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.