Have your books put on a jacket. It's cold outside!

When you have a laminator, it seems logical to just laminate the book covers before you attach them to a book so they last longer. Unfortunately, laminate peels off eventually and then that pretty book jacket just looks a mess. There's not much help for it then because even if you re-laminate it, its still pretty darn ugly.

Going to book jacket covers is a better way to go as they are durable and can be removed and recovered if they get damaged. In my quest to protect my new books better, I purchased 2 rolls of book jacket covers in the 9" & 12" varieties. I wandered about my library with a ruler to see the average size of my books and found that those 2 sizes would accommodate most of the books I had. I also bought some precut strips to attach the jackets.

Having the proper supplies and dispensers is vital to maintaining a collection. It is a large expense initially to purchase a multi-roll tape dispenser along with the weighted base but the time it saves you when repairing books is so valuable, you will wonder how you did your job without it. I still struggle with keeping up with shelving, cataloging, book repair, and everything else all by my lonesome but this little gem keeps me more sane.

Choosing a Book for OSOB

Our School Improvement Team took on a daunting task to choose a title for our school to read. The challenge? Something that will appeal to K-5, is appropriate for those ages, & will bring the school together. Hmm, if you think you have ideas, try previewing those titles and you will find that it is not as easy as you would think. As I am not on the team this year, my role is to support them in this task by providing resources and researching titles for them.

I've really enjoyed helping and even though it has taken a couple months, they have come to a decision. But I can't reveal the choice yet. It's not official so I'm keeping the secret. I'll be sure to post about it as soon as the official reveal happens!

Tackling Repairs

"My dog chewed it up."
"I had a carton of chocolate milk in my bookbag."
"I left it outside."
"My little brother colored in it."
"I took all the labels off & now I don't know where they are."
"I don't know how that happened."

We've heard it all when it comes to damaged books. But honestly, it doesn't matter how it happened, we still need to see if it can be repaired and how to do it. I have a pile of books that I need to get to and I have struggled for the past 6 years to decide how to best tackle the task. Do I have a book hospital and get to it later? Do I drop everything and work on it right away? (Not always an option folks.) Do I just discard the book since my time is at a premium? I have not found a hard and fast rule to follow on this.

What I can say about book repair is that you should follow your instincts. Do what works best for you. One of the best book repair people I know says you should never have a book hospital and you should repair books as you see them come in. She, however, is a high school librarian and as much as I would love to do just that, being in an elementary school does not really afford me the luxury of time. On a day I have 8 classes at 30 minutes each, repairing books just doesn't fit in my schedule. I'm working on a new time management plan and it involves more scheduling tasks and less to do lists. I am finding it works much better. (One of my scheduled tasks is blogging and this is my third week so it seems to be helping.)

What are some ways you've found that work for fitting in book repairs? Do you have a system? Help!

One School, One Book Take 2

Cover of The Lemonade War

Reading Lemonade War
with my daughter

My school did One School, One Book last year. We read The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies and had lots of fun activities to go with it. We had trivia questions every morning on the announcements that our principal graded answers and posted the classes' scores. We had a kickoff with a short skit from the book. We even dressed up like our favorite book characters to celebrate reading. It created quite a buzz and parents were asked to read the chapter book to their children regardless of if the student was in Kindergarten or 5th grade. Everyone loved it!

Principal as a lemon!

My role as the teacher librarian in all of this was largely unseen. I helped in ways that the students would not notice. I had the role of helping find copies of the books at reasonable prices. That's a large task when you need 600 copies! I helped organize events and corral kids as they filed in and out. And this year, I have been helping the School Improvement Team with the selection process for this year's book. I won't spill the beans on here about the title they are thinking about choosing but I will say, it's a really good one.

Is your school thinking about doing One School, One Book? What title are you going to choose? If not, what is standing in your way? I hope more schools decide to try this fun activity to get your kids excited about reading!

Organization as the Key to Success

I read somewhere that highly successful people don't make to do lists but they schedule tasks to complete. I am finding that difficult as time management is a task that anyone in a school finds daunting. I have had my blog on my calendar for Thursdays at 10 AM for some time but I have found myself putting it off to finish shelving or work on books or some other pressing task. And, of course, there has been no time to write because I did not find time to do it. People make time and find money for the things they want to find time and money for. This applies to everything in my job and at home too.

My office is slowly becoming a peaceful organized space where I actually enjoy working. I have started to purge clutter that hasn't been touched in the 6 years I've worked at this school. I'm loving the changes and it has taken me some time to work on my long held bad habits. I am noticing that it makes me a better person overall and I am able to help my students grow without becoming overwhelmed and frustrated by my surroundings.

I hope to put more tasks on my schedule soon but I'm starting slowly. Baby steps to make my way! What are some ideas you have had to become more organized?

Energized!

I spent two days at my school district's Annual Teaching & Learning Conference. As always, I feel renewed and energized after the workshops. I need to keep this feeling throughout the school year. It always seems like I lose more and more of my enthusiasm as the year goes on with March being the toughest month for some reason. I plan to look for opportunities to learn this year. Blogging also helps me solidify what I've learned.
Some of the speakers I got to hear over Tuesday & Wednesday reminded me of why we teach: to change lives. We may not know if we make a difference but high standards and support truly make that happen. It is a group effort so we all take part in planting the seeds for success in students. One teacher may be the catalyst but it is always multiple teachers that continue to make it happen. I plan to be part of that team.

Budgeting is Advocacy

Much of the information in this post was gleaned from an informative session led by Dr. Sandra Andrews, Director of Instructional Technology & Media Services for Lincoln County Schools. I attended her session at Gaston County School's Summer Media Institute earlier this month. You can find Dr. Andrew's blog at Dr. A's Comments on the Digital World. Resources from her presentation are at Power of Data.

Budgeting truly is advocacy or, in other words, you won't get what you don't ask for. It's a simple task really; find the money and ask for it. I know that you are thinking there is no way they will give me what I want. My response to that is, "How do you know?" Even if you have submitted requests in the past and they have been turned down, the answer may change at any time. More money could be coming in. Someone may have retired. Hey, maybe your principal had some really great coffee that morning. You really never know what is going to change.

So what do you ask for? Hopefully you have a collection development policy already so you have something to work with. If not, do that first. Look at your school & your community. Analyze them & figure out what makes them tick. What kind of people live there? What education do they have? How much money do they make? You can't know what people need without knowing who they are first. 

Once you have that, move on to creating a plan for what you will buy. I looked at major gaps in my collection, figured up how many books I needed for each section this year & multiplied that by $20. That really isn't the correct number to use because it isn't the average cost of a book but it's easy to multiply & gives nice round numbers. If you want to use real numbers, you can look here: SLJ's Average Book Prices.

I factored in a loss of 2% on my collection that would need funding to replace which ended up being $4,000 for my collection of about 10,000. I also listed what I would like to spend on replacing my old, ugly, rusty metal shelving each year. Since I had the information on what I was given last year, I included that & subtracted that amount from my total to give anyone reading it an idea of what my deficit is. This is my very simple budget that I shared with my principal & PTO president Proposed Budget 2014-2015. When I sent it, I let them know they could share the document with anyone they wanted.

This is obviously a work in progress & I plan to add to it to create a 5 year plan. This budget was submitted as soon as I created it but I plan to revise & resubmit in Dec/Jan as this is when principals and others are looking at how to spend monies for the following school year.

Now, getting down to the advocacy part of this blog is simple. When people see how you are spending your money or how you would spend money if you had it, they realize what you are doing and how important it is or could be. My budget is simple at present because I am just starting it but I imagine it will blossom into a document that evolves with me. Have faith and ask for what will make your library spectacular. They might not give you the full amount but you never know!