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A Unique View
- 15. NEW PAINT!
- 17. BRIGHT WHITE!
- 20. Beautiful Space!
- 28. FOUND ITEMS
- 30. MY OFFICE?
- 31. STORAGE ROOM
- 33. WORKROOM MESSES
- 51. FINDING MY VOICE • Professional development/County AVA Center • In library space professional development • Connections with staff and classes • Database lessons in library • Using SkyDrive lessons in classroom • AASL Flash Webinar
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Welcome, I am so glad you came.
- I am curious about you. What level? Fixed Schedule or open schedule? Computers in library or separate room? Supportive administration? New librarian in a school where someone just retired? Resigned? Years in school librarianship? 0-5? 6-10? 11-15? 15-20? More than 20? Why did they decide to attend this presentation?
- There’s a little bit you need to know about me. Actually there’s probably a lot you need to know about me. I am first & foremost a wife & momma. I’ll be married to Angelo 25 years in December. I have a 23 year old son who just graduated from college with a BA degree in animation, in case anyone needs an animator or 3D modeler, he is available for a position. I have a 2nd son, who was going to start his college career in accounting this fall but he became very sick and had to put off college until January. I attended Trenton State College, which later became The College of NJ, & graduated in 1979 with a BS in Early Childhood Education-back then that degree certified me to teach in Preschool & kindergarten to 8th grade. I worked for 6 years in wild wonderful West Virginia as a 1st & 2nd grade teacher and returned to NJ in 1986. I worked in Estell Manor & Dennis Township schools for a total of 17 years. In 1999, I began to burnout and worried so much about not being an effective teacher I became depressed & almost left education, but my sons were young and I was selfish & didn’t want to give up my Christmas holidays and summers off with them. So I did some soul searching, talked to lots of folks, and decided to go back to school to earn my Masters in School Librarianship. I attended Rowan University for 6 years, part time, while I raised my sons, worked full time, and tried to keep up with cleaning my house. In 2003 I applied for a full time librarian position at Holly Heights Elementary in Millville, NJ & I worked there until September 2012. I entered that position after the former librarian retired & I learned she had been there for ages and the library space was a bit old, too. The summer I was hired, they were replacing the carpet with tile and therefore all, ALL, books were boxed and packed away and shelves were scattered, & the place was a mess. But I persevered & worked hard, cried lots of tears, felt so defeated, and eventually pulled the space back together, created a warm inviting environment for the children and staff, & opened my heart to the community.
- In my district when I started in 2003, there was at the time no librarian supervisor. The librarian at the high school had been in district the longest & took it upon himself to be mentor, spokesperson, supervisor, in essence for the group of us. We would meet once a year-all together in the high school library and every time I walked into the space I would feel claustrophobic and depressed. The room was filled -just filled with furniture that could not be reconfigured. The shelving units were dark brown and were from long ago. There were books from end to end on the shelves, old books. There was so much stuff there was no organization to it. You would look at one shelf unit that had Fiction M through O on it and when you went to the next shelf where you expected to see Fiction P & Q you would see, instead, nonfiction reference books. I asked my predecessor one day at a meeting there, why he didn’t get rid of old materials. organize, and redo the space. He told me “If I get rid of the old things, I have to get rid of me, too.” That thought process never matched what I was doing in the elementary school and I saw the elementary library growing in usage, becoming a major hub or center of the school. That’s what I believe library spaces should be. I felt terrible for the high school students. I couldn’t understand how they must feel entering the space, dark and crowded. So June of 2012 snuck up on me and I opened my email one day, about 2 weeks from the last day of school and the high school librarian was telling us he was retiring in 14 days! We were all so stunned and surprised. After 43 years in the district, 38 of them in the high school, he was going to retire. I went home and without thinking much about it, announced to my family I was going to apply for the high school position, after 32 years of teaching where I swore I would never teach above 5th grade. My family supported me and I applied, went in for an interview and remember thinking I would never get it because I told the interview team I did not want to be like my predecessor, and I wanted to teach, not just order books, and I told them I wanted to create a space where the library would become the center of the school-the hub! There were about 5 others who interviewed and I personally knew two of them and they were mighty librarians. But my principal, Kathy Procopio, saw something in me and with the interview team’s blessing decided to hire me.
- If you have an interest in getting together or talking over something you see or hear in this presentation please feel free to contact me. My school email is here along with my Twitter handle and the handle of my Library. I’ve also recently started a blog. It has taken me so long to get started. I’ve wanted to do this for a year, but did not do it. So this summer I just sat down and started. It’s something I am trying my hand at. I have this slide again at the end of my presentation so if you do not get the email address or whatever you want here, you will have another chance to do it at the end of the hour.
- It was late July when I was hired and my family had plans for a year in advance to visit my son , Nick, in Savannah, Georgia the second and third week in August. That coming fall was to be his senior year in college. I decided to begin work right away in the library and when I walked in, even though I had seen what it was like during meetings there, I was overwhelmed with the amount of things in the room.
- I walked through with the principal, Kathy Procopio and vice principal, Stephanie DeRose and pondered aloud how wonderful it would be to have the room emptied and painted and wouldn’t it be lovely to have truly white walls instead of the yellowish color on the walls now.
- I was informed this was Tuscan White-the standard white for all schools in the district. I explained how it would brighten the space up, make the room light up, to have freshly painted walls, open the window blinds (which were never opened) and go from there. After a few phone calls and rescheduling, it had been decided that the room could be painted if I got it emptied out! So I went to work!
- i started collecting boxes. The school had some boxes but they were kind enough to allow me to use the plastic tub with the lids-you know Rubbermaid ones? They had used them in the past at testing time and whenever they had to move files and things and now they were up in the storage area, wasting space. Will Sutton the head custodian, had his team bring them to the library and I immediately began to pack books into boxes. Time was of the essence, as they say and I was bound and determined to get everything packed and out of the main library space before leaving for vacation so painting could begin. they were gong to remove all the book cases and paint top to bottom and end to end of the main library room. I worked all day, everyday. Some of the secretaries would come over and pack with me. Summer football cam was being held and at noon when they were finished, I would grab my son and some other players and they would come in, pack books, and move boxes into the hallway. It was a physically demanding job. I had lots of melt downs -mostly at home with husband-wondering if I had done the right thing by taking the job. I kept going back to the students and worrying about them. I worked as long as I could and vacation came up on me fast. I was not giving up my trip to Savannah.
- Now I did leave NJ without the library being emptied. I still had shelves of books not packed and therefore those shelves were not going to moved out. I figured whatever they could paint they would paint and I would deal with the consequences of the rest when I got back. After 10 days in beautiful Savannah with my family, emails back and forth about the library to the secretary and the principals, I returned to NJ and the high school to what I expected to be a newly painted room with some not so finished spots. But I got a surprise...
- An empty room and new paint all over the main library room! The summer staff, the secretaries, the custodians, the principal and the vice principal, the guidance department, everyone pitched in to complete the packing and the moving and when I walked into the main room doors, I was so surprised and happy and excited to see freshly painted walls, ceilings, and a newly washed and waxed floor. It was beautiful!
- Meanwhile, the hallway outside of the library was stuffed with items which had been moved out of the main room. there were tons of things & it seemed they were all packed into boxes from liquor stores!
- Now came the hardest part of all, I believe; the putting back! The shelving units had to be brought back in and the books and everything else I had worked so hard to remove. Then of courseI had to prepare the space for the opening of school! The shelves had to come back first.
- The circulation desk had to be facing the door I believed. The set up in the past was difficult to maneuver and from the circ desk you could not see the entire room. We began by moving the circ desk in with plans of purchasing a new desk in the near future. Next came the shelving units and the tables/chairs. The woman who had been principal before Kathy Procopio had bought tables and chairs for the library the year she was retiring so they were only 2 years old, but they were heavy and big. I knew that they were not the best for the space, but you sometimes have to make do with what you have. We had so many chairs it was ridiculous! Then they started to bring table after table in -rectangular and circular- and I realized we had so much furniture it would never fit back into the space without it looking like it did before. So we started moving furniture out into different rooms of the school!
- I had some nice furniture in the elementary library that was used for staff in my library and I was able to bring it over to the high school. So we set it up near the front door and decided it would need to be replaced as soon as possible due to the fact that it was not fire rated (it had come from my parents’ home & was in terrific shape!) But for now it worked.
- There were over 100 plastic filmstrip canisters, some with the filmstrips still in them. There was a large wooden box of slides of various locations around the country and something had been spilled on part of the box and there was mold growing inside of the box. The slides and box were discarded but I kept looking at the filmstrip canisters, trying to figure out what to do with them. They were so bright and colorful, I loved them but 100+ canisters were difficult to wrap my head around and difficult to store.
- To go with the filmstrips there were filmstrip projectors and slide projectors of all sorts. Things I had never laid eyes on before. I recognized these from my younger childhood days as a student in Catholic School.
- This is my office space. We did not empty out the four small rooms during this initial period. There was no room to move anything else out into the hallway and we had run out of boxes. I’d like to give a plug to all the local liquor stores in Millville-they, along with Wawa were my main source of boxes. this is how my office remained on the day I started school for the first time in high school!
- The storage room next to my office was loaded with carts of TV, VCRs, projectors of all sorts, a boom box, 33 RPM records, light bulbs of all kinds for projectors of all kinds, projector screens, printer cartridges, VHS tapes, old magazines, you name it-it was there!
- This was the find that got everyone giggling and guessing at how much it would go for on e-bay!
- The one workroom behind my office has a sink and cabinets and you can see cords, wires, and stuff galore. Across the main room of the library are two other rooms. In this picture you can see more carts with more TVs, globes, more printer cartridges and books galore. there were also trophies from as far back as 1979 debate team. On the right side is an old laptop cart-one of the originals I believe from when they were first made. When we finally found the correct key to open the cart (there were millions of keys!) there were only about 4 or 5 laptops in there and none of them worked.
- I had 2 electric typewriters in my library offices along with ribbons and other paraphernalia to go with them.
- In this picture you can see the magazine collection on top of the shelves in one workroom and the printer cartridges piled high in the other wall! Check out the lights. Someone-I still do not know if it was the principal or the gentleman in charge of grounds and buildings or if it was the Business administrator, but someone also decided that the plastic light covers needed to be changed out with new ones. Thank Goodness!
- Here is another shot of the room with the trophies. There were old computer monitors, computers, wires and cords, and an Ellison Machine with all the construction paper you may need for a year or two!
- Back in the main room, I decided I had to create a space hip, young, and interesting. I bought some posters and scoured my house for frames. Notice the clock, please! Did you know that the word Thunderbolts (our school mascot) has 12 letters in it, and each letter fits nicely over each number on an analog clock? I had people tell me I just couldn’t get rid of that clock. I believe, this will be the last year for the clock! I have such a hard time telling time on this clock so I bought a digital clock for the circ desk to help me when I write passes.
- World Market has items on sale from all over the world. These handmade good luck pieces were made in India. I still have them hanging over the circulation desk. On one end of a stack I created a Go Bolts sign with room for a poster. Every little bit of color added warmth to the space and made it more student oriented.
- I am all about recycling when possible and the principal loved the old projectors and items we found. She actually kept some for the main office conference room. They are displayed on the shelves in that room. In the library workroom I discovered many empty movie reels. So I spray painted them and they are waiting to be bolted together and mounted to the wall in the library.
- Remember all the plastic filmstrip canisters? I found a way to use them.
- Twitter is one of the best places to develop your personal learning network. I follow and learn from educators, librarians, teachers administrators and others. I only have 2 people I follow for being social. One is my niece, Alyssa, who is in musical theater and the other is David Bromstad from HGTV network. How many know who I am talking about? Anyway, I thought maybe he would have an idea to use the canisters, so I tweeted him and his response was to ask me to send a picture of the room along with a picture of what these canisters were-he is so young! After checking out the pics, he tweeted back and suggested that it would be cool to reuse the canisters to spell out READ. He also suggested I get the local woodworking class to create shelving for the letters to stand on. I began thinking about this, talked to a few staff members, and my husband and we came up with creating READ but attaching them directly to the wall. Using hot glue, the letters were readied and they were hung on the wall over the main shelving unit directly across from the front door into the library.
- The library is in a rotunda-a round section of the school-the very front. It is a strange shape and we have these pillar things made out of concrete at various places around the library. In front of one pillar we have the sign up book for the library space and the blue pillar looked so blah. I found these cool colorful letters from Hobby Lobby-half price sale! -and I bought them for the library. I began to think I would spell out words with them for the students to see, but instead I decided to just go with the idea of the Chicka Chicka BoomBoom letters from the book illustrated by Lois Elhert and written by Bill Martin, jr. where the letters climb the coconut tree and all fall down in a heap, head over heels, piled on top of each other. I do not have it finished to the top or bottom of the pillar yet, but I am continually looking for a sale for more letters.
- What else was done? The books were not all back on shelves by the time school started. There were boxes everywhere and I spent the better part of my days going through books and checking the catalog. While going through all the books I kept coming up to a raised seal on page 57 of each book. It stated the name of the school library-looked like a notary public seal, you know. I didn’t understand what this was and had never been taught about this in my Masters program, but I decided to do some research. I am part of the NJASL yahoo group and followed along on the email learning as much as I could without really taking an active part. But the seal had me stumped. I put out an email and a woman named Arlen Kimmelman answered me back and wanted me to call her. She was a wonderful woman to talk to and while she was discussing the seal with me -by the way, does anyone know what the seal was?- she asked if I had ever considered helping out the NJASL. I himed and hauled and finally said, I don’t know...she said well you should think about presenting at NJASL this coming year-you have a unique view of the library-what with coming from elementary to high school. Think about it. And I did. I did find out later she was then vice president of NJASL. Another situation that was sticky was my library aid. She is a great gal but had the run of the room since my predecessor did the cataloging and delivering of equipment and all the other stuff an assistant might do. We had difficulty in that she was always telling me a better way to do something-or a different way. I dealt with it for quite awhile, but things had to change and I had to say that she had to let me make decisions and let me make decisions that may be bad. I had to fall on my face but I had to try new things! We worked that out and now we run the library together as a team. She also asked me about her job description. So I contacted the board of eduction and found a job description and here is what it says...
- We began school in a panic, trying to get through books as best we could, but other things were still going on. We had classes come in for research and word processing and checking out books. But we had a group of kids who were interested in sign language and a paraprofessional who took it upon herself to come into the library before homeroom and give sign language lessons to the kids for free. This year they are a sign language club who meets in the library on Mondays after school. We are also the place where the Mock Trial team, the academic bowl team, and the gifted and talented students gather before heading off to competitions and visits to colleges. We have chess and other board games for the students to play when they enter the library before school between 7-7:40 am or after school when the library stays open late between 2:15-3:30. They are also welcome to use the computers, complete homework, or just sit and read in a safe space.
- During the year we did order and have installed a new circulation desk. It has made all the difference in the room and is more user friendly
- I was approached by the special education reading teacher to get some of her kids reading more books than just those in her classroom library. We set up a book talk time but since her classes were during first and second blocks, we decided to have breakfast goodies and milk available for the students. They loved it! I set the table with tablecloth and napkins and made it comfortable and like home for them. We sat and talked about what kinds of books each of them liked while they ate breakfast. I had already gotten list from the teacher, too. I had pulled books for them--high interest-low level-so they could see they hd options in what they could check out. We met like this 2-4 times during the year and had a ball with the classes.
- I was approached by the guidance office to allow them to host a prom party in the library one day before prom for the girls who came from poverty and did not have resources available to them to buy new outfits. The guidance department had a source who brought gowns, shoes, jewelry, and undergarments to the school, but the girls in the population who needed the help would have to be pulled from class and allowed to “shop”. I loved the idea and immediately jumped at the chance to host. I bought my camera that day and asked permission of the girls if I could take pictures of them shopping and trying on gowns, print them out and return the pictures to them so they would have the memory of “shopping” for the prom. No one turned that offer down.
- During the year I did have opportunities to address the staff and students concerning the library and some of the skills that I could help them with in the library and in the classrooms. The 2012-2013 school year was not an easy one for me. Between the end of July when I was hired until the last day of school, I stressed out and cried and worried that I had made the biggest mistake in my life! I did not feel welcome by everyone and I had my run-ins with staff members, but I had made it through the year. I was not sure I would return. But over the summer, something happened. I decided I could do this. I decided I had to make the library mine. We had planned to have the 4 library offices painted this year, since they were so full of stuff last summer and I barely got to clean them out. So not long after school was out, I was right back in school emptying out the four workrooms and preparing them for painting just like I had done in the main room. Boxes and boxes and more boxes...discovering all kinds of stuff from ancient times, and cleaning until my hands hurt red raw. The difference was-I was doing it. I was responsible. And I would be putting it back my way. The walls were being painted early in the summer instead of in a hurry at the end of the summer. The floors were cleaned and waxed and then I went to work once again. I rearranged the rooms, moved furniture and painted the cabinets in the workroom. I knew where I put equipment; I straightened things up; I made the space mine. That was the difference. I made the space my own. I began to own it.
- This past banned books week I had banned and challenged books on display and I know you have all seen the READ boxes, based on the RED box, all over the Internet, in libraries. So I created a READ box for my library. Here I am putting some finishing touches on the top of the READ BOX before we brought it to school and assembled it.
- Here the READ BOX being attached to the end of the stack. That’s my husband by the way-he does all kinds of stuff for me when it comes to the library. And here is the final shot of the READ BOX. It is not far from the main door and pulls folks in to see it-it is so bright red!