I appreciate the custodian's impulse to bring them to the library but my IS49 backlog already makes me feel like Sisyphus, and frequent unexpected deliveries of discovered classroom libraries only seal the deal.
Luckily the weekly library meeting with Karali, The Green School's principal, was already on the agenda for today and this became Agenda Item Numero Uno. Long story longer, Karali agreed to run interference between me and the well-meaning but often cantankerous head custodian.
We want the books, but we need advanced warning and, at this point, we need them to be stored somewhere outside of the library while we take care of the backlog. After a breif kerfuffle, two of the affable, accommodating custodians came up to sort things out.
I was hoping that during the flap, I'd be able to solve the problem of the mysterious TV that suddenly appeared in the library last week.
It has neither DVD player nor VCR and the heinous looking metal cart it's strapped to has the added bonus of years' worth of filth and detritus. I sent out an e-mail to the staff to see if anyone wanted it, but so far, no takers. Karali thinks we should put it on Craigslist. However we jettison it is fine with me at this point.
On the ESL front, we've received six new English Language Learner enrollees since school opened for the school year, four of whom need formal assessments (LAB-R) asap. Tomorrow is my personal deadline to get them all tested. I also met with Ben, co-director of The Green School, and our lead Spanish teacher, Frank, to talk about our ESL program with Native Language Arts support. Very productive meeting, but the problem remains that the ELLs at each level of English proficiency are scattered throughout grades and cohorts, making our original push-in plan unrealistic. Many students are about to be reprogrammed because of this and other issues and we'll probably end up with one self-contained class and a second period of push-in for more advanced students, as we did last year.
Finally, I stayed late for the first meeting of Parent Association leadership to kick off the year.
The participation is much greater than it has been in prior years, with Freshman parents eager to contribute. We weren't sure if parents would be overwhelmed by too much fund raising talk, but the parents themselves kept coming back to the idea that raising money for the school was the main thing they want to do. Fantastic!
I gave a brief talk about the library and how parents could help. They seemed very interested in coming in to help process books perhapsa few other duties. These efforts would be incredibly helpful. We kept going until after 8:30. With any luck we'll be able to keep this enthusiasm up for the entire year.
- Posted remotely via mobile phone.
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