Hello, long-lost world! It's been a while since I've blogged, since grad school actually. I'm just about to wrap up my first year as a Middle School Librarian, and it has been the most fulfilling position I've had in my working career thus far. I can't say this strongly enough, middle school through the eyes of a teacher is so completely different than how I remember it as a student. What do I remember about middle school? Desperately, desperately trying to be cool and make friends with the popular kids, so much so that I dropped much of my identity to try and fit in. Did it work? Nope. Total failure. Middle school wasn't fun. Though my observations are limited to this year alone, I've found the students to be unique, funny, awkward of course, and at a point in their lives where they're still deciding what's cool and what isn't. I've worked in high school libraries before and attempted to run after school programming with extremely limited interest from the students. However, trying some of the same exact programs at the middle school level were met positively by students, often bringing new faces into the library that I didn't expect.
I look forward to sharing some of the programs I developed this school year in blog posts to come, but I thought I'd wrap up this brief first post by sharing my vision for the school library I work at. My school has a little over 400 students. This year marks the first time in ten years the school has had a library media specialist. I'm so lucky to be able to start fresh with the library program and shape it into a lively community space for the entire student body. When I first started, the library had just undergone a renovation to transform it into an appealing place for students. All books were boxed up and no non fiction books were in the catalog. I weeded, shelved, and cataloged my way through the first few weeks, but then turned my focus toward a few other goals: building a library website, collaborating with teachers on research projects, and starting a student advisory group that develops programs for the entire school to enjoy. I think we've had a pretty great year, certainly creating memories that I'll look back on warmly. I want to continue to grow all of these things next year, however a few additional projects I'll be working on include genrefying the fiction collection (see my blog post outlining my first go at genrefying at one of my previous jobs) and creating a makerspace with a focus on sharing upcycled projects using digital tools. Why do these things? I want students to enjoy using the library. I want it to be a place that inspires, a place where students go to not only receive information but share their learning with the world, a library where student voice is front and center. A library that promotes reading and creating, and sharing and collaborating is a place where I'd like to be!
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AuthorChristy is a middle school librarian in MA. ArchivesCategories |