Teachers, Working With

Last week was another training week for me. I taught the teachers how to use the gradebook portion of Infinite Campus. Since my training (in a demo model) several features looked different. Since I do not have the ability to practice with a class, I am glad I chose to provide instruction to small groups (about 5-7 at a time). This allowed me to see the program in action with a few teachers, take notes, record questions, and not confuse the entire staff. I have answers to most of the questions I had during the first session. I am also creating a Tips Sheet that will answer most teacher questions.

This week it is the other Media Specialist's (Library Lady #1) turn with the teachers. She will begin giving book talks. She is using the Georgia Book Award Nominees for her talks. She is really good at giving BookTalks. Since our days together on a team (she taught Language Arts and I taught Social Studies) I enjoyed "overhearing" her talks with her own class. She can captivate middle school readers. I am excited that she will be in the classrooms over the next couple of weeks.

That means I will be the only MS in the MC for a few hours each day. Good thing Library Lady #2 (our parapro) will be there! The 3 of us get along well...at least I think so. I hope they do to. This past Friday, we checked out about 800 books, and had an average of 3 classes in the MC each period. One teacher brought her Social Studies classes in, and we pulled about 100 books (fiction and non-fiction) for her class to peruse and check out. They are studying Latin America. I pulled the non-fiction, Library Lady #1 pulled fiction books connected with Latin America is some way. I was told "I was in The Book" for volunteering to get the non-fiction. I knew where those books were, and they were all together. LL#1 had to conduct a search, and scour the fiction section to find the dozen or so books we had. I think my name was erased at the end of the day, because I re-shelved all the books before quiting time. It was a good day.

It's been a good, busy week. We completed our first order of books, and LL#1 created a list of AR test to order as well. We achieved a lot. Everybody is working hard, and enjoying the process of serving our kids and teachers.

We have PTO Open House this week. I hope the MC will be able to identify some family needs we can assist with in an online way. I'm ready to begin developing some resources to get our kids' attention...and their families. I'm thinking I might create a MySpace account for our Media Center. We can't get to it at school (proxy-blocking), but that doesn't mean we can't advertise our MySpace page in school. After all, we want to be where the kids are anyway. If we can't teach them to be responsible online citizens at school, we can teach them with a positive online example, in a manner they understand...right?