Was the library well organized and easy to maneuver around it?

The brown paper cut-out panels above the shelves are an inexpensive way to decorate the library and also provide good navigational signs. Each panel illustrated something found in that section of the shelves.

Our library had only six computers for patron use, and often our language arts classes average about 30 students per class. Not everyone was able to access the online catalog every time they visited, or sometimes the network would go down and the computers were useless, so I wanted to make sure students could still find their way around the library using the signage.

Years ago, librarians were the keepers of the information-- they were the key hole through which patrons had to go to find the information they were seeking. Today, librarians roles have changed drastically. Librarians teach students and patrons how to find books and information for themselves, and part of that includes providing good signage and teaching students how to navigate their way around the library using those signs.

Keep the signage simple; use easy to read fonts; fancy fonts are distracting. Vary the size of the signs; the largest for the major sections [FICTION, BIOGRAPHIES, the Dewey major section numbers, etc.], down to smaller end shelf signs.

I received a good tip from a lady who worked with special ed students. On both ends of the fiction shelves in the middle of the library, I added nice, easy to read letter ranges to help students quickly find the fiction authors they were seeking. The SPED teacher asked if I would also print out the entire range, not just the beginning and end letters of the authors' last names, to help those students who struggled with the alphabet. I was happy to comply. They looked similar to this:

A - F

A - B - C - D - E - F

Teach students to read the alphabetized shelves by section - left to right; up to down before moving to the next section.

Make the major Dewey division signs the largest for students to easily find the section they are looking for.

In the shelves using the Dewey Decimal System, try to keep the shelves together in numerical order. It's confusing to shelve the numbered books in different areas of the library. All of our numbered books were in shelves against the walls that wrapped around three sides of the library, so I put large signage above each major section of the Dewey - 000's, 100's, 200's, 300's, etc. so the students could see the section they were looking for from anywhere in the library. On the individual shelves, I added many subject signs [Civil Rights, Fairy Tales, Solar System, Weather, etc.] that also included pictures that were very helpful to the students. 

Teach students how to read numerical order, especially the decimal fractions. It's much easier for them to understand if you teach them to read it like money; kids understand money. I have several very inexpensive posters and lessons in my Teachers Pay Teachers store that let students practice alphabetizing and putting call numbers in numerical order. Both are important skills for students to learn for life, and skipping over those skills makes it harder for them later.

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but I tell myself that maybe a paraprofessional might be reading this and could learn something from these posts. Sadly, too many school districts are replacing certified librarians with paraprofessionals; that happened to my job. But students still need to learn their way around a well-organized library complete with good signage. 

I'm so sorry, April!

April is National Poetry Month, and I should've posted at the beginning of the month an encouragement to sponsor a poetry contest in your school. But the month is well more than half over, so I'll post some of my favorite winning poems from years past. These students will be seniors in a couple of years now, and their class contained a number of exceptional writers. I would love to see what they're all up to in about ten years.

Forever Loyal
by Taylor Bechtel, when she was in 8th grade

I remember when spring was in my step,
When my tail was an uncontrollable propeller,
And my face held no note of grey.
I remember when you would scratch my ears,
And praise me for simple tricks.
I remember when I was something to be proud of,
Not just a burden.

Was it really that long ago that I was your best friend?
Do you even remember my trusting gaze?
My innocent disposition?
My utter devotion?
It is still that way,
At least from my perspective.

Your eyes catch mine,
While I shiver on this silver bed
Drowning in your excess emotions,
Hope,
Fear,
Sympathy,
Love.
The last overpowering the rest.
Life has no Disney ending.

But even as this needle pierces my skin
I am at ease
Even as my heartbeat slows
I am content.
Because even as this cold drug pulls my eyes shut,
Your love keeps me warm.

                                                                                                                             [Used with permission]

*  *  *

I was completely blown away by this poem. If you didn't get it the first time through, read it again. I cried the second time through when I realized it was from the perspective of the dog, about to be put down in the vet's office. 

RIP Daisy

About a month before, I had done the same thing with my seventeen-year-old poodle. And as heart-tugging as the poem is, it left me with such a sweet expression of love for my old dog.

*  *  *

A Long Wait

by Morgan Gray, when she was in the 7th grade

The child plays on

Carefree

The wind blows by

Unaware

Leaves rustle in the tree

Unnoticed

Dogs chase the cats

Ignored

The family eats

Unharmed

The soldiers march by

Feared

They pass through, destroying what they like

Hated

I shrink back from the window

Wondering

My mind contemplating the soldiers' defeat

Hoping

Thinking of the day I will get to play like the child

Happy

Be unnoticed like the leaves

Unimportant

The day I will be free of this hiding place

Waiting

                                                                                                       [Used with permission]

Morgan told me they had done a study on the Holocaust, and that inspired her wonderful poem.

  
*  *  *


Rooted to the Ground

by Amanda Peck, when she was in the 7th grade




You are the wind

Trying to knock me down

Blow me away

Trying to hurt me

Trying to bruise me

Blowing at me

In every direction

But I am an oak tree

Rooted to the ground

Deep below the surface

Where you cannot reach me

No matter how hard you blow

I will not come un-rooted

You think I am struggling

You laugh at me

Think I am barely holding on

But I am sturdy

Mocking your attempts

To bring me to the ground

For you are the one struggling

While I easily hold on

                                                                           [Used with permission]

*  *  *

Invisible

by Nathan Albers, when he was in the 7th grade


If I could have a power

to hold and then to use,

The power to turn invisible

is not the one that I'd choose.

I do not like the feeling

of being unseen by all.

They act like my chair's empty,

Like no one's there at all.

It might be my fault, too,

because I'm quiet as a stone.

No voices speak to me,

no ring comes from my phone.

They have their own friends,

and they don't need me.

There's conversation everywhere,

but nothing aimed at me.

I feel like I'm an empty cup,

like a car in an empty parking lot,

Or a painting that no one comes to see,

like a basketball that's never shot.

The world seems very far away,

for I sit here very glum.

They're talking and laughing and having fun,

but they don't want me to come.

If someone would come

to the seat next to me,

In a very short time

he would begin to agree.

With what every few people

have come to see,

That when I'm not invisible,

I'm a completely different me.

                                                                                                                   [Used with permission]

*  *  *

The library is a great place to provide students opportunities to express themselves through prose and poetry contests. You can also create an anthology each year of students' original works to document their efforts. Work with your Language Arts teachers to help collect good submissions. 

Who knows? The spark you start may mean adding some of your former students' published books to your library shelves some day.