Transitioning to the Middle School

Riding a High

The first three weeks of school were a blur of activity. During the first week (four school days) 15 parent volunteers unpacked 17,000 books onto the shelves of the brand new library media center. There was such satisfaction in organizing, unpacking, and stacking empty boxes in the hallway to be taken away. It was exciting to set a goal of getting it done and actually accomplishing the goal. With the help of these dedicated mothers nothing could stop us!

During the second and third week of school I somehow managed to convince every cluster in the building to bring their students to the library for orientation and a chance to check out books. Actually, it really wasn't a difficult sell. The building was brand new to everyone and there was a lot of excitement about getting into the media center space to see it unpacked.

I actually "pushed in" to a classroom for this cluster's orientation.

8th Graders Engaged in a "Coming of Age" theme book tasting

I made sure every student was able to log into the online catalog so they could start placing holds. Sure enough, stacks of books started showing up from other libraries to fill those holds. It was a beautiful thing bringing those titles to homerooms. One student asked me why I bring the books to their homerooms and not to where they are in class. "I would need a Marauder's Map in order to successfully pull that off," I replied.

Holds coming in from other RI school libraries

Feeling Low

As is normal, people began settling into their new routines. The library media center quickly went from a bustling, energetic space to a cavernous room so quiet it was beginning to freak me out.  Seriously, the lights automatically shut off without movement on a daily basis. I was getting a visual reminder of how completely dead the space was.

So completely quiet and empty

Getting Inside My Own Head

I started to question everything. Maybe leaving elementary school wasn't such a good idea. I am a people person. Making connections with others brings me joy and purpose. How will I make a positive impact on students and faculty if I am alone in here? Maybe I would never get the opportunity to do what I love most in the world - teach and learn from students and colleagues. Even worse - maybe everyone else looked at me as someone who doesn't work.

Wanting Positive Reviews

One social studies teacher has worked closely over the years with the retired library media specialist I replaced. They did lessons such as keyword searches, website evaluation, and exploring databases together at the start of each year. When I met with this teacher to plan some collaborative teaching times I realized she was a longtime "best customer" and wanted to make sure she continued to be satisfied.  Again, getting inside my head, I felt this tremendous pressure to do a good job with these lessons because she was the first person to reach out to collaborate. And just like Yelp, I wanted her to provide positive reviews so that other "customers" would be more likely to want to collaborate.

I eventually reached out to my retired colleague and asked her to share her lessons with me so as not to disappoint this teacher. I then tweaked the lessons to make them work for me. Now that I have been working with this social studies teacher for a few weeks we are getting more comfortable with one another and I don't find myself as stressed about disappointing her.

Working Through It

One of the things I had to keep reminding myself of was the fact that building relationships takes time. I set a goal to eat lunch with colleagues and get to know them through shared stories and laughs. My lofty plan was to get to each grade level lunch with colleagues at least once a week. People are more likely to want to collaborate if they know you are a decent person. However, due to the reality of not being able to leave the library media center unattended, I can usually only get to the grade level lunch time on my floor. Therefore, I have gotten to know the seventh grade teachers the best so far and they are some pretty amazing humans.

Surprisingly, another aspect that is helping me in my quest for collaboration is the state teacher evaluation. I am obliged to find colleagues to work with due to needing to create two student outcome objectives I can measure for growth throughout the year. Every teacher understands this need and when I have reached out to colleagues about my situation they are are eager to help me. I am working on some possible ideas by meeting with colleagues throughout the building. There is such purposeful joy in the act of brainstorming with another teacher, and you both walk away with new ideas and understandings from the exercise.

When I interviewed with my superintendent for this position back in June he gave me some advice or direction. He advised me to get into as many rooms as possible and get a feel for what my colleagues are teaching in order to find ways to collaborate. I have begun doing just that and I am so inspired and impressed with the teaching and learning going on in my building. It is providing more context for me to think about ways in which the library media center can provide avenues to enhance and enrich the learning I am seeing in these rooms around the building.

Digital Literacy with Mr. Davis

Annotations with Mrs. Carroll

Mrs. Henderson in the STEAM lab

Mr. MacFarland in the Makerspace

Finding Others to "Geek Out" With

Here's the thing about life: when you are passionate about certain things, you naturally find others like you. I quickly made a connection with a seventh grade teacher who also loves reading so much she does weekly blog posts. You can find her blog here. We talk books and life. Through our conversation I learned that her cluster has a "become a positive agent of change" theme for their students this year. I immediately handed her Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension by Sara K. Ahmed. She is excited about the book too. We may be co-teaching some lessons soon.

 

Goodreads summary

My Takeaway

If I am honest, I would not have been able to write this post while in the thick of it. I was too scared about the huge change I had made in my life and wondering if I had made the right decision. However, I am now able to write because my days are completely filled with co-teaching and planning meetings for upcoming collaborative projects. In a time of panic in September I had reached out to Stephanie Mills, a Cranston middle school library media specialist I respect and admire, for advice. She wisely told me to enjoy the few moments of calm because I would soon be very busy. I am so thrilled to say she was right. I was petrified to leave the structure of scheduled classes at the elementary level. But the truth is, middle school students are older and ready for more. My days are packed with co-teaching but we have not even begun to scratch the surface of what we will do together. These are building blocks. Over time we will create and explore and fail and tweak and try again. That is the art of teaching and learning. And I am so grateful for this opportunity. 

Getting to Know Your Readers

When I left the classroom to take the library media specialist position six years ago one of my biggest fears was that I would no longer have the impact I had on my class of 25 fourth grade students each year. The relationships you build with your own class are so powerful and lasting. What I have learned is that when you leave the classroom to become a library media specialist, you cast a much wider net. You have the ability to positively impact the culture of a school. I would like to take this time to reflect on routines I built into my lesson time to naturally connect with and get to know my students in the library.

Learning to Say Names Correctly

This might sound like a given but it is important to note. On the first day of class I ask students to tell me what they like to be called and I make sure I can say it correctly. If it is a tricky name for me to pronounce I make a notation with the way to say it phonetically. It is a sign of respect to say someone's name correctly, and I want students to know I care enough to get it right.

Starting the Class

Some days are more hectic than others. As a specialist you have new classes coming through the door every 45 minutes. On a particularly chaotic day a few years ago when my patience was running low I thought about this quote: "If you're too busy to be kind, you're too busy." It made me think about the limited interactions I have with my students and how I needed to make them count. I decided to start a routine when taking attendance that would be more interactive. I say, "Good morning, James" and the student needs to look me in the eye and say, "Good morning, Mrs. Roy" in return. Making eye contact with a friendly greeting is a life skill I tell students they need to master. I feel satisfied knowing that before we get into the lesson every student has heard the sound of their own name.

I purchase a set of index cards on a coil at Walmart each August. I write a message on each card and leave the index cards on display at the circulation desk. An example of a message would be "Good afternoon, Mrs. Currie!" This visual reminds students to greet their parent volunteer with a friendly greeting. I have found that this weekly routine and reminder has been working. When I am in the hallways students are quick to greet me and respond appropriately to my greeting. 

Mindfulness Practice

As students enter the library more and more come to me dis-regulated.  Their engines are running high and I need to help them settle and be ready for learning. Lucky for me, I enlisted the help of our Social Emotional Learning coach, Sue Constable, and she expertly provided me with a quick routine for this. 

First, we ring the chimes twice. During this time students can choose to close their eyes or focus on a piece of the rug. There is no making noise or trying to get anyone else's attention. It is a time to settle in and notice your own breathing. 

The chime is rung twice

The next part is practicing deep breaths. We use a breathing ball as a visual for this. As a student pulls the ball out, we take a deep breath in. As a student pushes the ball in, we breathe out. We do three deep breaths to get oxygen to our brains. This technique is good practice to get your body to a point where you can access other tools when your emotions are getting the best of you. 

Three deep breaths with the breathing ball

The last part is practicing the art of focusing. We think about focusing as a skill we can improve in just as we can get better at a sport with practice. A student shakes up a glitter bottle and then turns it back to its original position. We all stay quiet and watch the glitter as it settles to the bottom of the bottle. 

I asked students to reflect on their library experience in a post to their parents in October. Most students wrote about the mindfulness core practices. See three examples below.

Checking In On Their Reading Lives

At the end of class students check out books with a parent volunteer (more on those amazing parents in a later post) and then they come see me to check in about their reading lives. Students show me what books they are taking out or, if they are not taking out books, they tell me about what they are reading in school or at home. I jot down the genres they are taking out and we have a quick discussion. Students become adept at identifying genres from this weekly routine. I can start to see patterns which helps guide our discussion. I will not discourage students from reading any particular genre. I will, however, gently nudge them to step out of their comfort zone and create a balanced reading diet if I notice the same types of books always being checked out.

My messy color coded system

GN - graphic novel

hyb - hybrid (chapter book with pictures interspersed like Diary of a Wimpy Kid)

PB - picture book

NF - nonfiction

bio -biography

HF - historical fiction

RF - realistic fiction

mag - magazine

Takeaway

I am grateful for the opportunity to work with all of the students in our reading community. Although I only have students for 45 minutes per week, I feel that the routines I have incorporated into our time together have given me a chance to get to know my 550 students on a more personal level.  

The Power of Book Recommendations to Grow Readers

I'm feeling nostalgic as I prepare to transition from the role of an elementary library media specialist to a middle school library media specialist. In all honesty, whenever I am asked what I do, my immediate response is "library teacher." We have many hats we wear in the library but I believe at the heart of everything we do is connecting with our students and the adults that we serve.

When you are an educator it does not matter what you are teaching - research skills, digital citizenship, instilling a love of reading, growth mindset, you could plug in any teaching standard here - at the very core is figuring out a way to bring the lesson to life so that others will connect and care about the subject matter. So, yes, technically our term is library media specialist but if you were to ask me what I was born to do, I will answer first "mother" and then "teacher."

My day to day existence will look much different next year in the new middle school media center. Over the next few weeks I hope to reflect on my "takeaways" serving fourth and fifth graders over the past six years. I want these reflections housed for posterity so I can look back at what matters in order to forge ahead.

I recently surveyed my students and want to share the results in a Growing Readers series. I am focusing on the power of book recommendations in the first part of the series.

One day of holds going out on the "Holds Cart" delivered by a student and teacher assistant. Notice the colorful decorations adorning the cart? It is a celebration to get a book you've been wanting to read delivered to your classroom so I wanted the cart to reflect that excitement.

The single biggest bang for my buck in the library has been dedicating 5 to 10 minutes of class on book recommendations. I do it in the form of a blog so that I can share these recommendations with our community - students, faculty and families. It is structured with 5 recommendations per week with varying genres. If there is a book trailer or super short video to make the book more enticing, I include it. The kids rely on this time. In fact, there are groans if we don't get to our weekly "Book Bites." I also encourage students to create book trailers to recommend titles to peers. It is really empowering when their book trailers get showcased. 

Providing Agency

At the beginning of the year I teach students how to log into their library catalog account and place holds. They take complete ownership over this process within the next month and then the holds start pouring in from school libraries across the state. It mimics the public library process for them so that they get into the habit of advocating for themselves. My goal is that they transfer that skill year round through the public library and then when they head to the middle school. 

What the Data Shows

Earlier in this post I mentioned that I had asked my students to fill out a survey for me. 471 students responded. I asked the students how they find out about books they want to read. 81% of students reported using the weekly Book Bites posts for recommendations.  62% of students reported relying on recommendations from friends. Other ways they reported getting recommendations included family members, looking around at the bookstore and the library, and book tastings (more on that in a later blog post).

I asked the students what kind of an impact the weekly Book Bites posts has had on their reading life. 46% of students report learning about many more books due to this weekly recommendation time. 37% of students report finding new books weekly to check out or place holds on based on the weekly Book Bites posts. 

A majority of the time when ILL (inter library loan) books come in daily from other libraries for our students the green mail pouch is either bursting at the seams or a library bin is sent instead.  We process a LOT of books. I  have had incredible parent volunteers over the past few years (shout out to Mrs. Carolyn Gray and Mrs. Elaine Van Leer ) who graciously come in at least once a week to help me with this. I knew we had volume but I thought what we were bringing in was the standard until I saw the state data from the 2017-2018 school year. The students from our library received 1,255 books from lending libraries last year. That is 1,000 more books than any other school library in the state. 

This data confirms what I have come to realize over the past few years: if you take the time to recommend books, to get excited about titles, and to let students recommend to each other, they will read. They will look forward to the selections and they will look forward to receiving the books once they have placed holds. 

An Unexpected, Joyful Outcome

Above there is a picture of the book holds cart. We have a student who (along with his teacher assistant) brings books to students in their classrooms. It is a win-win situation. The student practices greeting and making eye contact with others. Students know when he knocks on their door, someone in their class is receiving a book. This book delivery student has become an integral part of our school community. On Valentine's Day students from all classrooms surprised him with cards.  He has relationships with children across the building which may not have happened if he wasn't going door to door each day delivering the books.  When asked how it feels to get books delivered to their classroom by this person, students responded "It feels really good," "It is exciting," and "It makes me happy."

My Takeaway 

Students deserve to have adults in their lives who will champion literacy. If we are genuinely excited about titles, our enthusiasm is contagious. If we put systems in place for students to learn of new titles and advocate for themselves, we will watch the magic happen. I have been a witness to this and it truly is miraculous.