Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts

Inventories. Dislike them. Necessary evil.  Far too many students are having a hard time locating books on the shelf.  We weeded a bunch, well over 2000 copies. But the catalog is still pointing kids to books.  So the plan is to do an inventory before Thanksgiving. We will do it section by section.

I also need to do a hardware inventory. In doing the migration from Groupwise to Outlook for our district email client software, I’ve discovered far to many teachers using outdated hardware as their main teacher workstation.  I had aked this at the beginning of school, but apparently folks had too much on their plate and chose not to answer me.  There were roughly 1/3 of our teachers who could not have Outlook loaded b/c district says it is buggy for anything less than Office 2003.  So I have a goal for a hardwre inventory too.

I will create forms and use some of the library workers to go in with me and boot up classroom computers while I get teacher computer information, like brand, serial numbers, assett tag numbers., and even operating system version.  Oh yes, and the version of Office it is running. Then maybe I can make heads and tails out of what our school has and doesn’t have.

I have been preaching a little about how wonderful podcasts and blogging tools really engage students and increase learning. One of my social studies teachers has decided to create a class blog, and another one has confessed today that he is totally addicted to podcasts. I love the title of his blog, aptly named “The Kneighborhood of Knowledge.” How clever is that?? His blog also has a page called podcasts, which tells me he is interested in exploring the concept of podcasting for his class! WOOT! Before today, I had only managed to convince library colleagues (from various other schools) to jump in, but I can now say I have fellow teaching colleagues joining me in the web 2.0 ocean. Please encourage them by visiting the one blog (I predict the other will be blogging before long) and leaving him a nice compliment or message of encouragement. Both are EXCELLENT teachers who have the greatest of potential. All of the sudden all the kids think these two already cool teachers are even more cool!!

P.S. (I haven’t done that since middle school myself!) Both of these teachers have been listening to and viewing K12Online Conference material.  Since this is about my school, I will call this an SYP!

“I didn’t realize how important that number is.”

“You weren’t kidding about moving some books today.”

“I had no idea I’d be sore from helping in here yesterday.”

“I know, I know, right to left, top to bottom. I got it.”

“What do you mean, the shelf is off a little. Parallel. Whooa, this ain’t math class!”

These are just a few comments I’ve heard from the kids this week. You see, we removed a bookcase and finished weeding probably another 1000 books this week, and so some shelves are completely empty, while some are too full.   So the obvious solution was to shift books.  I’ve had volunteers from the student body coming in during various free times, and they have been incredibly helpful. I felt a little guilty, as it really has been a lot like manual labor.  But I tried to explain it to one teacher like this–and I’ve said this repeatedly–move one shelf of books in the library, and you move them ALL.  We are now trying to spread them out, make the shelves visually balanced, and ensure shelves are parallel (same height, all the way around.) It was shocking to notice shelves off kilter that before went unnoticed b/c they were FULL to overflowing. But once space was made from weeding, the uphill, downhill look was an eyesore.  My volunteers got an authentic taste of Dewey today.  Handling the books gave them a better understanding of how the books are shelved than any lesson I’ve ever tried to teach regarding book arrangement ever. They were talking about the weight of books, the dustiness around, particles floating in the air and why, about level shelves, about the 4 clips that effectively hold a shelf up loaded with books, and more. (I can think of many academic tie-ins here, and they were naturally discussing them w/o any reference to tests or classes or subjects.) They expressed concern over the empty space now available on every shelf, and fund raising ideas for getting more books.  The best idea tossed out was to sell the entire print reference collection since no one they know uses it. Then they were guessing how much the different books would get our school. It was rather funny.

W e still have a long way to go in getting this library ship-shape, but I’m glad to report kids are taking an extreme interest in the project.  As we talked about the space available on shelves, I showed how I like to display books–stand them up so they can be seen from the cover. I then asked them to go to the shelves that had empty space and make a selection to display. Oh my, it was a race. The middle school kids when done were talking about the books they had selected to be the display.  They were very proud when their book was checked out today.  Even though there is still a lot to be done, this made me feel really good that students are taking pride in their library.  I really feel that more books will be checked out this year simply b/c they can see that we have a lot of great books. They just could not see the forest for the trees before. With every shelf crammed full, well, browsing just could not happen.  Now there is real browsing like there should be.

I’m planning a book store event–where we set up displays by genres, soon. I think i’ll get the kids to help me choose the books for the categories (romance, horror, mysteries, suspense, science fiction, and more…) They will have to defend to the group why their book should go with the display.

What a bonus today. The students really acted like they liked the books here. No one asked to use a computer. And it’s looking better and better.  I think I’ll ask them how to decorate the library when we finish this reshuffling of books.

Yes, this is an official SYP post.  I hope you enjoyed it.

Image: “Library.” Stewart’s Photostream. 11 February 2006.  3 October 2007. http://www.flickr.com/photos/12037949632@N01/99129170

I shared with a small group of faculty & staff who just happened to be in the library while I was “introducing” myself to kids that the mp3 player or iPod could be used to hold audiobooks. Little did I know I was the talk of the group, who suddenly began conversing about taking back their players from their kids. I didn’t have the heart to say in all liklihood, their children wouldn’t be willing to give it back.

In my role as school tech contact (troubleshooter-fixer-report big issues to the district office) I managed to fix three workstations in different classrooms today by simply plugging them back into their power source. I promise this is the truth…none of them even thought to check the power, they just called me b/c the little green light wouldn’t come on, the monitor didn’t seem to be working, or just a “something’s wrong…” Then shocked amazement when all was well. (I didn’t have the heart to say I just plugged it in…oh yes i did…with a sickening gleeful smile and a glad to help, have a good day skip out the door.) I really do love it when it is that easy, but am amazed it wasn’t checked before I was called. <blank stare>

Image: ‘Shameless Plug‘
www.flickr.com/photos/29855929@N00/245882056

Awesome! This was shared many times in the recent past, and I am considering sharing it with some kids–sort of as a starting point for conversation. I heard some other educators have shared it with their kids too, so I figure, why not?

Today I had kids for the first time–shocking I know. The library has had a slow start, and I’ve been pulled for all sorts of other things (my favorite being MAP Testing.) But I do understand we all work together, and I’m a member of the team trying to do my part.

As a way to introduce myself to eighth graders today, I showcased my interests: my blog, my aggregators–bloglines, my iTunes (just a screenshot) and pictures of the family. But they were intensely interested in my ipod! I pulled it out, hooked it up to speakers, and gave them a random sampling of some of my music selections. Many were stunned at my choices, since I have some really oldies as well as new material there. I played some Queen, Styx, Journey, Boston, Jimmy Buffett, Sugarland, Rascal Flatts, Nicole C. Mullen, Michael W. Smith, and a few opening in lines to some of my podcasts I subscribe to (like Bit by Bit, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, and a soap opera–Guiding Light.) I even shared a snippet from some of the audiobooks on my ipod, including The World is Flat and A Whole New Mind–which by the way I have still been unable to play off the iPod. (It will begin, but suddenly ends for no reason!!) It was funny to see the reactions of the kids. They were really surprised to know that I put books on my iPod.
I used this as a door to the discussion of Web 2.o tools, and how the Internet has changed to a give and take world, and how they can give as much back as they take. We talked about YouTube (and I made it clear they did not have permission to post me in YouTube!!) That got a laugh. And then we talked about the tools they have right in their pockets to add content, but then I disappointed them when they realized many of these tools (like flickr, many blogs, and YouTube) are blocked at school.

It was only a beginning, but I hope with this group I piqued some interest. I didn’t have that long to go over this, so they only got a taste, but my hope is that they will see me as one who is “up” on most things, and one they can turn to in asking questions. I do believe I impressed some, b/c at the end of school today, some passing eighth graders called me by name to say goodbye. Before today, I haven’t known a single student in the whole building to call me by name. That’s a start in changing the perception of the library for this school.

Oh, SYP I guess. Bad news today too. My fixed assett disposal forms (all 12 of them) will have to be rewritten so that the equipment that I’m ridding the school of is easy to identify. I was told today if the folks who come pick it up can’t identify it and match it to the sheet, it will not go. : ( But a fellow LMS at St. James Middle–Paula C. gave me a method to the madness of color coding using colored dots and NUMBERS so that when they look at a sheet, they look for items that have that colored dot. That will make the process easier. And all we have to do is re-arrange the line of stuff and put dots on the items, and perhaps NOT have to rewrite those sheets. For those that know about my eye surgery, I am also worried that I miscopied numbers–model numbers and serial numbers are microscopic, even w/ glasses!

So my next visit–I’m thinking about playing “Pay Attention” to start a conversation. Wish me luck.

I haven’t done an SYP lately, so I thought I’d catch everyone up. Here’s my lists:

Accomplished:

• Weeded 2000+ books from the 11,000. (still waiting on the raw numbers since the “missing” titles still have yet to be removed. I’ll wait to run another coll. analysis when that is taken care of.
• Updated all the computers in the library to “new” at the suggestion of my principal–we had 40 come to the building, and I got 22 of them!
• Completed four pages of fixed asset disposals (roughly 20 lines each) of broken overheads, dot matrix printers, old overhead style LCD panels, about 100 computer mouses in a box (????), seven old, dated computers of various companies (all were running w98 and old, old, old!), a typewriter, record players, so much more–too much to list.
• Lined up this equipment in one location in the media center for pick up; lined up broken furniture and about fifty gazillion boxes, nicely broken down by me for disposals and removal
• Lined up boxes of discarded books for pick up. (Can you believe all these things (the above mentioned 2 and this one) get picked up by different folks?)
• Almost finished setting up vid production studio–the equipment just came in this week
• Administering MAP testing (still another week to go)
• Setting up very student in the building to have their own network log in–still haven’t disseminated though…
• Cleaned out library office (junked mega stuff–old manuals, etc.) Bookcases are finally clear and there is now room for my stuff!
• Cleaned out second office (where a teacher copier was placed new this year.) The assistant whose desk was in the video retrieval room has now relocated to this room. (Our school uses TechNet, a video retrieval system that also serves other functions, like scheduled bells, scrolling announcements, etc. The assistant’s desk has been near it to load the videos that teachers will call up with the phone system. It is a really expensive system that is used district wide, but it does a lot more than just play out videos. With the significant increase in the use of StreamlineSC –United Streaming portal–there was a significant decrease in the use of school owned videos. So we made the decision to relocate her out of that room. PLUS the school got a new server, and it was either go there where her desk was or out in the middle of the library floor.)
• Sink is finally spic and span–i scrubbed it myself today. It was really bad dirty.

Still needs to be done

• Orientation (hasn’t been done yet cuz MAP Testing takes priority)
• Rotating XP workstations that were in the library to classrooms that still have W98 running in them
• Fixing computer issues (like adding printers, finding network printers, troubleshooting logins, etc.) Only one so far has required a district work-order
• Formal introduction of myself to kids, a school blog, and promote SC Children’s Book and Junior Book Award program–will be planned this week in coll. meetings
• Finish cleaning out storage room number 1, and tackle storage room number 2
• Unpack my personal school belongings
• Assess the fifteen to twenty VCRs located in storage…do we need them…is there a better place for them?

Most interesting discoveries:

• Somebody before me had a weird fixation with boxes of any size. I have broken down many boxes today, and still did not make a dent in clearing them out. I’m all for saving a few–you never know when you’ll need them, but darn there are way too many. I would post a picture but I don’t want to publicize what we have/don’t have to invite thieves… But suffice it to say we could probably move four families with the number and size of the boxes we have. I will keep some, yes, but they will be broken down and sensibly stored. Sheepishly I think this is one of the reasons I’ve YET to unpack my personal belongings…they are still stacked in the library office–about fifteen medium sized boxes. I didn’t want to add to the pandemonium I inherited. I wanted to clear and clean. I’m ALMOST ready to unpack some of my personal belongings, I’m happy to report.
• A large quantity of broken material, stored from floor to ceiling in storage room number 2. We haven’t even made a dent in there yet…but slowly and surely you are now able to walk along a small path to the back.
• I had a really GROSS experience today, one bad enough for me to say okay, that’s enough for today. Storage room number 1 has shelves all along the walls. Some have equipment, some have back issues of magazines, and some have assorted other things. But here is also where i located all those boxes. Some big ones (Dell computer boxes) lined the top, and since they were empty, I simply tipped them off with my finger, allowing them to fall in front of me. The last one did fall over and down. I picked it up, hauled it out, opened the top (and got ready to turn it to cut tape and flatten) when something in the box caught my eye–it was brown and furry. Yes–a mouse. All I could think was that the way I was ever so NOT gently getting them down, that little rodent could have landed right on top of my head! It was enough to quit today. I stopped and went to do something else.
• Each day teachers come in and say how VASTLY improved in appearance the library is taking. I’m glad they can see it, b/c I can’t. And b/c we have been so focused on cleaning up and out, we have done NO decorating or making it kid friendly at all. No displays, no nothing. It’s almost embarrassing. But I’m on a mission to clear out the JUNK. And the assistant is DELIGHTED that I want to do that. I really was afraid she would be reluctant to get rid of things. (Secretly I have caught her holding onto some little things…but that’s okay. I know she’ll put them to good use.) OHH how I wish I could share a before and after picture of her new office space! She is even decorating her desk with her personal things. I hope to SOON unbox mine so i can personalize my space.

In closing, progress is slow but sure. I hope next time I report, I’ll have something STUDENT centered to discuss!

Yesterday I was so upset because my removing 1165 books from the catalog hardly made a dent in bringing up my average age of the collection. So I set my helpers to finding 1000+ books from the Fiction section to be discarded. We began that process today. While they worked, I began to study the reports of discarded materials. The lists I had given my helpers were just spreadsheets with old books sorted by call number. (I made them because TW only gives the aged titles in “age” order. That way they could start at a right shelf and remove titles and check them off as they worked their way across the library. Trust me, locating books by Dewey order is much easier. I began looking at the sheets they had used, and realized SO MANY were not found. I just reasoned that they were lost. The first page of these titles were showing up in a search of the catalog, and they were not classified as lost or missing. In the inventory, books not scanned (due to not being on the shelf) would have been changed automatically to lost or missing. Being new to Destiny, I didn’t know which. So I decided to check the last inventory report. I went into the books and reports section (i don’t recall right off the top what it is called) and discovered that NO reports existed for deleted books. The only deleted books reports that existed were the 1165 I had done during the week. I was having a bad feeling about this. I decided to run the report (over 100+ pages) of the inventory, which would show books accounted for, and books unaccounted for. Okay, hold onto your shorts…there were over 50 pages of books unaccounted for! Now each page listed at least 25 titles, and I did not physically count to see. I was absolutely feeling nauseated! I asked my library assistant, who assured me MANY books were weeded last year too. But there was no record of deleted books (except the ones I had done this week.) So the realization we both had at the same time was that all the books (and neither of us knew how many) had been weeded and discarded last year, but none had been taken out of the system. So the 11,000 materials this library has is actually PROBABLY half that, especially after we finish weeding the books that are currently being de-labeled and identifying stamps marked out. I am probably getting ready to go from offering ten books a student to MAYBE five. My collection according to the SDE rubric will be labeled “Below Standard.” I might get lucky and earn an “Emerging” label. Yes, it makes me feel sick. My assistant wanted to return the fiction books we pulled, but I told her NO! I said if we ran a circulation record for those titles, we’d find that 90% of them did not circulate, and they were OLD, GROSS, and downright SMELLY! I told her I’d beg for funding from the school and district if I had to, and work on writing grants too. But we were not putting those books back on the shelf. So there. My media coordinator is in talks with Destiny Tech Support about possibly doing a global delete of all the unaccounted books. We rationalized that if any showed up that were truly worth keeping, we would re-catalog those books, which is probably the simplest solution. So now I look forward to completing round 2 of the weed, and round 3 of the global delete weed. I anxiously await our damage to both our age and quantity. I hypothesize the age will get dramatically better, and the quantity books per students will go down drastically–to a point that will REALLY look bad. Bummer.

How many books are we losing? Let’s estimate to the best of my mathematical ability:
This week we weeded 1165 books, making the grand total of materials = to 10094

We are weeding about 1000 more (fiction books), so the materials should soon equal 9094.

If there were 25 books a page on the fifty pages of “unaccounted for” books, then we are missing another 1250 that will be deleted as well, leaving an estimated 7844.

7844 divided by our enrollment of 650 = 12 books per student??? Okay, so I’ll be okay in the number of books per student. But this is STILL a very discomforting feeling. And their are other sections that need a weed, like Reference and Biography. : (

Anyone want to join in my pity party? Actually it is comforting to reflect and realize that no matter what, I’m already making a huge impact at my new school in that very dated library.

I am just a little disappointed. You see for the last eight school days (give or take) there has been a major focus on weeding, particularly the nonfiction section of our collection. We came back this summer to all the books from mid 550 through 818 boxed up due to the addition of our production studio, and these books needed to be reshelved. I made the decision to unmercifully weed since they each had an opportunity to be handled, smelled, and seen with a critical eye (and nose–yes some smelled OLD!) I was given the go ahead by my principal and district media coordinator, and tackled the project with zest. Me, my assistant, substitutes and a parent volunteer began. We only devoted half of the day to the task as other activities and needs arose daily–we’re there to serve our staff and students first and foremost, so they always come before most library management type activity. Since we were reshelving we decided to do all of the nonfiction (000=999). Now I printed and gave the folks helping a printout of the books I suspected needed to go (of course I physically checked every book before it was discarded) and today figured that we discarded a total of 1165 books. There were MANY on the list that were just NOT found. I will have to check in Destiny to see if these books are categorized as “lost” from inventories that have been done prior to my coming in. We may be able to delete a few more. I sort of hope so.

South Carolina, so NOTORIOUS for poor test scores, has a reputation regarding our educational standards for teaching. When NCLB came about, SC had already set the bar high as far as student achievement. So our standards are rigorous, as is our state assessment program. I blogged about this before, and you can read the archived post from June 2007  for a more clear description.

Recently, our SC State Department of Education contact and liaison for library media programs released an assessment instrument to use on school library media programs. It is titled Achieving Exemplary School Libraries: School Library Program Recommendations and Evaluation Rubrics and it is located on the section for school library media programs, though I believe one has to be logged in to view it. It is 55 pages in length and is what I beleive a fair document. It is my goal to bring my collection up to what this document calls proficient, though I will long range goal work for what is known as exemplary. The “grades” a program can make even loosely match how are students are labeled based on their performance on our state assessment program of PACT (and scores classify one as Below Basic, Basic, Proficient, and Advanced). PACT, I should say, our assessment program, stands for Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test. Even the name suggests to the unschooled reader that the test is designed to “challenge” students. Go figure! Using this rubric, a school library media program might be labeled Below Standard, Emerging, Proficient, or Exemplary. It’s pretty rigorous too, but not unattainable.

Which brings me back to this post. A lot of time, hard work, sweat, and sore muscles went into the discarding of those 1165 books. I was SO hoping that I would lose five years off my average collection age of 1988. But this evening I ran another collection analysis (our district uses Follett’s Titlewise.) I have actually used the program in all my years as a school LMS–since it was started. I find it an invaluable tool for assessing your collection. So I uploaded my records tonight, and my collection only lost 2 years. Now instead of 1988 as an average copyright date, the collection is 1990. Here is the data from TW.

But there is more. In order to be “Exemplary” there are roughly fifteen or so indicators that refer to the collection. These indicators have to do with age sensitivity for the various areas (i.e. sciences are more age sensitive than folk tales or fiction…) Here is a view of the beginning of the “indicators.”

Did you notice the number of books per student?? 15 per student. With my school having according to the analysis 566 students (and I know that does not match enrollment right now since we are roughly 650 students as of Wednesday…) we are right now offering 17.63 books per student. I should have adjusted the enrollment number BEFORE running the analysis. But a quickie punch on the calculator shows that we currently offer an estimated 650 students 15.53 books per student. Proficient only calls for ten books per student….With a goal to be exemplary, I cannot afford to weed anymore, but my age absolutely DEMANDS it. Am I holding myself to too high a standard?? I will be acquiring more books to the collection, and usually its about 300 books a year. (Note I still do not know what my budget is yet, so I could be way off in either direction, to the good or bad. If I am off I do pray its in my favor.)

Again it is just a snapshot above, and then that section is JUST about books. The program is also evaluated on scheduling, collaboration, instructional practices, and other areas.

So where do I go from here? To be proficient, I can drop down to ten books per students, and that also keeps me within SACS requiremnts. So I am going to shift my weeding helpers to the fiction section and the story collection section. These two sections are very old too, and even though the SC section is small, the fiction represents 35% of our total collection. Maybe getting in there and ridding the shelves of old stories will help. So I’m going to allow for about another 1000 books to go.

Overall I’m not too sad. The change in copyright age from 88 to 90 does indicate the collection is being addressed. And we’ve only just begun, not to mention this should not happen over night. Maybe not even in one school year. Wish me luck.

I discovered today that I am in need of statistics.  This is an SYP post by the way, so I may stray from topic to topic, and ramble, as I do more frequently than not.  I’ve distributed around a dozen printer cartridges since teachers returned.  I sadly discovered that the library is responsible for providing teachers with replacement cartridges. This saddens me b/c I’ve been doing this teaching gig long enough to know that some teachers print everything even if it’s not important, and some print a lot of material unrelated to school in general.  I asked my assistant if any records had been kept on the numbers of cartridges used, and she handed m a legal pad where last year she and the retired LMS wrote down every time someone came and asked for one.  After analyzing that data,  I found roughly seven who were asking for cartridges continuosly, going through at least one in a month’s time all year.  Forgive me if I don’t know how long it takes to go through a cartridge anymore–This is shocking b/c the school from where I came pretty muched used laser printers, both b/w and color, and I never printed to a desktop printer for the last three years at least. In SC, our teachers are given (YES I said given) $275 to purchase classroom supplies. In my old district teacher materials & supplies other than paper were the teacher’s responsibility (including getting those really expensive cartridges.) That is what many teachers used their money on, among other things. This school had even gone to requiring teachers to purchase VCRs and DVD players for their rooms if they so chose–basically because the school had a video distribution system in the media center, and any instructional video could be played from there. Teachers bought a wide array of stuff, including furniture, books, printers, and even webspace for the adventurous ones.

We have roughly 32 teachers across three grade levels, and that is not counting those singletons like me (who work with students but not in the same sense as a classroom teacher.) When you think that the average printer cartridge runs no less than $20, and most everybody’s printer needs a black and a color cartridge—well it gets pretty expensive just to replace the pair one time. Most teachers had their cartridges changed twice (with the exception of the print happy teachers who had b/w them roughly 9 cartidges each.)

Let’s look closer at some numbers.

7 teachers used 9 cartridges (1 a month last year.)  9×7 = 63 x estimated $20 a cartridge = $1260

The remaining group on average had 2 cartridges changed during the year–
32 teachers - the 7 already mentioned = 25 teachers.
25 x 2 cartridges each = 50 x estimated $20 a cartridge = $1000

Total estimated cost to supply classroom teachers w/ replacement printer cartridges = $2260.

Also add in that the library is responsible for the toner for all laser b/w printers (4 of them) and 2 color laser printers, and we are talking a huge chunk of change!

As you can see. I’m collecting dat for a principal presentation. I just need to find a way to present this so it does not come across as a whine.  I also had a teacher come to me about the new Dell projectors that eight teachers received.  SHe is telling me her (and her co-teacher next door) need USB/printer cables for their projectors.  At first I thought she was confused, but she took mine from my desktop printer, showed me the two ends (one USB and one more square shaped like this, she shared and pointed to).  Okay, I’m notorious for taking things out of the box and putting them together w/o referring to directions frequently, especially when I have working knowledge of them from previous experience. I just put one of the projectors out of its box and connected it to a laptop today, and I don’t recall thinking I needed a USB printer cable!!  Now I need to go back to school and find that dang guide (of which I have no idea its location) and look it up! GRRR. I just cannot fathom that a projector of any kind needs a printer cable.

Oh it’s so fun being new.  I’m trying to decide if 1) she doesn’t realize what she is asking for; 2) she knows exactly what she is asking for; or 3) my chain is being jerked.  Either way, the library is responsible for acquiring these needs.  On the light side, there is a tech budget, though I have yet to see anything in writing regarding my budgets.

Positive NOTES:

I finally got one of the other new teachers into her email account.  She kept confusing her netowrk login w/ her Groupwise (email)login. She listened as I troubleshooted another teachers’ password for Novell, and something I said jogged her memory about what her password is.  She had 77 unread emails. She was quite happy but overwhelmed.

The PE coaches were having troouble printing. I went and looked (I’m a visual learner) and low and behold their laser printers (yes–they have laser networked printers EACH–and they are in offices side by side) were loaded and there, but they were printing to a document writer, which each time asked them to save instead of print. So I reconfigured, and magically they printed.  They were ecstatic.  I thought it was a simple task, but I guess this is all about perspective.

We finished weeding the Nonfiction and Biographies, but I could not run any reports b/c Destiny is in the process of having the student db rolled in. It tells me its running SIF (what ever that means) and i can’t get into it. Maybe tomorrow or whenever I update an SYP again, I’ll be able to report that our age went down. My goal with this first sweep is five years, though I may be dreaming.  But I kid you not when I say we got rid of some real OLDIES!

Friday (yesterday) at school we had a day long staff development (last day before our kids return Monday) to review the faculty handbook, the school discipline plan, and our summer reading project, What Great Teachers Do Differently. We had a great conversation aout this book, and we studied our behavior plan (PBIS–which stands for Positive Behavior Interventions & Support) as it related to this book.  I was not familiar with PBIS, but from what I have learned through this staff development, it is really good and can be effective if implemented consistently.  What I like is a grid or table that gives student expectations and it lists just about every “school place” a student may find themselves in (like hallways, playgrounds, classroms, lunchrooms, labs, gym, auditorium, locker room, I could go on….)

The teachers want “science labs” added for safety reasons and so that students will know what is expected there as well.  The grid lists behaviors for each location as it relates to respecting self, respecting others, respecting  the facility, and another category. (I don’t have my sheet in front of me.) But match the labels, like respect others/cafeteria, and you find a general statement like “use inside voices.”

I know it sounds complicated, but the school is in year 3 of using this program, and the faculty seems to believe in it. This tells me they are seeing results. The teacher buy-in is there.  One of the elementary feeder schools began using it last year, and so it must be something popular.

The biggest dilemma that came up was how to keep students from counterfeiting a component of the award system, which includes giving out “paws bucks.” Apparently some pretty slick students begn generating their own via copier/scanners at home.  So the satff had to come up with a way.  There was talk of using “invisible ink” to authenticate the bucks, but I was called away to deal with a technical issue and didn’t hear the final say. I guess I’ll have to ask someone later.

I was excited to receive my teacher handbook (ha,ha, I bet not many can say that) so that I could learn a little more about the logisitics of how the school operates on a day to day basis.  It will be riveting reading for me.  The principal claims she rewrote the entire document so that teacher expectations are clearly stated. (I gather there were things in the last book that were left for interpretation, and so some had misunderstandings regarding parts of the teacher handbook.)

Just before I left Friday, my principal assured me that I wouldn’t need to worry about students in the library next week, as every class will be teaching PBIS in their classes. There is even a lesson plan for every teacher for parts of PBIS, and everyone is to teach their assigned part. This will show kids that everyone is doing the same thing.  And all will get instruction on basic student expectations. It is a two week lesson plan. So I suppose I will work hard to get the library looking ship shape and continue with halping teachers with their technical issues.

Friday night I met my family in Columbia for the South Pointe-Irmo game, and hooray, SP won!  I also got to sit with a teacher from my old school, so it was nice to catch up with her.  Now I will enjoy a weekend with my family and next weekend, they will come to the beach to spend it with me. They will bring the dog, Sandy to!! Life is good! (Sandy is our yellow lab who went  through mournng when we sold our house last November and she lost her swimming pool, big yard, and personal pond.  She had to adjust to indoor apartment life and a leash back then. Lost most of her freedoms, as she understood life, including the doggy-door to come and go.  Poor Sandy.

This concludes SYP, Day 6.