I have been sampling a lot of podcasts in recent months but haven't been a regular listener to any yet... (I know. I know. Shun the non-loyal listener! I listen to audio books a lot in the car, so I don't have a set time or rhythm with listening to podcasts yet and have found lots of good ones to try. Sometime I'll try to right another post with a rundown of various ones I've sampled.) The other day I was listening to an episode of Happier with Gretchen Rubin where they were chatting about designating different days of the week for different things whether it be meals (Taco Tuesday), outfits (Fun Friday), work tasks (Invoice Monday), or anything.
Now this wasn't a new concept to me. I had heard it before. I had actually tried to come up with a daily cleaning chart after my first kiddo was born thanks to Pinterest. (Pinterest, I love you, but sometimes you make me try to live up to ideals that are stress inducing.) That did not work for me at all and ended up stressing me out more instead of less, because I would think about what I didn't clean or get to that day. So I trashed the idea and assumed it wasn't for me. But...I hadn't thought about applying it to work tasks before listening to that podcast. Now as a school librarian, a lot of my days and weeks look different and have elements of both predictability and unpredictability. Some projects are short term, and some are longterm. Some days I get to my to do list, and some I don't. But I started wondering: What if I could nail down five of my ongoing responsibilities that are always needed and that I always wish I had more time for? Then I looked at what could fit under the same umbrella as another need, and came up with this list:
I am also considering doing a Saturday and Sunday one to hold myself accountable but with things I enjoy doing related to my line of work. I thought about having Saturday be a day with books (maybe some extra reading, reviewing, or picking next books to read) and Sunday being a day to write (at first probably for the blog, but after a while, maybe I could get into other forms of writing I used to enjoy too). We'll see where this goes! I'm ready to give it a try!
0 Comments
I ordered a set of genre mini-posters from Demco last year. I loved them, but they didn't fit all of our genres. This summer the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to make my own to fit my building's genres. I also wanted to simplify what was hung on the library end caps, so this was the perfect solution: Dear Luke's future teachers,
Tonight as I rocked him to sleep, I found myself pondering how I want him seen and guided in the classroom when he is in school. I understand that he is only just shy of 15 months old, but earlier tonight in the car on our way home, I listened to Kim Strobel talk to Hal Brown about labels and how labeling students can be dangerous for children and lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. As I rocked my son, that made me wonder if he would have labels plastered on him. So that's where we will begin:
With hope, JoyAnn This is what I would ask of my children's future teachers. This is what I am going to start to be more intentional with as an educator. This is what I hope you'll take a moment to consider as an educator of children. It's School Library Month! Wahoo! Okay...obviously it's been School Library Month for a bit, but my school was on Spring Break the first week, so for me it feels like it just started this week. The last two years I've had a couple of stations or contests for students, but I wanted to go a bit bigger and have more options this year. I was also trying to find some ways to tie in more hands on options and/or Makerspace esque activities while fitting in with this year's theme from AASL. (You can get cool graphics like the one below and find out more about their theme and ideas fro this year at their SLM site.) the stations I casually brainstormed a lot about what the stations would be over break and looked around social media and AASL for ideas too. (To be honest, I spent way too much time trying to narrow it down. I am great at finding and brainstorming ideas but sometimes struggle with picking one.) You can see a slideshow of the ideas below. Also if you'd like to download the PowerPoint copy of it to edit or have, you can get it here.
I had an epiphany tonight. After a long day of wrapping up a book fair complete with a migraine followed by taking care of things for my family, I was thinking about how much I miss writing, and how much I need to write that blog post I've been excited to write that will go in depth about my meetings with various departments in the makerspace including what I prepared for them, what worked and what didn't, how it went, etc. It would be EPIC! It would include pictures and links to documents I created as examples! But...I haven't had time to write a lengthy, detailed blog post. So I haven't written in a bit, because I had it set it my mind that that had to be the next thing I wrote. So I waited. But no time has come for me to write such a thorough post as the one I envisioned.
Then it occurred to me, not all blog posts have to be lengthy or detailed. Save that epic blog post I'm passionate about and dreaming up in the back of my head for when I have time. Why not write about other things in the meantime? I've done this other times or in other situations. For example, I have found myself waiting to pitch an idea to others until it's 100% complete or waiting to start a project until I know I'll have time to finish it. Why? I need to work on breaking this cycle. Sometimes educators are too perfectionistic. We set the bar so high for ourselves. Which is great. But sometimes it's too high, and we need to come back down to reality for a minute. School Library Journal published an article in December written by Jennifer Sturge titled "What's Your Why? Defining Your Mission | Take the Lead." Ever since I read that article a couple of weeks ago, it's been sitting in the back of my brain waiting for me to have time to make it concise. This is why I do what I do. This is my mission: Help students foster the desire and ability to: independently find materials they can enjoy or utilize, independently locate reliable information, and be lifelong readers and learners. Provide the the school with quality resources and to be a powerful resource to support and ignite endeavors. It’s hard to believe that two sentences can encompass all of what I have done, currently do, and hope to do in the future in my school's library in one sentence. But everything I do for students, staff, the library, and anything in between really takes me back to that. (I drafted my mission easily but revised it probably twenty times before it felt right.) What's your mission? Shortly before winter break back in December, I had a day where I was just completely spent, as I'm sure many educators can relate to. My small children hadn't been sleeping through the night much, which of course meant neither had my husband and I. My schedule was all over the place with different disruptions happening. It'd been an amazing but also tiring first semester. Needless to say I was having a rough day and not having a particularly great attitude about it. I found my sleep deprived self that morning thinking about all the things I had to do when I got to my school, but then by some miracle, I caught myself in my negative thinking. Wait. Have to? No. Get to. I get to do x, y, and z with 1, 2, and 3 in the makerspace and library today. I get to. I love this job. Snap out of it. I get to do this!
|