2016 May Theme: Caring for Others

Accomplishments

• School wide book festival!
• Ellen Hopkins talk to select students
• Delivered ~300 books to the units
• Worked on parts of speech unit with Ms. R's Class
• Processed large donation from City of Rochester library

The Spring Book Festival was a success! In partnership with the St. John Fisher College Senor class of 2016, the Monroe County Library, the Library presented an afternoon celebration of reading. Students spent the afternoon learning about a variety of book genres; including graphic novels, urban fiction, poetry, historical fiction and non-fiction. Each student participated in an informational scavenger hunt where St. John Fish College students provided clues and answers. Over 50 students participated. Students also received free books courtesy of the Monroe County Library System. Local librarians, Shelley Matthews and Darlene Saunders, provided personalized readers advisory. They also distributed over 500 free books to students.

Ellen Hopkins came to speak to a select group of students. It was an interesting talk about the power of not giving up and the downside of drug addiction. After this talk, the superintendent expressed interest in having other, more diverse authors come to speak at our school. I have started the process of securing a local author to speak later this summer or early fall.

I worked with a local librarian to deliver about 300 books to the units. We went from unit to unit and removed old, titles then replaced them with newer books donated by the Monroe County Library.

I continued working with Ms. R's class. We focused on parts of speech. I read them a book on adjectives and verbs. We then used knowledge from those books to complete several hilarious Mad Libs. We also started reading James and The Giant Peach. 

Volunteers getting ready!

Scavenger hunt central

Superhero cape and balloons ready to go!

2016 April Theme: Getting Outside

Accomplishments

• Finalized book festival plans
• Processed new Title 1 and donated books
• Created display for Poetry month
• Poetry unit with Ms. R’s class

This month I really focused on finalizing book festival details. It’s coming soon! A few things I have prepared for the event: BINGO/Scavenger hunt game to reinforce literacy goals of the event, collect and organize prize books, order decorations, finalize directions for St. John Fisher volunteers, finalize schedule and logistics with the help of two wonderful teachers, invite administrators and marketing, coordinate with culinary to provide cookies and select books for 12 table displays.

The Title 1 books came in! I processed the books with Title 1 stickers & stamps and prepped their circulation cards. I also created a new display to highlight the new titles. 

In celebration of poetry month, I worked with Ms. R’s class discuss poetry creation. We read several poetry books including, A Light In The Attic, Poke In The Eye and If I Ruled The School. We then practiced brainstorming and playing with adjectives.

2016 March Theme: Woman’s History

Accomplishments

• Created Women’s History display
• Eric Carle story time and craft with Ms. R’s class
• Prevention and choices with Ms. R’s class
• Focused on administrative tasks

Unfortunately the book club, has fallen to the wayside due to scheduling conflicts. I hope to revive the group in the summer when scheduling may be a bit easier. Several students still are very interested.

This month, I focused on getting the library organized. With the book festival coming, a large donation and Title 1 books coming in, I needed to make sure the library was organized and behind-the-scene tasks were attended to. This included circulation, reporting, physically organizing books and weeding old books. 

I was able to create a new mini unit on prevention and choices with Ms. R’s class. I read them the book, Alexander’s Terrible, Horrible, No-good, Very Bad Day. I then presented the class with visual representations of each ‘terrible’ thing that happened to Alexander. We then worked together to identify if each thing was ‘preventable’ or ‘inevitable’. Of course the ensuing message is that ~90% of the events were preventable. We then had a discussion about prevention in their own lives.

Later in the month, we read several Eric Carle stories and utilized a kit to create our own Eric Carle style artwork. We presented the art to Ms. R.

2016 February Theme: Diversity

Accomplishments

• Created Black History Month display
• Held book club meeting in the library
• Read Anna, Banana to Ms. R’s class
• Coordinated and organized huge book donation from Monroe County Library
• Coordinated with units to attend Wes Moore talk through MCC and provided copies of The Other Wes Moore to clients.

Book Club! Finally! I was able to get a group of students together to start a book club. We held the meeting in the library. The students selected A.S. King’s Everybody Sees The Ants. It’s a wonderful book about bullying, dysfunctional families and relationships. Of course, being an A.S. King book, it has a touch of magic where the main character communicates with his POW grandfather through dreams. Together we read the first few pages and shared our thoughts on what might happen. 

This month I also managed a HUGE donation from the Monroe County Library. I brought in about 30 boxes of books. Our campus does not have enough space to manage these, so I contacted the other campuses and coordinated the delivery of about 12 boxes of books. It was quite the task. I took requests from campus representatives and attempted to match each campus with books that would be most read in each location. Yay, readers advisory practice! 

I also reached out to the units and encouraged them to attend a talk by Wes Moore. I ended up providing one of the units with a set of books, allowing clients to read his book prior to the talk. I heard that some of the clients got to speak with him directly. 

I also continued to work directly with Ms. R’s class. We read a trilogy by new author, Anica Rissi. These books are wonderful conversation starters. They discuss the difficulties of friendships and how to navigate life changes. http://www.anicarissi.com/books/

2016 January Theme: National Book Month with Historical focus

Accomplishments

• Wrote and published a book with Ms. R’s class
• Had a few students volunteer their time in the library
• Planned new AT Book Club
• Continued to plan Book Festival
• Created display for Black History Month

This month focused on library upkeep and maintenance. I worked with a student volunteer to label the spines of books for easy student access. I also worked to process new book donations into the collection.

From the suggestion of Ms. A., I organized a student book club. I identified about 10 students to participate. I have sent official invitations and coordinated snacks and teacher volunteers. We will be having our first meeting at the beginning of February. 

With Ms. R’s class we read If You Give A Mouse A Cookie and If You Give A Moose A Muffin. After reading these two books, we wrote our own story, If You Give A Hyena A Ham Sandwich. We worked on re-creating the structure of the book, analyzing the logic between the chains of events and illustrating our own story-line. The book has been published and distributed around the school. A copy resides in the library. 

I have also continued to work on the planning of the Book Festival. There is an opportunity to have Ellen Hopkins speak at school during the Book Festival week. This is a huge draw for many students who love her work. I will be planning and executing her visit with Jennifer Perry. 

2015 December Theme: Give-a-ways

 Accomplishments

• Distributed Book on every Bed books
• Distribute unit library books
• Acquire and process donations from Mercy High School
• Create spine labels for Bibliotherapy titles.
• Provide Monster to Focus unit for book club.
• Compiled student work for poetry book printing
• Created Title I order
• TCI update

December was a busy month. The Book on Every Bed program took many man hours. Although I am still waiting on more feedback on the program, I feel it went really well. I hope to do it next year.  What an exercise in readers advisory!!

Program details:

1. First, creating a pool of about 200 appropriate (no trigger-able topics) books in new condition.
2. Second, matching student reading levels and interests.
3. Third, labeling books and sorting for delivery.
4. Finally, delivering the books.

Aside from the book give-a-way, I focused on collection development. I worked with Ms. Armstrong to re-institute the Title I budget from last year. I also compiled a book order list and got a quote from Liftbridge Books. I am still waiting on final budget approval. 

I also compiled a wonderful set of student poetry for the libraries first student poetry publication. I distributed this book to all students to contributed material and various administrators. I was very proud of their work. The goals of this workshop were to expose students to a variety of classic poetry and also explore self-expression and inspiration. In addition, we focused on poetic structure and techniques.  We started by reading and analyzing Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. We discussed breaking traditional rules of writing. We then moved to the poem, Oranges by Gary Soto. With this poem we discussed similes and metaphors and utilizing imagery in the written format. Finally, we discussed The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. With this poem we discussed symbolism and structure. Students also played with fun poetry formats such as acrostic, concrete and book spine poetry.

 One of my student's work

2015 November Theme: Poetry & Kindness

Accomplishments

• Dug into old files to identify potential funding sources
• Discussed funding with the Children’s Foundation
• Continued weekly poetry unit with Ms. R and Ms. S’s class
• Non-fiction Thanksgiving classes with Ms. R
• Re-organized Storybooks to be Alphabetical
• Children’s book festival display
• Kindness display & unit with R’s class
• Compiled mental health booklist for councilors (bibliotherapy)

 

My Everyday Kindness Display

• This month I focused on a variety of initiatives, the most important being; securing funding for the library. This year, we were left with $0 for the library. This was disappointing, considering that in previous years, we had at least $2,000 in Title I funds. I explored the Laura Bush grant and was told I cannot apply for it and it was not a priority for the grant writing team. This was also disappointing. I then had a great conversation with several Foundation staff members who helped set up a Barnes and Noble wish list and also help get the word out about the library needs to potential donors. This year, I hope to be permitted to participate in the Title I budgeting. I also will communicate with the superintendent on making the Laura Bush grant a priority for the next year.

• Creating a list of biblio-therapeutic books was another great success this month. I compiled a list from several School Library Journal articles into a master list to be utilized by HCC staff. Categories included abuse/assault, addiction, anxiety disorder, ADD, ADHD, ASD, bipolar disorder, depression and mood disorders, dissociative disorder, eating disorders, OCD, PTSD, schizophrenia, self-harm, suicide, Tourette syndrome, war and death. I have distributed it to all clinical staff and made copies available to teachers.

Raw Data to Published Article

Digging down to find original sources and raw data. It takes time, patience and magic librarian research skills. Most people don't do it, they see an article or picture and take it as fact and sometimes even extend that 'fact' to apply to a broader scope. This is part of the reason why there is so much mis-information in the world. I wonder what the world would be like if everyone understood and valued the importance of information literacy.

I just read an amazing article on TED about the guy that edits photos for NASA. It was a great visual example of how information changes/evolves from it's raw data sources to published/shared post. I hope to use it in a future information literacy class to illustrate how important it is to realize that each article is an interpretation of raw data.

http://ideas.ted.com/gallery-the-art-and-science-of-space-photography/?utm_campaign=social&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_content=ideas-blog&utm_term=science

Raw Data: 


Final Image: 

2015 October Theme: Poetry

    Accomplishments:

• Weekly poetry writing & appreciation with two classes
• Manned the library during open house
• Attended superintendent’s meeting
• Organized donated books from St. John Fisher
• Obtained free furniture for library
• Began re-writing Laura Bush grant for re-application
• Re-label bookshelves for better access
• Created comprehensive ‘Library Quick Start Guide’ for staff to empower themselves to utilize the library at any time.
• Coordinated BML book sale setup with Mr. L and student council students

    October was a month of donations and access. Through my connections with the greater library community I was able to secure a story time rug, office chair and corner shelf for the library. These items came from Fairport, who has recently remodeled. Fairport also donated several rugs and coat hooks to Ms. R’s class and Dr. S. The library also participated in setting up the Brighton Library Book Sale for the third year since I’ve been here. This resulted in student helpers taking home books for themselves and the library adding a box of new books to the collection. We were also lucky enough to receive a large box of books from St. John Fisher.  All of these new books were processed and added to the collection or student give-a-way shelves.

 

New Storytime Rug

    I also spent a significant amount of time improving access to the library. I worked on re-labeling the shelves, so items can be found more effectively. I also created and distributed a new ‘Library Quick Start Guide’ for staff. This guide provides all the information needed to utilize the library to its fullest potential, even in my absence.

    This month I also began my poetry unit with Ms. R’s and Ms. S’s class. We discussed the major categories of poetry, ways to be inspired, and key literary devices. With both classes we produced mini poetry books and analyzed poems such as Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, Oranges by Gary Soto and The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost.

2015 September Theme: Fall Into Reading

Accomplishments

• Fall Into Reading book display
• Updated posters in main office
• Connected with teachers, sharing library resources and services
• Distributed public library user guides to both unit staff and school
• Story times with R’s Class
• Book Festival planning kick-off
• Book on every planning pillow kick-off
• Produced guide for college application process
• Produced publishing quick-start guide for student interested in publishing

September was a ‘kick-off’ month. I began planning this year’s big events. These include Book On Every Pillow and the School Wide Book Festival. Smaller projects include, creating a college resource packet, training staff on utilizing the library on their own, teaching writing skills, teaching storytelling and finding funding for the library.

Coordinating with staff was also a focus in September. I reached out to staff, offering a variety of resources and services. I provided Ms. G with a collection of animal books to complete classroom research. I provided Ms. G (Speech) with a variety of simple joke books to assist her students with articulation. I connected with Mr. T (Work scholarship) to inform him that the library has a variety of career exploration texts. I also put feelers out for teachers to take advantage of advisory period for short information literacy classes.

June Theme: Summer Reading

Accomplishments

• Discussed Ben Franklin and the writing process with Ms. R’s class
• Summer reading book display (See below)
• MWC assembly and celebration
• Brighton Memorial Library book sale set up and donations
• Weeded books
• Summer preparations

Much of June was spent preparing for the summer creative writing workshop and preparing for summer reading.This year the summer reading theme is Every Hero Has a Hero so I am giving my summer creative writing workshop the same name. I hope to do a separate post about the workshop details. 

This month I also planned the Million Word Challenge celebration event. Over the course of the last few months, our students have read over 11 million words. It was wonderful to recognize the students who participated. There was one student who was in the library all year, and it was especially exciting to give him his reward.

Year Summary

My first as a school librarian has come to a close! What a great year. Here is a summary of my accomplishments. 

Library Mission: The Library’s mission is to congruently support both student learning and treatment goals by providing access to a variety of reading, viewing and listening materials with a focus on instilling a lifelong love of reading.

Library Goals:

1. Support students by providing individualized materials based on interest and comprehension ability.
2. Support teaching teams with the resources they need to enrich student learning.
3. Support clinical teams with resources that engage and enlighten student healing.
4. Support administrative teams by providing proof that library funding is being used to improve student outcomes.

2014-2015 Library statistics

• The library circulated ~25 books /week.
• The library gave away 250+ books to students through Read Across America and Holiday programs.
• 60+ classes were taught by the librarian.
• 1 student authored book was published and added to the library collection.
• Almost 11 million words were read by students participating in the Million Word Challenge.
• 4 students became the libraries first team of library volunteers.
• The library secured $700+ worth of library equipment through a partnership with a local private school .
• Delivered 4 boxes of books to unit book shelves.

May Theme: Caring for Others

Accomplishments

• Distributed residential library newsletter
• Expanded library’s poetry collection
• Began outlining summer writing workshop lesson plans
• Established regular student volunteer work with 5 students
• Continued library lessons with Ms. T's class. (Current events & spelling)
• Reached out to units to plan book club and graphic design lessons
• Processed new Title I books!!!!!
• Had Ms. R’s class perform Elephant & Piggie as a play for Ms. T’s class

Springtime is organizing time for the library. I focused on identifying 5 student volunteers for the rest of the year. These volunteers did everything from creating check-out cards to writing book reviews to identifying books to weed from the collection. It was a great having the extra help. It was also great to see students with a passion for reading. I hope to see some of these students as future library employees! 

I hope to do a future unit on poetry. To prepare for this, I have sought out poetry books from local book sales to augment our collection.

April Theme: Getting Outside

Accomplishments

• Provided Holocaust primary resource kit to Ms. H’s class. 
• Completed Alliteration book with Ms. R’s class.
• Continued to provide library lessons to Ms. T’s class. (Online resource evaluation & Current events)
• Picked up book donations from local poet.
• Continued to collect storytelling resources.
• Created Million Word Challenge certificates and awards.
• Created Teen Book Festival display and held book review contest for students.
• PMP prep and meeting with principal.

This month I was able to put my publishing background to use. I taught Ms. R’s class about the publishing process and worked all month long to write and publish a book about alliteration with them. The process was really exciting. Each day provided an opportunity to teach the students something new. We learned about the parts of a book, the brainstorming process, editing, -ing endings, verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, spelling, illustration and cooperation. 

I also was able to teach an information literacy class to Ms. T’s class. We focused on evaluating online resources for bias, authority, and currency.

March Theme: Woman’s History

Accomplishments

• School wide Read Across America book give-a-way
• Coordinated the delivery of last year’s Title I book order
• Initiated groundwork for storytelling event
• Met with superintendent to discuss vision for library
• Taught Genres to Ms. T’s class
• Taught alliteration class to Ms. R’s class. Also began writing an alliteration book with class.

This month I focused on developing programming. My goal is to create robust programs. My first idea will focus on process of storytelling. What makes a good story? How do you tell it in an interesting way? The process from inspiration to distribution. I want students to know how to express themselves and be able to share it with the world.

February Theme: Diversity

Accomplishments

• Curriculum connected library classes
• Order submitted!
• Contacted BOCES for resource sharing
• Students helped set up Brighton Book Sale

This February the library finally felt its rhythm. Books were checked out, returned, re-shelved. The Title I book order was completed. Various organizations were contacted for potential resource partnerships (BOCES & Brighton Library). Excess books were delivered to the integration waiting room. Ms. R’s class read and learned about curriculum related topics (African American History). Ms. T’s class read Eggs by Jerry Spenelli as a group. We worked together to map the characters, learn new vocabulary and practice reading aloud.

January Theme: National Book Month with Historical focus

Accomplishments

• RRRReview Program
• Newsletter
• Circulation tracking initiated 

Big thanks from Management

The start of the New Year helped bring the library into a pattern of service. The library holds regular classes with Ms. R and Ms. T. The library also now tracks circulation statistics to give insight into library usage. I hope to expand the tracking system in the future to give further insights.
The library newsletter was sent to the community highlighting 2014 accomplishments.

A new reading interaction program was initiated. I coined it RRRReview. It's easy as Read…Review…Reap…Repeat. Read a book, write a review, win a prize. I've created a VERY simple book review book mark for students to fill out after they have read a book. I also set up a box on my desk to collect reviews. I'll select a few winners each week to get prize. I can distribute the prizes as needed.

2014 December Theme: Houses

Accomplishments

• Distributed Book on Every Bed program books
• Distribute unit library books
• Finish processing 3 boxes of donations
• MWC leader board display

December was a busy month. The Book on Every Bed program took many man hours. Although I am still waiting on more feedback on the program, I feel it went really well. I hope to do it next year.  Here are some details of the process:

1. First, creating a pool of about 200 appropriate (no trigger-able topics) books in new condition.
2. Second, matching student reading levels and interests.
3. Third, labeling books and sorting for delivery.
4. Finally, delivering the books.

Aside from the book give-a-way, I focused on assisting the kicking off the Million Word Challenge. The official kick off was held this month and went pretty well. About 3 students have already read 1 million words. I created a hallway display to highlight the challenge and rewards.

I continued reading class with Ms. R and Ms. T’s class.