Blog Archives
It’s Standardized Testing Time!
Get your supplies ready…
It’s that time of year, folks.
Buy a whole pack of #2 and sharpen them all, buddy, because we’re doing this for the next three weeks.
Yeah, you heard me right. THREE. WEEKS.
Personally, I think this time of year is my personal version of hell. I have to sit with students for four hours each day, and I literally can do nothing except watch them take the test. I can’t read, write, doodle, sleep, or do anything except watch my kids fill in bubbles. My brain needs mental stimulation and I can’t handle just watching the clock tick for hours and hours over three days of testing and three days of retesting.
Testing in my state (and probably in yours!) bothers me because it’s too much. There are so many stakeholders in education: teachers, administrators, parents, community members, policy makers, and even the students themselves. Because each of these groups are demanding MORE data and MORE accountability, we equate that with MORE tests, LONGER tests, MORE days of pre- and re-testing, and MORE testing security. As a result, we spend at least fifteen days pre-testing, testing, and re-testing our students just for the main test — that’s not counting, ESL, writing, vocational, and high school-level exams. We also devote several hours each morning over fifteen days for school-wide “tutoring” and remediation, in addition to our government-sponsored after school and Saturday tutoring.
Testing is important because we get an individual score for the student, the teacher, the school, and the district. We calculate pass/fail rates, growth, and value added by the teacher. Score are tied to the school improvement plan and goals for the following year. We are constantly shown data and graphs telling us how we rank against other schools in our district. When our school shows up at the bottom of the graph, teachers and administrators are told we aren’t working hard enough. When we are at the top it is assumed that we are doing something right. Everything comes down to the test.
Testing fascinates me because I think we do too much of it. Too much rides on one test, and I don’t believe the test gives an accurate picture of a student’s success. Don’t get me wrong — the scores are definitely useful. They show us patterns and areas we need to target. However, I think we can get these same results with a shorter test. Two hours of math one day, and two hours of reading the next would suffice — no quarter tests. No retests. No four hour testing sessions. While testing stresses the kids out, most of them realize it does not define them as students. Their grades don’t always correlate with their test scores, and they are almost always promoted to the next grade level, even if they fail. We aren’t making our kids pre- and re-test for their benefit, we are making them pre- and re-test so we can force them to get the highest possible score on a very specific test. The adults (teachers and administrators) need the highest possible scores to justify budgets, teacher quality, and policies.
Our students would fare better and learn more if we took back our thirty days of testing and tutoring and put those back into teaching curriculum. If we’d stop teaching to the test, students might actually perform better on the test itself.
Just a thought.
Since I can’t do much else during testing but think, I’ll be thinking a lot about these issues over the next three weeks. I hope folks across the nation are thinking about some of the same things, and that one day we can scale back on our death-by-assessment practices.
So tell me…what do you think of testing? Love it? Hate it? Necessary evil? Do you have to participate in testing? Does it numb your brain like it numbs mine?
Sharing Is Caring
I share my library and my collection with an elementary school. I mention it from time to time, but today I wanted to elaborate on this unique situation and how it is a challenge.
So here’s the set-up: two completely different schools, one physical space for the library. The folks who dreamed up this campus thought this would be an effective use of space and a great concept. The folks who put the books in the space and automated the system made a decision to put both collections in the same online system.
Let me break this down for you non-library folks:
- Two schools, with completely different administrations, staff, budgets, and accounts.
- One space.
- And all of our books are in the same catalog. All of our patrons and reports are in the same computer system.
It is a difficult. Even the nicest and sweetest of folks would get frustrated working in an environment like this.
Our shared media center space
(click to see a larger image)
Physical Space
For starters, just sharing the physical space is rough. It would be one thing if we were a true K-8 school where we were all coworkers and a cohesive school with the same mission and the same boss. We are not. There is a constant conflict over behavior expectations of students and staff. Objectively, our problem is not so much in the actual behaviors, but in the perception of what those behavior are and should be. Our middle school teachers are routinely bothered by the behaviors of the elementary students and staff. The elementary teachers are constantly complaining about the behaviors of the middle school students and staff.
Here’s two examples that have happened recently:
- Our middle school boys, on their way to the bathroom, were playfully telling each other to shut up. This offended a kindergarten teacher and her class that we walking in the door, because kindergarteners take “shut up” seriously.
- While I was trying to do a serious research project with a sixth grade class, an elementary teacher was doing a lot of singing, clapping, and cutesy stuff with her class while they checked out books. The teacher I was working with was offended because the class was distracting.
What exactly are we supposed to do in these situations? We utilize teachable moments constantly, but it’s kind of tiring to constantly have to hold eighth grade boys to the standard of being “good role models to the kindergarteners” when it is out of their normal standard of behavior. I can’t write a kid up for saying “shut-up.” The elementary teacher in the above scenario was doing an appropriate activity with her kids to make library time fun. Nobody is “wrong” in these situations, but both sides think the other is out of line and tension results.
I get so tired of trying to anticipate problems and calm people down. I get tired of being the diplomat. I get tired of holding eighth graders to unrealistic behavior standards. I get tired of listening to elementary school activities (I’m sorry — they are cute…sometimes. But I don’t teach elementary school for a reason, y’all).
Our schools don’t collaborate on scheduling AT ALL. Everything is done as if we don’t share the space. Communication is non-existent, and I can’t fix that alone. No matter how much I want to.
Also, another pitfall: everyone has to stay on their own side of the library. The space is basically a large rectangle, divided into two symmetrical spaces by an invisible line. Students can see books that they aren’t allowed to check out. Teachers can see a free, open space that they aren’t allowed to use. We have a huge problems with students and teachers trying to use the wrong computers. And no one seems to understand that the staff is completely different for each school. It’s hard for me to explain that I can’t help them with things because I am not their librarian. I am not a back-up librarian for them, and neither is my media assistant. We are both overly helpful people, but we learned quickly that giving in to this behavior quickly becomes a huge burden and takes a lot of time/energy away from doing our own work for our school.
Shared Database
The bigger problem than the shared space is the shared database. Not a shared COLLECTION, mind you. I buy my own books with my own money and store them on my own side of the library. But our catalog is lumped together as one big school. I can see why someone thought this would be a good idea — with all the books in the same room, it would be way too confusing to have two different databases. However, this causes a lot of problems in reality.
The first problem is in labeling exactly what belongs to which school, both on the physical item and in the computer record. Apparently no one thought about this when they first automated the collection, so this has been done very poorly. Fixing 40,000 items is overwhelming, but it needs to be done. There is no good way to tell if something is owned by the elementary school or the middle school.
Now imagine trying to run reports in that environment. A nightmare. They are always wrong! We have to gestimate who owns what, and it sucks. I can’t get accurate statistics or numbers on ANYTHING. Running overdue notices is tough, too. And fine collection is a pain because it can be hard to tell who the fine is owed to and fines are always sent to the wrong accounts.
It also sucks when the kids search for a book and they don’t understand that it actually belongs to the other school.
The Big Picture
Working in this environment is frustrating over time. My first two years I was very much of the “we just make it work!” mindset. And we do make it work. The frustration crops up more some days than others. Most of the time things move along smoothly. But there is an above-average amount of conflict and confusion. It would take a very special personal to stay in this environment for all thirty-plus years of his or her career, and that person is not me! I guess I’m too much of a control freak.
It’s not the worst situation in the world — far from it. But, given the choice, I would want to work in a media center where I had more control over my space and my records. We’ve cleaned a lot of it up in three years, but it’s only made a dent.
There are positives, of course. I don’t have to worry about purchasing lower-level books, because we are able to use those on a limited basic from the elementary school collection. We can collaborate with elementary teachers and students. I’ve even made friends with some of the elementary school staff. I always have another media specialist to ask questions to and two media assistants around to gain insight from. Our students mostly come from the elementary school, so we can keep up with fines more easily. We have a great sense of community and the media center is always busy with multiple activities, so it is obvious that we have a great space for learning that is essential to both schools.
I just thought I’d share my unique situation to those of you who might be curious. I’d also be interested in hearing about your unique media center or education spaces if you have one! There is no “normal” in education, so I’m sure we all have stories!
Just call me Dr. Anderson…in 3-5 years.
How could I not love this place?
I had a major life event occur over the weekend, which you might have caught if you follow me on Twitter: I got accepted to UNC-Chapel Hill for their Ph.D program in Education! My concentration will be in Culture, Curriculum, and Change, and I will start in the fall of 2012.
I picked this program because it will offer me incredible flexibility in my coursework and my research. Looking at the course list made me giddy! I wanted to take them all! Though I did my undergraduate degree in education at UNC, I will have completely different professors and totally different experience this time around. But I am terribly excited to be going back to my alma mater for another four years(-ish) of being a student!
This news sets me on a new career path! I will be leaving the library and K-12 education to pursue a career in academia as an education professor. Though I love my job, I recognize that our public education system is going through some tough times. I feel the best way for me to contribute to changing public education for the better is through thoughtful research, teaching our future teachers, and utilizing the resources of universities.
I’m still narrowing down my research interests (I want to study everything!!), but I think I will be focusing on either teacher preparation, student transitions to middle school from elementary school, professional development, social media in personal learning networks, or middle grades literacy.
So this blog will still have a librarian focus for the next four months, but eventually my focus will shift. I still plan to primarily read and review young adult literature, but I will likely change the name of the blog and talk about my experiences in academia starting in mid-August. Stay tuned!
Should audio books count?
Audio books are amazing. I have a 45 minute commute to work each day, which leaves me with at least 7.5 hours in the car each week that can be used for multi-tasking. The local public library has a particularly amazing collection of audio books, and I can usually get YA books quickly without a wait list. However, I feel guilty when adding my audio reads to my challenges. I feel guilty when I say I “read” a book this way. Do audio books count as reading? Why should an audio book count as reading when my countless hours of podcasts and NPR don’t?
I’m so torn on this!
In the bigger picture of life, I do believe an audio book counts as having read a book. Listening to an audio book still gives me the story. I’ve experienced the language, the characters, the plot, the conflict, and the themes. Nobody in real life is keeping score or giving grades. If I want to say I read a book because I listened to it in my car, who cares? As a librarian, the ease and convenience of audio books allows me to keep up with more books more efficiently so I can do my job better.
But…
It’s not really reading. The experience of listening is close to reading — I can still picture the characters in my head and get lost in a different world — but it’s not actual reading by running my eyes across a page of words. There is something to be said for the mental workout involved in seeing and processing the printed word. Audio books decide the emphasis and inflections for the listener, but reading a book involves interpreting the text in a very personal way. I started my first reading challenge in 2009 because I wanted to spend more time curled up with simple, old-fashioned, non-techy books.
For my 2011 challenge, I solved this issue with a compromise: I would count audio books, but I would limit the number read. Seven of my fifty-two books were audio books. I just finished number eight today (The Help by Kathryn Stockett, I’ll be reviewing it soon). Giving up my audio books is not an option, so I’ll be counting them. I’d actually like to see more audio books on my 2012 list because I felt like seven was too small a number. I guess my compromise for this in 2012 will be upping the total number of books read. I’m thinking 70 books for next year, allowing for 10-20 audio books.
What do y’all think? Does an audio book count as reading a book? Do you read audio books?
Books 50, 51, and 52…and 53-60
Okay, so I’m in the middle of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie and Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us by Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman, which will no doubt be books #50 and #51 in my challenge. I’m also in the middle of A Wrinkle in Time for my book club, which will be book #52. I realized that I’m going to finish prematurely.
What to do?
I’m going to extend the challenge to 60 books. I picked this number because seven of the books I read were audio books, so I’m reading seven more to account for those (and yes, 52 + 7 = 59…so I added in one more to make it an even sixty).
For November, I am also going to assign myself two novels for REQUIRED READING.
These will be:
Mostly I picked these two because I checked them out from my own library and I need to get them back to the school. I’ll let you know what I think of them both by the end of the month.
Since they are required reading, I also give full notice to my readers to mock, judge, tease, harass, and thumbs-down me for not completing both or either of these reads by November 30.
Step away from the books…
Reason #1,274 why we need our library assistants: I am a failure at covering books.
My media assistant spent most of her two days with me this week processing all of the paperbacks we bought from the Scholastic Book Fair. She left a small stack of undone books on the cart, and I thought I’d give it a go and help her out by covering a few.
Bad idea.
Not only did my cover have bubbles in it, but folds and rips, too. The worst part was that I accidentally folded the sticky side of the material over the last page in the book instead of just the back cover. So now the end page is forever entombed in contact paper that won’t unstick. “Forever” meaning “until my media assistant comes back on Monday and shows me how to fix it.”
I put the rest of the books back on the cart and gave up for the day.
That's end page stuck in contact-papery goodness.
Why I believe AR is bad for literacy and bad for students
When I talk to people about AR (Accelerated Reader), they either love it or hate it. I definitely agree with the latter. Every time I think I have effectively stamped out use of AR in my school, it rears its ugly little head again and I am forced to fight another round of the battle. It’s tiring, but I must stand on the front lines for literacy!
What is AR?
If you’ve never heard of AR, you either live under a rock or you haven’t be anywhere near an elementary/middle school in over fifteen years. AR is a program that quizzes children on books they have read to award points for the book. The child must read a book on his or her approved, tested reading level. The quizzes focus on small details of the book, in order to test if the child has actually read the material. Points are awarded based on how many questions the child gets right, and they receive zero points if they fail to answer 70% of the questions correctly. Many schools award prizes to top readers. In addition, they often let children use points to “shop” at an AR store for toys and supplies or other rewards. Many classroom teachers required minimum numbers of AR points for grades in the classroom.
The folks that love AR have good intentions. They believe that AR pushes reluctant readers to read and rewards regular readers for their efforts. I agree that there are some children out there who are motivated by AR and it changes their lives. Teacher like the ease of record keeping: the AR program lets kids take the quizzes and reports all points to the teacher. Teachers have these great stories about kids devouring books and racking up points. They love the feeling that kids are getting excited about reading (joy!).
However, if we look deeper into AR we see that there is more to the story…and it ain’t pretty.
Why It Fails Our Students
AR is, by its very nature, a system of providing extrinsic motivation and extrinsic rewards for reading. A very, very expensive system with very, very expensive rewards. Though I think intrinsic motivation is fabulous and preferred in most situations, I do recognize that extrinsic motivation is sometimes necessary. But do we really want children to read just because the get a cheap trinket? And can we really afford to keep doing so in this economy?
AR is expensive and time consuming. First, a school must buy the program and pay to support it each year. Then the school must buy a test for every library book purchased. At around $2.99 a pop, these tests don’t come cheap. For the price of five AR tests, an additional fiction book could be purchased for the library instead. The rewards are expensive, too. I did AR for one year, and it ate up a lot of my (very valuable) time. I had to put reading-level dots on the books, manually enter the 6th graders into the program, collect donations and supplies for the AR store each semester, shut down the library to run the store for six instructional days, and keep track of all the kids points from purchases.
But even if AR were free, the program still doesn’t work. It provides a short-term incentive to read, which disappears as soon as the reward is no longer available. Yes, kids may read more to rack up points…but they don’t enjoy it more and they don’t become life-long readers. And let’s not even talk about the cheating! I have heard stories from my friends about how they cheated by taking tests for friends, watching the movie for a popular book, or looking up the test answers online. One friend even said he cheated his way to the #1 spot for points in the school! Even though it’s not technically cheating, I also used to see students cruising the stacks for the books with the highest point values. If I had a dollar for every kid who picked up Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix without reading the first four novels in the series, I’d have enough money to take myself to a nice dinner.
What bothers me most about AR is the insistence that kids read books on their reading level. It SUCKS to be restricted in reading choices. Think about it: if you were told, right now, that you could only read books on your reading level, would you be happy? I’d be stuck reading dissertations all day because I doubt there is any fiction on my reading level readily available to me. Most popular fiction is written on a fifth or sixth-grade reading level. For my middle school students, that meant that the reading pickins’ were slim. Even for an elementary school student, the selection would be about 12% of the entire library. I see teachers tell kids every day that they can’t read a book because it’s too easy or too hard. These kids end up picking something less interesting, and then trudging through it to earn their points. Is that really how the world works?
Think about why you read. Do you read because you get tangible rewards? Probably not. You read because you need to or want to learn something for yourself or a class. You read because your friend recommended a great book. You read because you want to read the book before you see the movie. You read because you’re in a book club. You read to escape, to heal, to experience, and to pass time. We need to work on taking the time and thought to encourage the same for children by modeling our love for reading, providing access to varied and intriguing reading material, and making reading a more social experience. We need to make sure that the kids can read, and work on basic skills if they can’t. Dangling a carrot is not the solution.
Don’t Just Take My Word For It
Read the research on AR and reading motivation if you want to see for yourself. I feel like a broken record every time I say, “AR is not a research-based strategy.” Here’s my evidence to support my claim:
Jim Trelease’s comments on AR from The Read-Aloud Handbook
and a few more, from the general web:
The Loopy Librarian also hates AR (and read the comments — quite telling)
Like Netflix for books? Tell me more!
Apparently Amazon is trying to create a service that will be “Netflix for Books.” As both an e-reader enthusiast (remember how much I love my Nook?) and a Netflix subscriber, I am thrilled.
I love Netflix because I don’t like to own my movies. I like to watch movie or series of a show once and be done with it. Netflix lets me watch a great variety of movies without breaking the bank. $8 a month is a fair price for just the priviledge of viewing unlimited movies without ever owning a physical product.
Of course, there are several movies and TV shows that I love enough to buy. I own many seasons of my favorite shows (30 Rock, Big Bang Theory, The L Word, and How I Met Your Mother) and I usually buy movies that I love (Harry Potter, Love Actually, The Secret Garden, etc.). I’m happy with this system because it works for me. I can have my cake and eat it, too.
That’s how I feel about a subscription service for e-books. If I love a book, I will buy it in a heartbeat. However, I am not typically a re-reader of books. A subscription service would allow me to read more books each month on my Kindle (yes, I’d have to buy a Kindle) for a price much cheaper than buying the books outright. I don’t want to own most books and I don’t mind not being able to resell the book if the price is low to being with.
As it stands right now, I consider e-books a treat because of the price. I’m still reading books from my own library and the public library. I far prefer reading digital books over print books, so I can’t wait to see what Amazon does with their service…if it even actually happens any time soon!
Library Wordwall
Why yes, I do have a word wall in the library:
Even though I don’t have to have a word wall, I decided to make one. Surprisingly, it jazzed up the library more than I thought, fulfilling one of my personal goals for 2011-2012.
I put some basic words in general categories (part of a book, types of reference sources, drives on the computer, etc) up on the wall so I can point to them and reference them throughout the year. It’s not much, but it made me happy when I saw how good it looks.
Reflections on Four Years as an Educator
Four years ago, I began my stressful, ridiculous, often wonderful, sometimes overwhelming journey as a teacher. I promised myself that I’d do it for at least three years, even if I hated it, because I had heard that the learning curve is huge in the first three years and too many teachers quit. I started at a large suburban middle school, teaching language arts and math. While you couldn’t pay me enough money to go back to those first few years, I wouldn’t be where I am now without that time spent learning how to manage children while teaching content. So here’s a look back on my first four years in the profession and what I learned:
Year One — 6th Grade Math/Social Studies/Language Arts
I learned a lot in school, but nothing could prepare me for the real classroom.
I walked into my first classroom both excited and scared out of my mind. I spent far too much time at work on those first precious teacher workdays, forgetting to eat and spending a lot of money on stuff for my classroom that I ended up not needing/changing my mind about. I felt like the weakest link at the school because I was the only first-year teacher in the building and everyone had to help me figure out basic things: how to assign lockers, how to assign textbooks, how to collect money, etc. All I wanted to do on those teacher work days was get my classroom ready and plan for the year, but I quickly became extremely frustrated with the fact that all of the meetings/trainings/open houses actually made that impossible. It was day five of teacher workdays when I realized that all of the teachers actually come in before teacher workdays to set things up.
Before I left my house on the first student day, I threw up.
The first two weeks, the infamous “honeymoon period,” were lovely. They were followed by 34 weeks of what can only be described as the hardest, most frustrating, most anti-social weeks of my life. I cried a lot. I felt like my university education program had not prepared me for how hard it would be to work with actual living, breathing, complicated children. They also failed to tell me that working with the adults would be even harder than working with the children! The teachers on my hall were catty and condescending. Even though all of them are amazing teachers in their own style, office politics among the grown women I worked with was new territory for me. I felt like I had no one to go to for questions or advice. I felt alone.
The most frustrating thing of all, though, was teaching the students. I taught two blocks of math/language arts and then social studies/language arts, and each block was two hours long with thirty students. I come from a middle-class background with very educated, supportive parents and I valued my education for both intrinsic and extrinsic reasons. My students did not all have this background. In fact, most of them had quite the opposite. I found my students to be apathetic. Now I realize this is because of my teaching (which I was still learning how to do effectively). At the time, I knew there was a problem in my classroom but I didn’t know how to fix it, no matter how hard I tried. Now I realize that all of that trying and changing and adapting was part of the problem — children need consistency, structure, fairness, and firmness. I wanted to do all of those things, but learning how to do them comes with time and practice.
Year Two — 7th Grade Social Studies/Language Arts
The second year was much, much better in some respects, and much worse in others. I was paired with a teammate that was also a first year teacher and our team was created after the tenth day of school, pulling students out of their assigned classes to join the new team. All of the students were native Spanish speakers and/or had some kind of 504 plan, neither of which I knew anything about when the team was created. However, we only had thirteen students in each blocked class, which was a blessing.
We took our kids to a boy scout camp for a field trip. We trust them enough to give them archery equipment.
I think I cried more my second year than my first, even though things were better. I think I came out of my first year thinking, “Okay, I did all this stuff wrong. Now I can see what I did wrong. Next year I just have to do all that stuff right!” Easier said than done. I was still disconnected from where I wanted to be as a teacher. I knew how to do it, but applying that knowledge every minute of every day was exhausting. Two things saved me every day: the seventh grade schedule (teaching two classes, then two planning periods, then teaching two more classes) and the incredible community I created with my students in that small class environment. I believe I was a much more successful teacher with the small class size. All twenty-six of my students had failed the standardized test in 6th grade, but I managed to get ten of them to pass. I had another four or five that made huge jumps of around fifteen points, as well.
The seventh grade teachers were a brilliant, cooperative, helpful group of people, which also made my year much better. We had PLC (Professional Learning Community) meetings every day during planning, and I always left feeling like I had saved myself time by planning with the group…a group I felt I was an equal, contributing member of. Being part of a successful PLC is the reason why I value those connections to this day. If I don’t have a good PLC to lean on, I know to go and create my own from the people in real life and on the web that I trust and respect.
Year Three — Media Coordinator
In year three, I was able to prematurely make the jump to media coordinator at a different, medium-sized, low-income middle school. I had been working on my master’s degree in School Library Media and hadn’t completed it yet, but somehow I managed to secure a job early. It was the best thing that has happened to me professionally to date. I was able to complete all of my graduate work with actual students in real life situations, and most of my graduate work was very helpful to me as a first-year media coordinator. Most of all, though, working as the media coordinator made me HAPPY. I loved the variety of it, working in all subject areas and grade levels. I rediscovered why I love teaching. Being a media coordinator gave me a lot of flexibility and autonomy that I was missing in the classroom. I also got to experience a different type of relationship with the students — one of sharing, guiding, mentoring, and praising, rather than discipling.
Year Four — Media Coordinator
In year four, I definitely hit my stride as a teacher. I could feel it all around. The start of the new year felt fun, not stressful, because I was walking into a position that was familiar. I finished my degree and secured tenure status. I felt like a real member of the staff and I felt confident in my role and expertise. I changed many things that I had done the year before and made a lot of things better, but I also taught some of the same lessons and stuck with the things that worked. I came into my own with classroom management, utilizing my personal style consistently and firmly. I stopped blaming the students for being who they are and started adapting to them (it will never be the other way around, I finally figured that out).
Teaching and learning in the MC!
The bigger change that occurred in year four was that I started to step into a role as a leader in the school. I am a natural leader, but only in situations where I am confident. Well, the confidence had grown and it was time for me to use it in making things happen. I found an amazing partner in crime (our technology facilitator) and we started teaching technology trainings to the staff. I also made friends at work and socialized with them outside of school. I started attending PLCs with the other middle school media coordinators in the county, where I also felt like an equal, contributing member. I felt good as the year ended.
However, I also worry that, after four years, I have a new set of problems. Teaching, lesson planning, and classroom management come much more naturally for me now, but I worry that I have lost some of the spark and passion of a new teacher. I get caught up in the ho-hum of each day, teaching the same lesson for the eighth time that year and the sixteenth time ever and it can get a little boring. Rather, I can get a little boring. Teachers can never sit back, relax, and say they know it all. I still have plenty to learn and plenty to do better.
This Year
That’s why this year is about spicing it up a bit and engaging students in new ways. It’s also about engaging the staff in new ways, whether it’s igniting passion for new technology and literacy tools through our staff development series (un-conferences and a YA book club, yay!) or sparking interest in collaborating on content-area projects through the media center.
This is a year of great change at our school. We have new administrators, and 31% of our staff are new to the school. Many of those are new to the teaching profession. I hope to utilize the passion of these new teachers, as well as the passion of the go-to passionate people around me, to jump start a killer year in the media center. So here’s to starting year number five today!
The best part about year five: I don’t think I’m going to throw up before it begins.
