Check It Out

Yep, it’s my new year. Every late August is the beginning of the new year for me.  It usually means a week of seat time.  Which is hard.  I am active. I need to move around. My brain only assimilates what my bum can endure.

So yesterday was no different.  The morning was all about getting to know the staff again, setting the tone for the year.  The district has recommitted to the work of Richard DuFour, “professional learning communities”.  We were sidetracked a few years ago in a superintendent mess.  Now the district is returning to this theme.  That’s the nature of education. Cyclical. 

An impromptu lunch with other library media specialists was fabulous.  We find alternate ways to meet these days since our district focus is all about the building professional learning community not the district professional learning communtiy. (Which as someone who is awaiting the results of the national boards knows it is one of the tenets of being certified.  Which distrcit wide committees do you sit on? How are you involved st the district level? Very interesting to answer these days.)

The afternoon was better than anticipated.  Not because of the training in “Nettrekker“, a powerful subscription search engine ( whcih BTW, can screen out Wikipedia articles) but because the manger of the library media services mentioned “we are dipping our toes into blogging”. WOW!  My hand shot up (only to be reminded that this was not a discussion but a deliverance of news).  And to that end I am thankful to hear the legislature is doing a one time funding of $4.09 per FTE which will fortunately supplment our budget this year (which probably will take a 10 % cut as the district has financial woes).

So what does that mean? “Dipping our toe into blogging.” It is so amazing to me that the district is thinking about this because my “professional growth option” for this year is working with two fifth grade classes in a longer setting as I explore ways to blog with them as an educational tool.

Does it mean that we will use edublogs? What does a “blog moderator” do? Will it be on “Edline”, our in house web page?

And about blogging with students. How do I start? Who else is using blogs as a way to teach?  Lots of questions. This is good.  The August that comes without the big questions from me will be my last year of teaching.

Today I sit in another meeting. A meeting to discuss the norms and agreements for our porfessional learning community at Silver Star.  I wonder if an agreement could be that we all must write a bit more. I need to finish the mission statement for Family Library Night and for this blog.

If you have not had an opportunity to read Book Moot’s post on starting the new year, it is wonderful.  I shared it with my principal and other librarians as “the post I wish I had written”. Go. go now. and read it.  I printed it out to put in my school journal for review during the year.

Gotta get ready for school. Gotta remove that dream about finding out about my national board scores from my head.  Have you signed up for the Second Annual Kidlit Blogging Conference yet?

Happy Reading.

MsMac