Staff Development Week

Staff development week is a lot like treading water; I always feel as if I am kicking and paddling as fast as I can, but I'm still not getting anywhere. Since this happens every year, perhaps I need to look at my expectations for that week and reconsider...ok...next year.

The "big rocks," or main topics we wanted to tackle during staff development week this year were to update the various library schedules, look at & redesign our Freshman Orientation class, and update & share our library policies.  We did 2 out of 3 because we forgot to factor in the 24 mobile lab carts that needed our attention!  Since we don't see the Freshman until after Labor Day, we shifted that "rock" to next week.

The library policies didn't need too much updating, which was good.  We have policies for the students and for the staff that we post online and print out in brochure form.  On the brochure, we can add the usernames and passwords to our school's databases.  Our biggest issue was how to share our policies with the teachers.  The library has been a part of staff development week until this year.  So we decided to create a short intro "Go Animate" video and email it along with the brochures to the teachers.  We will also have a "Library Open House" in conjunction with the school's open house on Sept. 13th...any excuse to have a party in the library!

Here is our link to the library "commercial." http://goanimate.com/videos/0LTA-DJaJ9v8?utm_source=linkshare

Unfortunately, our staff library policies (the online version) are still a work in progress.  As soon as we have that up and running, I will post the link.

Here's to a great 2012-13 school year!

Getting Down to Business

I am about to enter my 5th year as a high school librarian, and I want to be more organized this year.  I feel as if I am fulfilling the academic needs of my patrons and following the school calendar, but I haven't been as good at celebrating what I call the "Library Calendar." I, along with my 2 colleagues (Karen & Blanca), do our best to lure the students into the library with our various clubs, chess boards, art projects, and programs. However, I think I would like to participate in some of the American Library Association's library activites this year.  Last Spring, we hosted a "Hunger Games Family Night," and we did some fun teen activities during National Library Week, but I think I'd like to do more.  In order to do that, I realized I needed to map out my year.

So I took my notebook that Karen gives me and Blanca every year...and I set out to do just that.

Some people like to start with a calendar and fill it in, but I needed a generic space to brainstorm and align my calendars...the academic, the school events, and the library calendars.  It started out looking like this...

After that, I went month by month and made a list of what we wanted to do....

So to be honest, that is what I have so far. I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew.  Last year our library participated in National Library Week.  This year I want to participate in Banned Book week, Teen Read Week, Teen Tech Week, and School Library Month.  We start back to school on Monday for staff development.  We'll see how this goes!