What's this you ask? Why, it is the Valentine's Cart of Cheer! But seriously- that's what I named it. Ms. Allen introduced me to the idea of flexibility in the library this week. And boy did she ever! When I saw this sitting in her corner upon arriving Monday morning, pointing to it, I asked "What's that thing?"
She smiled and proceeded to explain to me the many extra tasks of a librarian. She began to tell me stories of loyalty, as often times she is the one who gets to help throw school-wide celebrations and activities together (mostly at the last moment). This year- she got to deliver candy to every single classroom on Valentine's Day- hence the heart covered cart. After the explanation, I have to admit, I wasn't quite sure what to think. Is a task such as this (delivering candy) a good thing or bad for a LMS to do? Here's was my thought process:
Pros:
It's fun.
You get to see every single kid that day.
It serves as another opportunity to interact with students and teachers outside of the LMC.
Cons:
It has nothing to do with library media.It was the principal's idea.
It is valuable time you could be spending in the library.
Writing at the end of the week now, I am still not sure what I think of it all. Regardless, it happened. She also was given the privilege of delivering flowers to the teachers that were sent them. I did not like the sound of that. Even though my short analysis may seem silly as I share it here, the truth is, I think as educators, we often get asked to step up and take on something that is out of our job description. Sometimes this task can be to benefit our students, and sometimes it isn't. Already, I have seen that our LMS is put into this situation much more than the average educator. Between our "untraditional classroom", our broad knowledge base, the leadership position that we (hopefully) are placed in, and the central location of our physical space, being asked to do favors and take on irrelevant tasks is often reality for us. I mentioned flexibility in an earlier post, but I cannot express the need of it enough. While it may be difficult, I do believe that in the future, I should be prepared for such requests and be willing and confident enough to nicely decline, if necessary. Doing extra tasks can be fun, but I think that ultimately, I must always be sure that what I'm investing my time doing is for the benefit of my students' learning.
In the library this week, Ms. Allen told me about a display she had seen on Pinterest. The display and idea was called "Blind Date with a Book". She thought it would be a great idea to do the same in our library. So we did! The only issue we seemed to have was that students kept wanting to "peek" at their "date". Ms. Allen says that she could not even estimate how many times she had to explain the purpose of a blind date. Each book was wrapped in either pink or purple paper- pink for the "ladies" and purple for the "gentlemen". On the outside of the wrapping, the barcode was written. The books chosen were mostly classics. At our school, teachers tend to lean towards newer literature, so some of the classics are never introduced to students. Ms. Allen also typically displays newer titles, so we felt this would be a great opportunity to introduce readers to other titles they have less exposure to. Here is the only picture I have of the display.
