So I haven’t posted since November? Yikes!

I love to write. I know, I know. You certainly can’t tell that by the frequency of my blog posts. I’ve been thinking  recently seriously about what to post. I’ve got teaching tips for the library and remodeling ideas to share. But I’ve actually got to stop doing those things to write about them.. It’s just one more evening painting and then that one more becomes a week. Or one more week reorganizing shelves and then it’s a month.  Then some how winter has completely passed and it’s miraculously spring. But I’ve been doing and thinking about writing as I’m doing and then doing some more.

Here is an incomplete list so things I wanted to write about (and maybe I still will . . .)

• Master bath renovation (1st week of December. Oh my goodness can we say terrible timing many many times?)
• Stripping wall paper in hall and stairway. Repairing walls.
• Painting room after room after room.
• Researching flooring and cabinet paints.
• Reading numerous (I have absolutely no idea how many) home improvement blogs. There are some fabulous ones out ther btw.
• Refinishing half our furniture.
• Just as an aside, I thought being the super worker that I am, I could do the whole house in a year. Wrong. This year will be the main floor. Next year the 2nd floor will get my attention..
• Wrote an ELA book for Carson-Dellosa.
• Oh, and I’ve lost 40 pounds.

So that’s been home. Here’s school:

• Shifting non-fiction to a Dewey-bookstore hybrid.
• Working on stations to cross grade levels and where the movement and noise level do t drive me completely bonkers.
• Christmas break to now, working on a ncaa style bracket for favorite books.
• Still color coding library, labeling . . .
• Working on making old tittle 1 materials accessible.
• Book inventory. There’s also that pesky surprise asset tag inventory that came in from the county.
• Reorganizing guided reading room.
• Mmmmmmm, I’m forgetting something.
• Oh, and I teach six classes a day k- 5.

I’ve got pictures of most things, but I’ve realized that I’m a terrible before picture taker. I have a tendancy to jump right in.

I like the overall look of the house, but I think my absolute favorite thing is how the refinished furniture looks. Maybe I’ll talk about that next!

Advertisement

Woman Not Allowed To Donate Pagan Books To Son’s School – Winston-Salem News Story – WXII The Triad

Woman Not Allowed To Donate Pagan Books To Son’s School – Winston-Salem News Story – WXII The Triad.

A North Carolina mother says her son’s school is refusing books supportive of her pagan beliefs after last month offering Bibles.

Apparently Bibles had been handed out earlier by the Gideons.

This link has a fuller story.

Is there a line to be drawn? Do we take one set of sacred texts and not the other? Should there be a difference for religious texts taken at the three school levels?

Having just worked on a collection development policy, I know that we want to make sure that books in the library are as fact based as possible. Is a Bible “Christian propoganda” as stated in the second link? I’ve never thought of the Bible as propoganda. Chick Tracts? yes. Bible? no.

Wishing there was a list of the books she wanted to donate.

Is suspension an appropriate consequence?

This student is fighting suspension in grad school for off campus reckless driving.

Seems a bit over the top to me unless there is more here than we are being told. What do you think?

Access Denied! Dropbox

OK, I’ve been using dropbox.com for months now without any trouble. Today I walk in and call it up to get my lesson files for the day and got

ACCESS DENIED!

I tried again and again it happens. Still can’t get in. Had to get the building tech person fill out a work order . . .

*sigh*

Saving the Google students

From yet another pink-slipped school employee.

The current generation of kindergartners to 12th graders — those born between 1991 and 2004 — has no memory of a time before Google. But although these students are far more tech savvy than their parents and are perpetually connected to the Internet, they know a lot less than they think. And worse, they don’t know what they don’t know.

As a librarian in the Pasadena Unified School District, I teach students research skills. But I’ve just been pink-slipped, along with five other middle school and high school librarians, and only a parcel tax on the city’s May ballot can save the district’s libraries. Closing libraries is always a bad idea, but for the Google generation, it could be disastrous. In a time when information literacy is increasingly crucial to life and work, not teaching kids how to search for information is like sending them out into the world without knowing how to read.

Read on . . .

More here from the School Library Journal

Firing every adult in a school building

Last week, I mentioned the mass of school closings. This is different. These are low performing schools that apparently think they need a jump start with an entirely new staff.

When it was announced that a certain Rhode Island school was going to fire the entire staff, I commented on FB, “Isn’t there one teacher in the entire school worth keeping?” No one with the right experience, zeal, relationship with the kids? No one? I woke up this morning to news that a school in Georgia has decided to take the all or nothing approach (emphasis on the nothing) to keeping teachers. Now the school in GA is apparently considering rehiring up to 49% of its teachers. Well, why put the ones that will be offered jobs through this?

It’s happened again and again. One of those schools (at 50% lay offs) is in the county in which I teach. Now at least 50% imho is a much more realistic figure. I am not for keeping teachers who do not manage classrooms properly or teach the curriculum. I’m not for keeping teachers with the poor attitude that the kids they teach can’t learn, But if teachers classes are failing, talk to them and find out why. If they have that crummy attitude, send them on their ways. BUT if they want to teach and need more skills to work with a certain population, then help them get those skills OR transfer them and offer some kind of incentive for a teacher that has the right skill set.

Update – this is from the local paper about two schools in this school system that are planning to take the federal grants and reassign 50% of the teachers. Thanks to Sandy for the heads up on FB.

more editing work

Well, I must have done ok on the previous assignment because I’ve been offered another.I did ask for and get a little longer time period this time.

I am going into hiding for a while 😉

I have a research paper to write over this same time period AND while we are finishing Saturday Academy, we will be extending learning – which extends the school day for 1.5 hours two days a week. My final paper in this class is due 5/5 and it is a research proposal. I hope to be back to a slower schedule then!

Don’t type it if it’s about your job

Just in the last month (or a little over) there have been suspensions on multiple levels in education over facebook comments.

1. Student suspended for starting a page (apparently hateful) about teacher. Students who fanned page got after school suspension. article

2. NC teacher suspended for venting about student situation. My Post

3. College prof suspended for making what her employers thought were inappropriate comments. article

OK folks, if it’s about your school or the people that you interact with on campus and it’s not glowing, just don’t type it.

Long but good day

Today we had dress rehearsal for a program this evening. It was during my planning, but that was fine 😀

Then after school, I went to a monthly workshop and then we were back at school for the program.

Tomorrow we are anticipating snow coming in about noon, so Ron and I packed a bag so he could take me to school and hopefully get me home. The bag is just in case it’s been snowing for hours before I can leave school!

School supplies

I need to buy some spirals and pencils by the case.

Got suggestions for the best place to start this time of year?