We survived 25...

What a month it has been! We're 25 days into the school year now and what good news we have to report:

Circulations are booming, in spite of staff reduction. We checked out nearly 3000 books to our students in September.
Students are ENGAGED, asking lots of questions about reading
and books. They are requesting books for our library that they WANT to read.
We had 1080 students through orientation in five days. Whew! We started off the month by getting students the information they need to start using all their resources: Blackboard, Destiny OPAC and access to the school network.

We had two promotions this month:

We are finishing a successful collaborative Banned Books Week celebration. The American Library Association dedicates the last week of September to celebrating our Freedom to Read. In HOWL classes, students are learning all about the First Amendment, hearing famous authors read from their own challenged books, learning about the history of famous banned or challenged books, and answering questions about their own ideas of intellectual freedom. Our banned books list is nearly all checked out. Way to go, WMS!

The NC Smartest Card Campaign features Beaux Foy, the lead singer for local rock band Airiel Down. I played their Hurricane Warning song, most commonly known for the music our Carolina Hurricanes skate out to after each period.
Beaux supports literacies of all kinds by asking teens to visit thier local libraries for all the awesome programs that are available to them. I handed out many applications to students and will be excited to get their cards back to them when they arrive! Thanks, Beaux!

If I had to choose only one word to describe this year, I would choose 'overwhelming'. We are all working at a frenetic pace to keep up with shortages: teachers, support staff, administrators, students and parents. I am amazed each week at the level of teamwork we are achieving. Veteran teachers are reaching out to help new teachers. New teachers are making an incredible effort to catch up with policies and procedures while teaching a rigorous curriculum. Support staff are working long hours to keep up with it all. Students are coming to school prepared to learn. Parents are active in our PTA and volunteering more hours this year. Custodians are working overtime to keep the building gorgeous. Administration is very supportive of us all.

We strive for excellence in educational support at our WMS Media Center. I'm happy to report that students are feeling supported this year. Many new students have given positive feedback about our collection, learning space and resources. I have often heard "you have books I like to read" and "I'll be back later this week for more books". The efforts to develop policies to support readers, hours spent on research and collection development and constant collaboration have paid off! It is with great enthusiasm that I exclaim, "We are boy-friendly at WMS!"

Here is a great article by award-winning and favorite teen author, James Patterson to explain what I mean:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/28/opinion/patterson-kids-reading/

The Top 10 Checkouts in September were:
1. Naruto. Vol. 25, Brothers
2. Rurouni Kenshin. Vol. 28, Toward a new era : Meiji swordsman romantic story
3. Dragon Ball Z. Vol. 23
4. Pita-ten : official fan book. Volume 1
5. 3D optical illusions
6. Cut (McCormick)
7. French phrases for dummies
8. Tales from a not-so-popular party girl (Russell)
9. Diary of a wimpy kid : the last straw
10. Diary of a wimpy kid : Greg Heffley's journal


Some activities coming up in October

:
- Poe's

Masque of Red Death

reading for our 6th grade students
- Big 6! Research process review with all grades
- Spooky Books display
- Bullying Prevention Month book display

Creative Educating

In the 2010-2011 school year, my Individual Growth Plan was to prove high circulations would bolster reading scores. I was able to prove an expected, yet interesting point instead: classrooms having more frequent interaction with the media specialist had notably more growth than those who didn’t.
This year, many school libraries will do without a team of media specialists. Most will have one media specialist and no assistant for up to one thousand students. At WMS, we are fortunate to have a part-time assistant, but still need to get creative to make this work.
How will we keep our program moving forward this year?
I can sit in my office and brood about the state of school libraries in the United States, but I choose to do anything I can to step out into the classroom and create a dynamic teaching experience for our students. By using the duo powers of teacher content experience and background knowledge with my resource knowledge and matching appropriate educational technologies, our students at WMS have a chance for a learning experience they will retain to develop themselves as lifelong information seekers. Working collaboratively is the key to provide an enriching classroom experience. Promoting the information center as the core of our school environment is essential.
You’ll see me in your department meetings, at leadership meetings, begging staff members to contribute by becoming active members of our Media Technology Advisory Committee. We will work together to find the best resources possible, create dynamic lessons, teach digital citizenship and work together to implement them for a successful school year.
This means that I will be less available to look up student logins already available on the network, troubleshoot technology issues and a/v problems, and write lesson plans by myself. I’m calling on teamwork to help our students succeed this year. I know we can do it, in spite of the impossible obstacles before us. We are a teaching and learning community. Let’s keep that in perspective and bring our best game this year.

First Gaming Day

As I quickly scratch off the remaining calendar days for this year, I am stunned to realize there are only 29 days left! We have been so busy in the media center, most recently to host our first gaming day.
Why should students play games in the media center? I had School Library Journal to thank for the idea. Over a period of three years, I have been reading about more schools, specifically middle schools, offering this activity to their students. Purpose varied from parent engagement activities to reading rewards. Ours was a data-driven decision.
As a member of our school's Literacy Data Team and Leadership Committee, I am immersed in discussions of data-driven planning. I wanted to see how our numbers could help drive student interaction. Our circulation data in December showed that our sixth graders were checking out an abundance of books (they will have their day soon, don't worry!), but our 8th grade was seriously lagging with an appalling 81 books for the entire grade level!
Consulting with the Language Arts teachers, I talked about ways we could boost reading interest in these students. Mrs. Senseney was excited about engaging her students, so we jumped right in to begin planning together. We drafted and implemented a Google docs student survey to target specific reasons students may not be choosing reading as an activity. Based on that data, we talked about ways to introduce students to books they may want to read.
I created a high-interest book pass with teen themes. On another visit, they learned about the Michael J. Printz award books we have in our collection. Ms. Senseney extended this reading encouragement in the classroom with discussions and reading logs.
April data showed that those particular students jumped 30% in their circulation! I was so proud of them, I honestly teared up! Mrs. Senseney and I were so excited for them, that we decided we had to do something to celebrate their efforts.
With the help of the invaluable Mrs. Stevens, our Media Assistant, we all got together to bring in our gaming systems and arrange for snacks. I put together a booktalk of all our books related to games and gaming. We kept it under wraps until the students were bursting with curiosity on the big day!
We had such great fun that the day went quickly. We had four classes of students beaming with happiness and pride in their efforts, and a school full of students asking how they can have this opportunity too. I am thrilled that it was such a success and hope to continue this tradition next year.

Spring Flings

News and Observer: Eastern Wake News
Article published Apr 10, 2011
WMS Students Turn Media Center Into Poetry Jam

Another Scholastic Book Fair passed by this year.
To celebrate our Family Night, our staff teamed up to host a fun Literacy Night Event.
Although we would have liked to see more families participate, those who did visit were treated to a beatnik-style Poetry Jam. Our own student volunteers served coffee, soda and cookies in a cafe'setting. Student poets performed poetry they wrote and a poem from their favorite author. Some Jazz Band members kept the beat with keyboards, drums and a saxophone.
Dig?

Other stations included vocabulary instruction strategies, text summarizing, read-and-say-something, booktalks featuring books from our fair and EOG highlighting strategies. These all help our students and parents read to learn and learn to read together. We had some great parental compliments!

Overall, the book fair was a success, in spite of the gloomy economy. Students had a great time visiting and helping out with our Student Crew over the last two weeks. Although we missed our goal by only $24.00, we were able to get almost $1200.00 in books for the library and classrooms!! We also had some leftover cash that the PTA will hold for fun activities coming up...
Until next year, happy reading and enjoy all our new books in our

media center.

Wordle of the library life

NHL All-Star Weekend

This is my other professional life. When I'm not looking at books or computer screens, I'm looking at monitors and well, computer screens.

A book about Nothing by Janne Teller

Nothing is a morbid, philosophical mind-bender by Janne Teller. Denmark is the setting for Teller's story, and the name she chose for the town is thought-provoking itself. Taering is a Danish word for "corrode, consume and eat through". The young teens in the town assimilate to their town's namesake.

Pierre Anton is a nihilist who walks away from his schooling to while away the hours in a plum tree. He accosts his former classmates on their way to school with his doctrine that life has no meaning. "Nothing matters, so nothing is worth doing." he proclaims. This infuriates his former classmates, who first try to pelt him with stones to change his perspective. When this fails, they vow to collectively build a "heap of meaning".

They found an abandoned sawmill where they decided to create their heap. At first, they brought favorite items like Dungeons and Dragons books, earrings, and sandals. Resistance began to develop as more meaningful items were suggested for the heap. Suggestions soon became vengeful demands. Their demands for each other became more and more insidious, until morbidity began piling on the heap: a child's exhumed coffin, a sacred prayer rug, the town church's large crucifix, and other horrifying, life-altering sacrifices.

By stripping themselves of their most valuable or sacred items, the teens sank to demoralizing behaviors. Their trials to create a heap of meaning irrevocably changed the teens' personalities. Sophie was a girl who became eerily calm in the process of brutalizing, macabre actions. "...she was rubbing off on the rest of us. What was to happen was a necessary sacrifice in our struggle for the meaning." Everyone had to participate in losing something precious to them for all to experience the loss. Their ultimate loss occured with Pierre Anton's reaction to their sacrifices.

Nothing is a read-alike for Lord of the Flies lovers. Teller's style of repeating words and using reverse superlatives throughout the book help the reader pause to experience the emotions of the characters: "little bit, tiny, little, smaller, nothing." Although the content is far too morbid and grotesque for the middle school ages, I would love to see a teacher take on the challenge of using this with an advanced high school literature course. Existentialism is a difficult concept to teach, but this novel paints a vivid picture of the experience.