This new school year has seen some big changes. I have a couple of new jobs - an admin/co-ordination/leadership role, but not to do with teaching, and the Best Job in the World. I do really enjoy the admin work, but it's not the stuff of interesting writing thus far. Fellow pen-pushers, you'll need to hold your hats for a mind-blowing post on the joys of developing and administrating systems for online collaboration another day. Sorry.
I've just begun a two year contract as my school's Information and Literature Resource Teacher, which I think is really just the knobbliest term someone could come up with for 'Library Teacher'. It's all the joys of Teacher Librarianism, without the cataloguing, ordering, book-mending and other sensible responsible library work. I am in charge of Literary Fun.
We started the year on an exciting note with an authors' visit from Chris Riddell, Paul Stewart and Anthony McGowan (coinciding with our annual visit from the excellent Brocklehursts of the Norfolk Children's Book Centre). I decided to try something new this year, asking our visitors to hold writing workshops with smaller groups, rather than the larger-scale book talks we've had in the past. My intent was that the smaller groupings, and more interactive format would be of greater benefit to the children, the vast majority of whom speak English as their second or third language. Anthony, Paul and Chris did wonderful work and it was a privilege to work with them and see them in action for a few days.
After that, time at the beginning of the school year was much spent in working on helping students learn their way around and how to find the books they need in the library. Using number lines to help the 3rd Graders understand the Dewey Decimal System was really effective, and we assessed the Grade Fours' skills by asking them to locate and pull books to keep in their classrooms for their Unit of Inquiry. Grade 5s spent a few lessons learning how to use the library catalogue, databases and kid-friendly search engines effectively. It's exciting to see them using keywords and filters to search, and it could well have happened that tears came to my eyes when I saw how many DO NOT automatically turn to Google Search when they want to find things out. Next stop, citation.
Working with the younger children (ELC, Grade Primary, Grade 1) has been a steep learning curve, but a rewarding one that deserves a post all of its own. I came into this position with very little Early Childhood experience and it's certainly a whole other world than the upper primary and middle school teaching I'm used to. Still, I'm very pleased with what I've learned so far - definitely challenging, but a very rewarding experience. And I have discovered a deep love for picture books.
My excellent librarian colleague and I have been tasked with making our library a more energetic and dynamic community space, which is an exciting process. Library traffic has definitely increased, with many more classes, teachers, parents and individual students using the space for a broader range of activities. This is an ongoing project, calling for lots of trialling of different ways of working together (and scheduling!), but we are learning together and many community members have commented on the 'friendlier' library atmosphere we've developed.
One thing I'm working on is increasing community awareness of the amazing literature resources we have, and how they connect to the concepts and values inherent in our school's mission and values, as well as those of the IB. Books We've Been Reading is a review blog for community members, that recommends high-quality literature available in our collection. I'm the author of the vast majority of posts, but you'll see that we have a few from guest student bloggers as well.
And I'll leave you with this wonderful illustration by Chris Riddell, that just arrived in the post for me this afternoon. Isn't she magnificent? Ah, the lucky lucky life of a library teacher!
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| Adventuress, by Chris Riddell. |
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