A Week in the Life...

Thank you to the Kansas Association of School Librarians for featuring me in their "week in the life" promotion. They invited me to submit photos and describe some of the activities that are part of my work as a school librarian.

Teaching

​Librarians are teachers. Whether I am leading a discussion, reading aloud and helping students analyze how the illustrations contribute to the understanding of a text, or instructing students on how to find books they will enjoy, teaching is at the heart of a librarian's work. 

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Active Learning

​As I design lessons, I am consciously working to incorporate activities that will engage students. Whether we are "fishing for call numbers" when learning to find books on the shelves or participating in a storytime that includes puppets and movement scarves along with music and sound effects through the Novel Effect app, we are actively learning together in the library. 

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STEM

Our STEM stations represent a focus on hands-on learning, problem solving, and perseverance. Students are doing technical reading and following directions, building circuits, assembling a 3D object, and growing their brains in so many ways. For the librarian, this represents many hours writing grant applications to fund the materials and skilled classroom management to keep a class of students working independently in five groups, each doing different STEM activities. 

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Research and Collaboration

​Each year I collaborate with 3rd grade teachers to teach research and computer skills for the Famous Kansan project. I teach the research process, and we begin by creating questions: what do we want to know about our famous Kansans? Then comes research and note-taking. We also learn how to find an image, copy and paste it into a Word document, and resize the image before printing. The result: a poster that shows what they have learned. I am so proud of their work!

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 Multitasking

​My messy desk tells the story of just a few of the tasks I completed in a single day: I held a preschool storytime that included puppets and students playing rhythm instruments; I tested our 3D pens to be sure all were in working order and printed out templates for students to use during STEM time; I was looking at my calendar to schedule classes to make the best use of my time, which is challenging because I am shared between two schools; and I was planning a reading challenge for students. This is on top of circulation and reader's advisory, which happen all day, every day.