Check It Out

This week sitting in meetings has been the order of the day. Next week the students arrive.

I discovered this wonderful poem in Naomi Shihab Nye’s collection, This Same Sky, a Collection of Poems from Around the World:

The Pen
Take a pen in your uncertain fingers.
Trust, and be assured
That the whole world is a sky blue butterfly
And words are the nets to capture it.

–Muhammad al-Ghuzzi
Tunisia

Translated by May Jayusi and John Heath-Snubbs

We should all be fortunate to have students arrive thinking that words are the nets to capture the sky-blue butterflies.

ANNOUNCEMENT:  Do you blog about YA and Children’s books?  The CYBILS Awards are in their fourth year and are looking for judges and panelists for the myriad of categories.  If interested, you can find out more here. 

This yer I am the organizer of the Nonfiction Picture Book (NFPB).  Am excited to serve in this capacity.

Poetry Friday is over at Book Aunt. Thanks, Kate.

Happy Reading.

MsMac

Three weeks ago, I wrote about our district’s budget woes and its effect on the library program.  It was a horrible week not knowing the district’s budget plans.  So much of the budget is dependent on what our state legislature decides.  The session ended last week but a special session will be called in the next few weeks.  It could mean more cuts to education.

However, a group of library media specialists, the teacher’s union and district officials met recently to discuss cuts to the library program as well as how the library budget is managed.  You see, when the announcement was made that the library budget would be cut by 50% next year, it was also decided that the money would go directly to the building and the building would decide how much the library would get. I felt like the library had heart surgery(more like heart removal surgery).

Wow!  I have read what has happened in other districts in this scenario. It does not favor libraries and actually creates “library haves” and “library have-nots”.  This is clearly illustrated by the current way elementary libraries are budgeted any building money.  I, for example,  am given $75.00 per year of the building budget, another school in the district gets $300.00 and still others do not receive any funds from their building budget.    This is the way it has been for a neighboring district as well; money disseminated to the library based on what the administration deems important or the type of relationship a library media specialist may have the principal.  Should it really be that way?  Should libraries be funded on a whim?  I think not.

Our meeting with the district went well.  I think the group conveyed the importance of having a “baseline budget” that is consistent through out the district configured by a set amount times the number of students in the school.  As someone in the meeting pointed out, “how can you have books for one library and no books for another?”. 

It was an eye opener for me how complex my job is to an outsider. I was asked why library should get a baseline budget when the art department does not.  I found myself talking about how we support the core curriculum of the school: literacy, science, math, social studies and the arts.  We are not an entity that accumulates books and materials that are never used.  It is used by all. (At least if I am doing my job it is.)

In the end, it was decided that for this next year, the budget would be cut 50% but the library media specialist would still maintain the budget.  We will need to be vigilant that the budget continues to be maintained by us.  I think the district would very much like to move to have just one budget, the building budget.  It is our job to communicate our expertise in collection development and our passion to maintian equity throughout the school district.

We still are awaiting the fate of our assistants.  Hopefully, they will be maintained at a full time level and not be reduced to half time status.  It was disturbing to be asked at a school board meeting if I thought that volunteers could do my assistant’s job.  

The library is recuperating from heart surgery. It does need any post surgery complications.

Happy Reading.

MsMac

You probably know that libraries are important.  In my district, for the first time in my thirty years, they are endangered.  Washington state is experiencing an eight billion dollar shortfall which will trickle down to all schools and government services.

I attended the public district budget meeting last night.  I have seen the cuts. But what shocked me the most was that it wasn’t a committee decision to cut library support but the district.  You see, on paper, libraries look flush.  We are staffed with one certificated person (moi!) and a full time classified staff person. On paper, it looks like a no-brainer for saving six hundred thousand dollars of the budget.

However, depending on the elementary school, we serve between four hundred to almost seven hundred students along with staff. At elementary we see scheduled weekly classes to provide planning time to teachers. 

In my building, students have the opportunity to come to the library whenever they please, even if I am in class.  This is possible because I have a staff assistant.  This will change if this position is cut to half time.

Collaboration with staff, creating a warm, friendly environment for students and integrating lessons were key components throughout my pursuit of the national certification process last year.  I am able to put my time and energy into these because I have a fully funded program.  If the program is cut, this will be more difficult.
All research points to a strong library program helps with student achievement.  A strong library program needs to be fully funded.  The recent Washington State Joint Task Force saw the need to fully fund libraries.  Hopefully, legislature will remain to fully fund libraries in the state.

A small group of librarians have been working to find ways to cut our program in order to save our staff assistant’s positions and maintain quality in the library.

What the library program in my district needs now is parents and students to speak out about the impact the library program has had on either themselves or their children.  Libraries are academic just as music is academic. 

 Last night, I watched the music parents and students speak out about maintaining the music program. The district was listening.  District meetings will continue through out spring. Speak up for libraries. Libraries are academic.

Happy Reading.

MsMac

Snowy days all around.The perfect cold chilly
Snow fell to the
Ground. and the ground was very
White you couldn’t even see the grass.
And slippery slidy walk moving carefully
On the snow on the side walk.
Also slidy as a ice
Berg. And feels so soft and cold
Snow resting on your hands.
And it crunches when you walk on
Frozen icy snow.
–chaz

Ninja poem 

Ninja fun
Ninja flying in the air and spinning in the air
Cutting flowers with a Ninja sword
Ninja fighting in the air
When I walk to a store I see a Ninja flying in the air
–Madison

 Skylar Elaine Faller 2/3/09
Every morning
two little eyes
watching cartoons
only seven weeks old
her eyes like the ocean blue
sometimes she’s a little machine with random words coming
only seven weeks old
she has been giving HUGE smiles
lots of giggles
only seven weeks old
–Makaela 

 
Snow on a Winter Day!

I walk to the bus stop,
With surprise in the air
I walk to the bus stop,
I look up and see snow flake falling
I walk to the bus stop,
I walk to the bus stop,
look back and see my green house white
I walk to the bus stop,
I look forward and see kids my age throwing snow balls
I walk to the bus stop,
The start of a new day!
–Sabrina

For more lookhere. Poetry Friday is at The Holly and the Ivy.  Thank you, Cuileanne.

All the participants were given a book to read at the conference last week. We were expected to read their book through the lens of the thinking strategy they were studying. Ten titles, nonfiction and fiction, were booked talked, then participants at each table had to come to consensus about which book they would select.  Participants were invited to choose a genre that would challenge their reading and thinking.

Hmmm, what I discovered about my reading was that being in the library media field, I read a lot and am familiar with most styles of writing.  I selected Ultimate Challenge by Alan Gottlieb, a dark, grisly book about how one man copes when forced to keep a secret when his best friend dies unexpectedly while both were in the Peace Corps.  Okay, so my thinking strategy was “synthesizing”.   Throughout the week, the conversation always returned to “is synthesizing  really a thinking strategy or is it the umbrella for which all others strategies come under”? 

So how did I synthesize my reading of Ultimate Excursion?  What did I think about as I read it?  Armed with post-its and pens (because even though we could write in the book, I could not bring myself to do so), I began reading.  I was brought back to a place twenty years ago when I led adult literature circles for class credit.  I was brought back in my mind to my visit to Columbia University, a workshop with Lucy Caulkins and Shelly Harwayne as we explore “what lens do you read through”.   I read through the lens of a reader, not a librarian trying to get through books in order to make selection choices.  There is a difference.  Sometimes I felt annoyed because I impose a “must think about this” on every page and that slows your reading down.  Yet, there was joy in slowing down, savoring the words.   Eventually, I set aside the post-its and just read.  I had to enforce lights out in Denver or I would have stay up all night.  It was an “ultimate excursion” to read this book.  It might make for a good read at high school level.  I am wonmdering if I could talk my book club into reading the book.  They typically do not go for dark reads. Do you know how much we synthesize without realizing it.

Fifth grade boys are crazy about the Guardians of Ga’hoole series by Kathryn Lasky.  I blogged about this two weeks ago.  I discovered Kathryn Lasky’s website and how to contact her and passed it onto the boys.  Today, Ben came down to tell me he had emailed her and she responded.  To see the joy on that boy’s face. Thank you to all the authors out there who take the time to respond to students.

What is on your nightstand?  Happy Reading.

MsMac

I am in Denver, CO attending the PEBC’s conference (Public Education Business Consortium, been around for 25 years).  The conference provides people from all the parts of education to look closely at thinking strategies that promote comprehension and a deeper level of understanding. This work is based on the work of Ellin Keene (Mosaic of Thought, To Understand), Debbie Miller (Reading for Meaning), Stephanie Harvey ( Nonfiction Matters, Strategies that Work)  among others.

The conference has been a blend of participation, reading, writing, and observation.  A first task was to choose a thinking strategy to study:
schema
asking questions
determining importance
monitoring
inferring
synthesizing: “You know this info, so what?”
creating mental/sensory images

I selected “synthesizing” because I know it is something I do it but how to convey it to students?  How do you get them to synthesize?  Is synthesizing a strategy unto itself? In addition to working in a group of like people interested in this strategy, we read a variety of articles through the lens of our chosen strategy.  Challenging!  Need I say that our conversations around synthesizing have been rich?  The first day I found myself accidentally volunteering to to the think aloud our an Eudora “Welty text (with turned out a missing piece).  Talking out loud about my thinking about synthesizing the text was uncomfortable but I realized that I need to do this more in my classes.

We were also invited to choose a text to read from a wide range of fiction and nonfiction books.  Our task was to record our thinking process while reading the book.  I am reading Ultimate Excursionby Allan Gottleib which is a very dark story.  I used to record my thoughts while reading but have moved away from it.   The first night I kind of got mad that my reading had slowed down and I just wanted to finish the book (And I had to decide book down and sleep or stay up all night.  I slept).

We have visited a school for the past two mornings observing the workshop model in process. Our third grade class is in the midst of understanding the “test taking” genre which I found a valuable idea to bring back to school and to work with my third graders on.

I am still thinking about these kids building schema about the upcoming tests.  Their conversations centered around the thinking strategies vocabulary.  To watch the whole workshop process in this room was to watch a master painter.  How she talk the vocabulary as well, set them up to to do the task, pulled them in when some redirecting was needed was seamless.  My mind was racing with questions:

How can I implement this next week?
Where do I start?
What are the books we need in the professional library and can we have study groups?
How do you approach staff that may not be comfortable in making changes?
What would our school look like if we all began using the same thinking strategies vocabulary?
How does this all fit into the structure of teaching in the library?

I feel so fortunate that there are four others from my staff here.  Seven staff members attended last year so our capacity for this model is increasing.  Those traveling with me are as excited and chomping at the bit to talk about how to proceed.

Hmm, so have I just written a post which synthesizes my experience?  My brain is a bit muddled from all this thinking.

Happy reading.

MsMac

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

I abandoned the alarm clock in June at the end of school for the summer.  Thing is that most days I awoke at 5 AM but did not get out until the 6-7 AM hour.  My respite from the school year.

Now the calendar shows August, the alarm clock is back in my life. To build that muscle memory for the upcoming school year. To guarantee at least an hour of quiet writing time and wake up time. To resume those 6 AM workouts.

 
Last years conference in Chicago

Last week I was panicky over the number of registrations coming in for the Second Annual Kidlit Blogging Conference.  “Ye of such little faith!”  I should have known that like me, July should be known as “National Everyone Go and Play Month”.  I was not home for a full week, why would anyone else be home?

This week airlines are offering “fall fare travel sales” (not to the rock bottom fares I love though)

Bloggers want to see the following topics:

CYBILS

Beginning Blogging

Community blogging

Pod casting

Social networking to promote your blog

And

VLOGGING?  Who will lead the session on Vlogging?

 I feel a bit like the “little red hen” when I ask, “Who will help out?”  Will you help?

Rumor has it that there will soon be some shirts and mugs for sale on Café Press in honor of the conference stay tuned.

School gets out next Wednesday. I am dreaming for that day.  It has been a long, wonderful year but I am ready for summer.  So in honor of dreams, I am sharing fro a discovery I made this year over at 7-Imp; Janet Wong’s Night Garden: Poems from the World of Dreams.  The illustrations are by Julie Paschkis, a favorite illustrator.

I dream almost every night. Sometimes as a result I wake up feeling like I had a good chat with my parents.  This is why I loved the line for “The Ones They Loved the Most”:

…”When you are chosen
remember to pull
at the air around you
when you wake
pull and gulp it down,
swallow hard,
and those sweet memories
will stick
like cotton candy.”

And that’s what I do on the nights when my parents visit in my dreams.

And I laughed throughout the “Talking in Her Sleep”.  It reminded me of my college days.  I would retire earlier than my roommate.  Many nights, I would sit up and begin a gibberish sort of conversation and she would recount it the following day. One night, she invited out friends to watch this weird event in our room.  I woke and was not happy.

“Night Garden”, the first poem, is my favorite.  I just love the idea of our mind being a garden rich:

“…dreams grow wild
like dandelion weeds,
feathery heads
alive
with seeds__”

I am looking forward to school being done, my national boards test completed (this Saturday), and time to cultivate the seeds waiting to sprout in my head.

Happy dreaming. Happy Reading.  Poetry Friday reound-up is at A Wrung Sponge today.

MsMac

Here are three entries as a follow-up to the wonderful poetry unit that Mrs. Fisher’s class did.

A red velvet scarf
sits, alone and forgotten
awaiting winter.
Hannah

Alone, petite tree.
Overshadowed with weather,
An only child.
Marianne

Cheetah
Awaits patiently
still, silent. Staring at me
there in the moon light.
Alicia

Are they not great images?

I am very excited to have been selected to run a “Poetry as Writer’s Workshop” for my district’s teachers in August.  Now I have to get organized.

I have an orignal poem over at Deowriter today.

Happy reading.

MsMac