This is my 12th school year as a teacher librarian. That also makes it my 12th year of teaching some type of library orientation to my students. Things have changed a lot over the years – from a pretty boring PowerPoint my first year to having to go to each socially distanced classroom individually … Read more
This is a multiple post series. Part 1 gave an overview of what my school has been doing during COVID and how my library’s physical space has adapted. In Part 2, I shared about programs I’ve done to encourage reading, plus collaborations with teachers. For this last post, I’ll share how we’ve adapted our makerspace … Read more
This is a multiple post series. In Part 1, I gave an overview of what my school has been doing during COVID and how my library’s physical space has adapted. In this post, I’ll be sharing about programs I’ve done to encourage reading, plus collaborations with teachers. For Part 3, I’ll share how we’ve adapted … Read more
To say it’s been an interesting school year so far would be an understatement. This has definitely been the most challenging year of my career. I consider myself lucky to be working at a school that has the resources and leadership to keep us safe. I know that many, many schools have been left … Read more
If you’re interested in the ways that education and design intersect, this book is for you. If you’re interested in empathy, design thinking, hands-on creative learning, getting comfortable with failure, you’re in luck. And if you love super-awesome illustrations created by the author spread throughout your books, this one’s got you covered. Educated By Design: … Read more
Banned Books Week is a fantastic opportunity to raise awareness about censorship and the right to read. There’s tons of great banned books activities and displays out there, but many of them work best in-person. Since the pandemic has most schools meeting either virtually or in a hybrid model, students likely won’t be able to … Read more
The COVID-19 pandemic has closed down many schools. Some are fully in virtual learning mode. Others have a hybrid approach of in-person and online learning (as my school does). And others have gone 100% back to in-person, but are still following guidelines for safe social distancing and cleaning. It’s a pretty crazy time right now. … Read more
How to Dream Big With a Library Space Analysis It may seem like an odd time to be reimagining your library space. You might currently have limited access or might not be allowed on campus. If you are having in-person learning, your library might not look like it normally does. To help manage social distancing, … Read more
These last few months, I’ve been focusing on improving my sketchnote skills. Part of that work was reading several books on the tis topic for educators (see my review of My Pencil Made Me Do It). Many general books on sketchnoting focus on the basics of how to sketchnote, which is awesome. I love using … Read more
There is a familiar sort of guilt in my life. That feeling of all the things that I should be doing. I should be reading and replying to more library Facebook threads. I should be going to Twitter chats. I should be spending more of my summer planning for a school year that is impossible … Read more