Sabrina's Magic Spell

I never thought I'd live to see the day, but late this morning a group of Lyons high school students used their lunch time free choice library access to put pencils to paper and work on a class project instead of noodling around aimlessly on the library's dinosauresque computers, huddled close together around one or two terminals so that I won't see what sites they use to jump the Department of Ed. firewall and go on Facebook. Through my tears of joy I summoned the presence of mind to snap a photo of this miraculous event.




It seems I owe this paradigm shift to tenth grade ELA teacher Sabrina. The kids told me they were working on a poetry project for her. Yay Sabrina! Yay poetry! Not only were these students failing to exhibit their usual library behaviors, which always look to me like pointedly and aggressively wasting time while complaining loudly that they're bored, and were actively discussing their work, without doing so disruptively. Simply amazing!

Across the room, an eleventh grader worked quietly the whole time on a poster for art class. She showed me her work at the end of period and this time I was so blown away I forgot to get a snapshot.

Could this be the beginning of a sea change? I hope the other teachers and I can continue to cultivate more students who are actually want to use the library as a workspace and not a chill spot. As appealing as the latter may sound to an adult who knows how to chill without bothering other people, the adolescent version of a chill spot without the constant intervention of adults can range from boisterous to literally unsafe.

With some structure in place and some motivating or even, dare I say it, fun assignments for the students to do, it can be a dream come true.

- Posted remotely via mobile phone.

The Three 'Principals' of a Successful Book Talk

In November, with the help of the three fabulous principals in my building, the Gaynor Campus Library hosted its first ever author visit and talk. Thanks to my principals and some fantastic classroom teachers, it came off without any major hitches.

Briefly, here are the elements that worked well:
1. A generous author who was easy to work with.
2. Principals who helped make sure it all came together.
3. ELA teachers who selected student attendees and accompanied them to the talk.
4. Students who have some familiarity with the book and are engaged during the talk.
5. A way to serve food in the least disruptive manner possible.

It all began when the wonderful Ms. D_____ of The Green School told me last Spring that a friend of hers, Peter Kujawinski, along with his co-author Jake Halpern, were embarking on a national tour to promote their book Dormia. Bonus: because they were new authors, they were doing their visits free of charge. Ms. D_____ handed them off to me via e-mail and between the three of us, it was decided that the talk would happen in the Fall 2009 and that Peter would probably be on the East coast at that time and would be the visiting author.

As the 2009-2010 school year began, I was informed that my three principals had decided to rotate their responsibilities and that my administrative contact would be Talana Bradley of The Yound Women's Leadership School of Brooklyn. Last year, Talana had organized a school-wide book talk for her school in the auditorium, so when I told her about the upcoming visit I knew she'd be able to speak from experience. I told Talana that I'd be more comfortable doing something smaller in scale and she agreed that this was probably the best way to go.

In addition, Talana agreed with me that the talk should take place in the library and suggested that 12 students from each school be nominated to attend. At the next Building Council meeting, Talana informed Karali Pitzele of The Green School and Taeko Onishi of Lyons Community School of the talk. Talana and Taeko each decided to purchase 12 copies of Dormia for each student attendee to keep, while The Green School opted to buy about four copies.

Having read the book, I felt it was geared a bit more toward middle school readers than high school students, although Peter assured me that his talks had gone over very well in high schools. Each school settled on its own system for nominating attendees. Lyons ended up with a mix of middle school and high school attendees, while The Green School, with high school grades only, had their ninth grade ELA teacher, Mr. R_____ accompany his whole class of about 12 students to the library. The Young Women's Leadership School, which currently has middle school grades only, selected students through their ELA teachers.

I took care of the catering out of my own pocket. I ran to the closest Subway Sandwich Shop the morning of and bought a tote bag full of footlong sandwiches. At a nearby dollar store, I filled another large tote bag with two-liter soda bottles and salty snacks. Back at school, I stowed everything away in an office fridge, with the soda in the freezer for the approximately two hour wait.

Peter's timing coincided with the second half of my beginner ESL class, so I had told my students that they'd be attending a talk that day, and they seemed up for a change of pace. When Taeko came to the library with the Lyons students, I was able to run to the fridge and grab the food and begin slicing the sandwiches into four pieces each. Peter arrived right on time and we finally met face-to-face. Mr. R_____ and I made the executive decision to serve lunch to the kids as they listened to the talk, rather than have a free-for-all or a long queue while Peter was talking. Mr. R____ and I playing waiter worked out beautifully.

As everyone got settled, we made sure that Peter got his food and when he had finished his plate he began to speak. Peter radiates an air of calm and kindness that the kids really responded to. Although I was busy serving for much of the talk, I know he discussed the inspiration for Dormia and I remember hearing him tell a story of visiting Poland when he was a teenager and meeting one of his uncles and some of his cousins who lived there.

By the time Mr. R_____ and I finally got to sit down, it was almost Q&A time. Students asked some really good questions, such as, "What was it like working with a co-author?" (a pleasure, according Peter) and, "Will there be a sequel?" (yes). Finally, as Peter wrapped up, he autographed a few more books and was on his way.

Some things I might do differently the next time include:
1. Recruit helpers to serve ahead of time.
2. Budget money to have food brought in by a local caterer.
3. Record the talk on video with the author's permission for a more vivid record of the event.
4. Make sure the timing works with all three schools (a small contingent of students ended up missing the event due to a scheduling conflict).
5. Elicit book reviews and on-the-spot written reflections about the author visit.

Overall, it's nice to have the first iteration of something go well. As I mentioned, I have the author, the principals and teachers who participated to thank for that. The students, too, deserve a word of thanks for their time and attention. It was great to see them engage with an adult from outside their circle and do so graciously. I'm looking forward to the next author visit opportunity. If I can organize things just a touch better, I can spend more time capturing and analyzing the ways in which such an event benefits the students.

Things Heat up as the Temperature Cools Down at the Campus Library

It's the first Friday of December after a whirlwind week. TYWLS Humanities classes have been visiting every morning. A Lyons eleventh grade research class was in for a talk on Proquest vs Google. While each session had its high and low points, today ended on a high note when ESL teacher Joshua Lewis brought his class in to hold a public reading of the vignettes the students have been working on for the last few weeks.

Joshua had orchestrated a similar reading in a classroom last year and the kids seemed to get a real charge out of having an audience that listened to their writing and responded to it not only chuckling at some of the intentionally humorous stories, but by participating in a question and answer session at the end. This time Joshua booked the library and made sure to run out to buy snacks and drinks, which was a very nice touch. As he did last year, Joshua was thoughtful enough to make printed packet of the text of the vignettes so that the audience members could follow along as the students read.

The vignettes themselves were adorable and well thought out and it was amusing to see these usually boisterous students shy and quiet with what appeared to be collective stage fright as they sat a table before their audience. They had to be encouraged to raise their voices as they read for the group of teachers who had turned out for the reading. I had to laugh to myself at how a subtle shift in situation caused such a marked change from the ordinary.

Kudos to the kids who read their work aloud and to Joshua who led them through the writing process. I know how hard they all worked as their class is held in the library twice a week, affording me the the opportunity to see it all take shape. Well done!

Fall Library Conference Rich in Ideas

Tuesday, November 3rd was not only election day, and a day of meetings and planning for most teachers, for teachers of information literacy (i.e. school librarians) it was the Fall Library Conference, which was held at Brooklyn Technical High School. Organized by the New York City Department of Education's Office of Library Services, the event drew hundreds of school librarians from across the city as well as library and related vendors from around the country.

While it's absolutely crucial for school librarians to be integral participants in-house meetings, professional development seminars and planning sessions alongside their subject-area teacher colleagues, we also need to time work network with each other to share ideas and best practices in order to enrich our library programs. The Fall conference provides an opportune time early in the school year to do just that.

Praise is due to the organizers, who got the conference program out early through the Fall Conference Wiki, complete with a handy grid on the back page showing all the sessions and their locations, allowing attendees to get an idea of which sessions would be of interest to them. The absence of a requirement to register for each workshop made it even easier than at most professional conferences I've attended. This "freestyle" session attendance policy leaves participants free to change their programs at will, also a boon.

With about 80 session to choose from there was something for everyone. Again, this is due to the work of the Office of Library Services, who actively recruited speakers from among the ranks of school librarians. The sessions were conveniently coded for grade-level interest as well. E for Elementary, M for Middle School and H for High School. As a participant and a presenter of one of the sessions, I found the day gave me lots of opportunities to learn and to exchange ideas. I walked away with a list of things I wanted to start working on, which, to me, is the mark of a good conference.

Dr. Ross J. Todd of Rutgers University's School of Communication and Information and the director of the Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries, delivered an impassioned keynote address. One idea that really caught my attention was the concept of the school library as an "inquiry commons". As part of the Green School, one of the core concepts we are cultivating this year is that of "the commons" or the shared, sustainable pool of community resources, either physical or conceptual. In an August seminar with the The Cloud Institute, the Green School's partner organization, the notion of The Commons in general came up in our discussions as part of what a community needs to remain sustainable.

In his address, Dr. Todd urged us to think ourselves less as providers of information or collections books, but as teacher/facilitator/managers of a vibrant space that not only makes intellectual inquiry possible, but in all ways leads those who enter toward it. While my current library is indeed a room of books that teachers want to reserve because there's lots of space for their students to spread out and a group of internet-connected computers, I've been making small changes to help teachers and administrators think of the library as a place where students can get some work done without the pressures and strictures of the classroom. The Inquiry Commons idea, however, gives me a related, loftier and ultimately more sustainable objective to work toward.

In fact, I think by "getting some work done", I wasn't necessarily referring to rote work. What I meant, without having put words to it, was something more akin to inquiry: asking questions, wondering what the answers might be, gathering information and synthesizing that information into an original answer, which itself leads to further inquiry. That said, however, I'm currently taking small steps in this direction. For example, I have a group of three (sometimes four) girls who've been given administrative approval to use the library at lunch for the sole reason that they wander the halls endlessly during class hours as well as during lunch, and the cafeteria is on the same floor as the library. If they wander the halls of the second floor, they are effectively outside of their school, which is housed on the floor above. So they've been instructed to wander right into the library until lunch is over.

Initially, I let the girls do what they wanted to do as long as they kept their voices low. What they seemed to want to do was send and receive messages on a portal at cluster of computers. I started to ask their teachers how they were doing in class and the answer came back a resounding, "They never even come to class." I asked if I could get class work or homework assignments they could do independently (i.e. without having to read through class textbooks or be present at teachers' lessons). A science teacher volunteered some homework worksheets that were doable in and of themselves. I approached the girls and the two of the three who I didn't expect to do anything with them at all took them and worked on them, while the one I thought would be the most amenable said, "I ain't doin' that shit!" Baby steps.

On a subsequent day, I asked one of the girls who had done the science worksheet, who happened be in the library without her girlfriends that day, if should could write something, a personal narrative, using a Web-based word processing system. To my surprise, she agreed. She wrote a solid paragraph, albeit with lots of non-standard spelling in non-standard English, but it was actually compelling reading. It surprised not only me, but some of the teachers who had never seen her produce anything before. The student only gave me permission to show it one of the teachers at her school who she trusts and who said he'd give her credit for any work she did in the library. He says he'll try to catch her in the hallway soon and talk to her about her writing and work with her on expanding it. More baby steps.

In my building we have a wide range of student abilities. In a large chunk of the population, reading, writing, study skills and even social skills are what one might charitably call "emerging". Oddly, the library seems to attract the few students whose skills are well developed and who come to get new books (and are frustrated at how slow the process is and how little NYSTL money I receive to feed their reading habits), very few kids in the middle of the spectrum and a core contingent of students in extreme need of intervention. This last group insists that the library is a place to "chill" which, as far as I can tell, doesn't even wave at critical thinking or inquiry, at least not in a way that could be argued in academic language. They can be so disruptive it's hard to house them at all, and they often drive the readers away, which is a shame. However, if I can try to get the academically neediest of students who visit to calm down long enough to speak civilly to me, do some intellectual musing and put some of it on paper, then I'm going in the right direction.

For the time being doing worksheets, rote though they may seem to me, may be a good step toward eventually opening up to inquiry in the long term. Luckily, the school that has been sending me a high percentage of students in this needy group has been very understanding and supportive in terms of how much I can take on. With time I hope to increase my stamina, but I need to be realistic in how much I can handle. For now, as a worker, my contact with them needs to be in small doses and in small groups.

At the same time, it's clear to me that this is a population I need to focus on, where I can really have an impact. As much as I want to please the avid readers and as easy as it would be to work with the quieter kids, I can't let myself gravitate toward the path of least resistance, tempting as it is. I sometimes liken some of the more challenging students to injured, angry and frightened wild felines who leap out at you, as if from nowhere, with their claws fully extended. All they seem to want is to survive another day. With patience and persistence on my part, perhaps the library can play a role in slowly and steadily turning these students into the powerful lions they have the potential to become.

Bringing Dr. Todd's notion of The Inquiry Commons home to my schools from the Fall Conference helps me put language around the aims I have for my library. Together with my students, the readers, the resisters and the middle of the pack, we can all begin to push each other toward this goal.

Oh, the Humanities!

Now that The Young Women's Leadership School of Brooklyn or TYWLS has hired a part time ESL teacher to teach the handful of ELLs at the school, the time I spend with TYWLS will be dedicated to teaching library and information literacy skills only for the entire school year. Because TYWLS is the youngest and currently the smallest school on campus, they fund only about 20% of me, which means they can now get about one period a day of library instruction. Progress!

Now, a word about TYWLS (everybody pronounces it "twills" even though that's not really how it's spelled): last year, they were simply a dream to work with. Talana Bradley, the principal is so friendly and easy to talk to and is so intelligent and good at getting things done it's almost hard to believe. How she remains so calm, composed and open in the face of everything principals in city schools have to contend with is a mystery to me.

The teachers are similarly wonderful and the students are just great. Right now, the school only has sixth and seventh grades. Over time, they'll grow all the way to 12th grade, adding one grade per year.

After negotiating the librarian's schedule that accommodates all three schools on campus, which took literally the first two weeks of the school year, it worked out that I'll be able to give one-hour library and information literacy lessons to all the Humanities classes at TYWLS in both grades if I cycle through one a day over the course of about a week and two days. This is great news: I now have an entire student body for which I can design and execute a library and information literacy curriculum throughout 2009-2010, dovetailing my lessons with the TYWLS Humanities curriculum.

This week I'm doing an orientation lesson in the students' classrooms, rather than bringing them up to the library. The main reason for this is that I'm spending about half the hour on orientation and behavior expectations, and the final half hour having the girls use the Tool for Real-time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (TRAILS). Unfortunately, there aren't enough computers in the library to accommodate whole classes, and the computers I have too old and cranky to get the job done efficiently, while TYWLS now has laptop carts for their classrooms.

I'm having each class take the sixth grade TRAILS assessment as a baseline, which we can then compare to follow-up assessment at the end of the year. Currently the sixth grade assessment covers all of middle school grades and the ninth grade versions cover all high school grades.

One of the things I like about TRAILS is that when you have teachers and administrators take it, the idea that there should be a library curriculum and standards for library skills teaching becomes much more clear than just having them listen to me pipe off about it all the time. Taking the test demonstrates how library and information literacy skills cut across all disciplines, and by extension shows that explicit teaching of these skills can benefit students in all their studies, not to mention in college when research becomes so much more important.

TRAILS covers five information literacy categories:

1. Develop a Topic
2. Identify Potential Sources
3. Develop, Use, and Revise Search Strategies
4. Evaluate Sources and Information
5. Recognize How to Use Information Responsibly, Ethically, and Legally

The sixth grade assessment has 25 questions and distributes them evenly, with three for each category above. Here is one of the simplest examples from the sixth grade test:

If you want to find books by Christopher Paul Curtis, what kind of catalog search should you try?

• Title search
• Author search
• Subject search

It may sound simple to us as adults, but I have to say, in two classes of intelligent students so far, about half of them have got this question wrong. One girl called me over and asked, "I don't know who Christoper Paul Curtis is. How can I answer this question?" This is the kind of thing that requires some explicit instruction. In middle school, the students are making the transition from loving reading to using their reading skills for both practical and leisure applications.

The assessment doesn't impact the students' grades and I tell them to relax and put a reasonable effort into it without stressing before they open up their laptops. What it does do is provide the librarian a very clear idea of which skills need to be emphasized in library lessons. It will be interesting to revisit TRAILS in the Spring and see if all the library time has made a difference.

Jogging Librarian Commutes Eight Miles on Foot!

Last Thursday I jogged to work again for the fifth time this school year. It was the third time I've been able to complete the trip without stopping, since the first two times I bonked and had to take a bus. I've changed my route since the first try, as the most direct route from my apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens to Williamsburg, Brooklyn has two long stretches without sidewalks. The route I take now is a bit more circuitous, but is much more pedestrian-friendly. If you're curious about the route, you can click here to see it on Google Maps.

I'm running wearing a backpack that holds my work clothes, my swim clothes (keep reading), my lunch and a few other items. I'd been leaving a pair of work shoes at school, however this past Wednesday I forgot to do so, which meant I had to carry those as well. That made it my heaviest pack run so far and my time did suffer. I'm trying not worry so much about the speed on these jogs though; I'm just focusing on getting in the miles and building up the stamina that running with a pack requires. The result is that my short, unencumbered runs are already getting faster.

Once I'd decided to try jogging to work, I had to choose the right backpack for the job. I looked at a few different packs through a mix of virtual and old-school physical shopping. I decided to go with a North Face pack called the Recon, which has both chest and waist straps to keep it steady en route. It can also accommodate a hydration system, which I may purchase one day. I got the yellow-ish color, called Chai Yellow, because it's slightly reflective and as it's quite dark out at 6:00 AM when I begin my long jog/schlog, it seems like the best color choice for the purpose. Luckily, it was available at a local sporting goods shop less than 15 minutes on foot from where I live, Emilio's Ski Shop in Forest Hills. Not only did I avoid waiting and paying for shipping, but I was able to support a local business in the bargain.

I've been very happy with the pack, even though I did read on the Bloggling Joggler's blog post on the subject that a simpler pack, without the extra chest and waist straps, can actually improve your form by forcing to you to shed any swaying or other wasted movements in your stride. I tested this theory with a small, light, unstructured pack that folds into a pouch when not in use, on a five-mile round-trip run to the farmer's market at the Atlas Park mall. It's true: the apples and tomatoes I'd bought started alternately slapping each of my kidneys as the pack flopped back and forth, until I was somehow able to correct my form in response to this feedback and steady the load. Interesting, but I still wanted to feel more secure with larger loads on longer runs, so the Recon it is, at least for now. And if really want the swaying effect, I can always unbuckle the straps.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "So how does this relate to being a school librarian?" Here's why I mention it: sustainability. Ever since I started teaching, I've been driving a car to school. I was not a driver for most of my adult life before teaching, save a brief period when I worked at LexisNexis and had large clients in both New York in Boston so I took a second apartment in Wallingford, CT. There aren't a lot of ways to get to and around the small towns of mid-Connecticut without a car, so I had one then, too.

One of the schools on my campus is The Green School: The Academy for Environmental Careers. Sustainability is literally the key word, the driver, if you'll excuse the pun, of The Green School's ethos. The other two schools on campus are no less committed to forging better and more sustainable ways to live our lives than we did in the 20th century than The Green School is. When I first arrived at the William Gaynor Campus last year I noticed lots of very young, energetic, idealistic teachers riding their bikes to school. I would love to ride my bike to school, but there's always some "but" involved in bike commuting for me. Always always has been.

I've had bikes stolen. I've had cramped apartments that hardly had enough room for me to turn around, and roommates who made it impossible for me to keep a bike indoors. My supportive partner and I tried it in one apartment, but the five flights up and down the building's narrow staircase made it untenable. Not to mention the tension bike rack we tried that popped one day while we were out. We found the bikes on the floor and our terrorized cats hiding under the bed wondering why they'd been attacked by flying bicycles in the middle what had probably been a pretty ordinary day. In our current coop, we tried hanging the bike directly on the wall, but it seemed to dominate the living room. Now, stashed behind a rolling kitchen cart, it seems like a huge effort to maneuver it into our tiny elevator or fight with six flights of stairs in order to ride it.

At one point, I even researched renting garage space for a bike, but there was no such thing at the time (I think such a setup may exist now, but I'm not sure). The kicker was, after moving to Kew Gardens, I went to visit a good friend of mine who still lives in the Manhattan building I'd moved out of and when I went downstairs with her to drop off a trash bag I was stunned to see a full-fledged, fully utilized bike rack. I'd been trying to get the building's management to get a bike rack for years and no-one listened. Then, after I leave they get one?!? This could only be the universe telling me to try another way.

Concurrent with all of this, I've always used jogging and running as a way to attempt to stay in shape and to clear my head. In fact, during periods when I slack off, I find myself sinking into a depression that only lifts when I start regularly making tracks on pavement again. Last semester was one of the slack-off periods, unfortunately, and I made a commitment to myself in August that I'd put those running shoes to good use again. What better way to get back on the road than to take my car off the road one day a week, thereby alleviating my guilt about driving, at least by one-fifth and forcing myself to do what for me is a long run? This, and the fact that one of my goals as always been to run a marathon at some point in my life and I might as well start training now. Between living more sustainably, getting more training miles under my belt and combining exercise and commuting time, jog-commuting (jommuting?) fulfills a lot of needs.

As sustainability has been on my mind a lot, since even before I started working with The Green School, it's starting to slowly permeate my thoughts and deeds, if even in small ways. I've been thinking of how libraries provide a sustainable model for information sharing. All this makes me think of the bulletin board I put up outside of the library at the beginning of the school year:


The "Third Century" line on the display refers to the original Library of Alexandria. I can't be the first person to have thought of it, but I particularly pleased with the whole "Read, Return, Recycle" riff on the "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" motto.

My sustainability/training goal for this year is to boost the jogmuting to at least two days a week, possibly adding Tuesdays to the Thursdays I'm already jogging. I'm currently using mass transit to get home on Thursdays, but I'm mulling over perhaps jogging back home at some point as well.. As a person who prefers 5K races and training runs of about three miles maximum, I used August to build up to about ten miles a week, of which the Thursday commute became my long run. I'm now up to about 14 miles per week total. I'm trying to be as sensible as possible to avoid any over-training injury that would result in my bagging the whole endeavor. At this rate, I'm on track for a second weekly jog by late November.

One of the big logistical problems in this undertaking is the lack of showers in the locker rooms on our "campus" (i.e. run-down old junior high building). The locker rooms are right across from the library. Wouldn't it be just perfecto if they were in working order? Wouldn't it be even more perfecto if the kids who go to the schools in our building could actually shower after their required gym classes?!? It's kind of hard to believe that these kids are forced to run around and sweat, without a way for them to get clean afterward. In April and May the poor things walk around soaking wet the rest of the school day after they have gym class.

As far as my jogmuting is concerned, it means I have to run about mile beyond the school building to the Metropolitan Pool, the beautiful public pool, built in 1922 in Williamsburg, to take a shower. So much the better. I get in more mileage, and while I'm at it I swim for about 20 to 30 minutes, which stretches out my leg muscles and joints as well. You can see a video of kids taking swim classes at this pool here. I'm there during morning adult lap swim time, of course. I then walk back to school, holding my pack by the top strap, because at that point the back panel is still drenched with perspiration.

By the time I get home on Thursday evenings, I'm dog tired. Good tired. I feel as though I've really pushed myself, but for a good, healthy reason. On Friday mornings, after my self-inflicted Thursday ordeal, I get in the car with a heightened sense of appreciation for being able to drive to work and more than a twinge of guilt that I'm back behind the wheel. The Kenyan runners who easily trounce Americans in races always say in interviews that all their lives, if they ever wanted to go someplace faster than walking speed, their only option was to run. They ran to relatives homes, to markets, to school, or to neighboring towns on errands. Now I'm giving myself a small, belated dose of that very human experience. Seated comfortably, looking out the windshield, adjusting the volume on the radio as I zip schoolward I now have a deeper sense of what a luxury driving to work in the morning truly is.

Wednesday Morning at the Gaynor Campus Library

Today, Wednesday, was my early day: 8:00 to 3:00. Because The Green School has an early release schedule on Wednesdays, the whole schedule for the day gets flip-flopped. On Wednesdays, my fourth period ESL class happens first period (9:00). Getting in at 8:00 makes me available for multiple functions: prepping for my ESL class at 9:00 (if I haven't prepped earlier), processing the good old "legacy collection" I've been blogging about for so long and which is still a work in progress, or giving a library lesson or hosting any other kind of class visit for the other two schools, which begin their days by 8:00. Today, it was processing and a little bit of ESL class prep.

One of the things that's been happening this year is that since The Green School starts at 9:00 (8:58, actually), there are kids entering the second floor by 8:30 or so, strolling around and thinking about going to the cafeteria for breakfast. If I'm in the library between 8:30 and 8:58, as I would be on Wednesdays, of course, with my 8:00 start time, I get kids knocking on the door, even if I'm clearly engaged in some kind of solo prep work. Unless I'm giving some kind of New York State ESL test and have a sign taped on the door stating "Testing: Please Respect the Students Taking the Test," the kids will just knock and knock until I break what I'm doing and let them in, or at least open up and speak with them, which for me is effectively the same thing, since both break my flow. Such are the hazards of being a public service...

This little wrinkle requires me to be strategic about how and when I enter the library. Don't get me wrong. I'm not avoiding the kids all the time, but sometimes I have to. Yes, yes, I'm doing what I do so the kids will have a library service, so although it may sound kind of hypocritical, but if the kids don't let me get any behind-the-scenes work done, there won't be anything in place for them when I do open the doors. Things are still in a jumble and I'm just starting to make a little headway. This means my usual entry strategy on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, when my hours are 9:30 to 4:00, is to enter only after 8:58, after the students are situated in their first period classes. I'm usually there just around that time because I don't like to be late. I can then have an entire 30 minutes just to do what I need to get done, or at least a good chunk of it, without being interrupted.

On Wednesdays, with my 8:00 to 3:00 hours, this isn't possible, so I've decided to fling the doors open on Wednesdays at 8:00 and let the kids wander in if they want to. In fact, I'm having them sign in on Wednesday mornings so I can show their visits to the powers that be at some point in the future when I go back to advocate for a two-person library staff: if the kids do want to come and visit both before school and after school, there's no way one person on teacher's hours can swing staffing both ends of the school day.

This morning I had it in my head to finish some book processing. Yesterday afternoon I'd trained my 12th grade intern E. how to use Follett's Destiny online OPAC system to enter uncatalogued, unprocessed books. It requires several steps, and missing any of them makes the process even more tedious in the end, so it's worth paying attention as you go to keep things running smoothly. E. did great, but we didn't have time to do the final steps: printing out the bar code and spine label stickers for the books that had just been entered and sticking them on the correct books. Just before closing, as we were working along, a student saw that Stephenie Myer's New Moon was in the stack of books getting processed and asked politely if she could take it out the following day. "Wow," I thought, "that's a huge lot better than screaming, 'Hey!!! New Moon!!! Gimme that!!!' and grabbing it," which wouldn't surprise me in some of the kids who've got what I'd call emerging social skills. But this young lady was very polite and had the insight to realize that E. and I weren't done with everything we needed to do to get the book ready for the public. I told her I'd put it on hold for her and she could have it the following day.

"When can I come and pick it up?" she asked. I was so impressed with her maturity that I said, "First thing in the morning," not wanting to make her wait after being so good, and knowing I'd be in early. I hate to have a bunch of books in the OPAC that haven't had their bar code and spine labels stuck on yet: it's just begging for disaster and confusion. So today, I came racing in and printed out the labels and was finalizing the stack of books we had done last night when, sure enough, a couple of my regulars came loping in. Now that I'm expecting it, baking it into my day, as it were, it was actually kind of fun to have them there in the morning. In fact one of the kids who came in, K., also likes to help out with things and she helped me shelve the newly processed books. Just before first period began, which is fourth period on Wacky Wednesdays, my New Moon reader came by and I was glad the book was ready and signed out to her. Finally, at least a few things are going along as they should. Baby steps.

Another thing my schools' administrations have been great about is letting me take a lunch break. This happens to conflict with The Green School's lunch, when the kids should have what I call a Free Choice library period. Given that I spend most of my Green School time as the ESL teacher, however, something's got to give and it's The Green School's lunch. Today, however, the Wednesday schedule being what it is, I was actually in the library during The Green School's lunch time, rather than having run out immediately at the beginning of the period, and had the pleasure of two of my regulars happening by and, seeing I was there, coming in for a visit. One of them, T., began to show me his sketches for a comic book he's doing and they're really great. I had no idea this student was even interested in art! "What am I doing?" I thought. "Here are some kids who could use a little breather in the library during lunch time, I'm not making that happen."

I don't want to get too starry-eyed about it, though. Last year, I hosted Open Access (which I now call Free Choice) lunch for both Lyons Community School and The Green School and the latter proved to be among the worst experiences of my working life. And I'm old and have worked in a lot of places. It was so bad that we all agreed that for the remainder of 2008-2009, I would only work as the ESL for The Green School and we'd deal with me as The Green School's librarian later on. It's now later on and as of yet, I'm not dong it. If I'm going to open up for lunch time this year, and I could possibly take a break a little later to make this work, there would have to be a lot of conditions and maybe some backup from the Dean's office to make sure kids didn't repeat the same performances they did last year.

Some of the students, a few of whom were the very angels who so abusive to me last year, have asked why I haven't provided lunch time access. For now I'm just toeing the party line: I'm using my hours as an ESL teacher during the day, but they're welcome to come after school.

Opening up for The Green School at lunch time is a service to seriously consider. It's something that should happen, and if I were employed full-on as a librarian rather than being split between ESL and library, it would be happening already. I know I'm sort-of, kind-of making it work for Lyons now, after a lot of trial and error last year. This is a question I'll come back to some time soon on this blog as I think it through in writing.