Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts

(Note to reader–this is not a complaint or anything remotely like that. I just want to sort of journal the school year. In the title the letters “SYP” represent “School Year Project” and each SYP post will be tagged accordingly. I got this idea from Christian Long of Think Lab. He is doing a similar thing. I may or may not keep it up here. But in NO way is this an expression of dissatisfaction. Secretly this post is written in 3rd person as I chronicle my new school and my experince this year, my 22 year of teaching–in public school no less–ALL of it. Pictures may be blurry, b/c I used my cell phone!)

Welcome to your new school year, Cathy. Here is your library. Enter with blinders on, for as you know the school is in the process of finishing a renovation and construction for a new science wing, and so the library has been a common storage area for just about anything and everything. Soon all this extra “stuff” will be taken out, but it may take a week or so. There are text books, library books, and other things boxed up and sitting around, but eventually it will all be sorted.

Here is your office and workroom. There is a conference room, an a/v room, a room where the old server is, and an additional storage room. You may have to wait to get into some of the storage rooms, because we stored a lot of classroom stuff in here while the new wing was being finished. I wouldn’t even bother with opening them today.

Surprise, the new production studio is well underway! It is going to be a state of the art facility, and we hope you are up to the challenge of bringing video production to our school. It’s not quite finished yet, but it is coming along nicely.

These boxes along this table here are from the shelves. You see, when we added the studio, it was decided to remove the bookcases from the walls. We purchased new shelving to accomodate all the books we moved, and they are in the boxes in order and well labeled, just waiting to be returned to the shelves. Since the studio’s “construction” is done, they can go back on the shelf anytime now. The workstations’ island may have to be shifted some, but you have time to figure out a floor plan that will work. What’s that? You want to give the books a really good study before they go back on the shelf? That’s right you did say that the collection analysis showed a lot of books need to go. Yes I would agree, and sciences probably need to be done first. That is good because the boxed books are from the sciences, technology, and sports…No time like the present to begin this project. It will save you a lot of work too, because there will be less shelving to be done. What a jewel! A book about flowers with a copyright date of 1948! Maybe we should save it for a memory box or some kind of archived history of the school.