Interviews & Author Skyping

Every week is kind of like a circus in the Media Center. We have all kinds of crazy things going on and it is almost always a wide-variety of activities. This week was no different. Tuesday I did book checkout and maker space free build with a Reading class that doesn't usually come to the Media Center. Wednesday I was off campus for a testing training. Thursday I was back at it with my Art students working on their Langston Hughes projects and Friday I had my GAPP kiddos back with me doing an "I Love My Library" activity (more to come on that later).

There were a lot of BIG things this week:

• The ABC Awards Gala for Brevard County Teacher of the Year
• A News Interview for the #swms20bookchallenge 
• Project Lit Skype session with Nic Stone 

I'm not going to talk much about the Gala. It was a wonderful evening but doesn't really have anything to do with what happens in the Media Center. I will say that I got to walk down a red carpet, do a red carpet interview (if you'd like to watch it, it is the second video on the linked page and about 18 minutes into the video), and I got to meet a lot of awesome educators. The interview part was one of my favorite parts of the evening (other than having my mom, my husband, and my bestie there with me) because I got to speak about the importance of my profession and what I do everyday and how AMAZING our students are. 

Thursday I had the honor of having Greg Pallone join us for an interview. He did a story on our school-wide 20 Book Challenge and our participation in the Follett Challenge. He spoke with some of our kids who were featured in our video. He got some information from me and then worked hard to get the story in the 5:00 News and on their website. I'm so thankful that he came and invested some of his time to help our students out. 

Friday we had our monthly Project Lit Book Club meeting but this month's was a special one. We focused on Dear Martin by Nic Stone and Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes. Our students got out of class for an extended period of time and we got to Skype Nic. It was sponsored by two of our incredible community members. We had a former NFL player join us, a fierce attorney, a high school senior, and one of our City Councilmen join us. Our students asked really great questions and our community members also had the chance to ask Nic some questions. I highly recommend doing this for your students!

I've written several times about the power of author visits. I have seen the impact of them. Sometimes budgets are strained...ok, who are we kidding? Budgets are ALWAYS strained but this is a great option that is significantly less expensive and still brings your students a great experience. 

A few tips about Skyping with an author for the first time:

• schedule your time and date with your author and then plan to have students in and everything else set up and ready to go before that. Our students came to me 15 minutes ahead of time.
• Make sure the students are prepped for the event. My students knew the event was happening, had read the book, and had been given some background information on the author. 
• Expect tech hiccups but Skype with someone else to test it all out and make sure you have all the equipment you need. 
• Make sure you have your admin stop by so they can see how awesome it is!

Nic is incredible. She's an incredible author and she loves students. If you are looking for an author to Skype with, she's definitely a great choice!  

If I can leave you with one piece of advice it would be to promote your program like it's your job because it is. People don't know that great things are happening unless you tell them about it. Be your own advocate! 

A Whirlwind of Great Learning

I'm really behind on posting some great things that have happened. It's been a whirlwind. I'll do my best to be brief but share some of the awesomeness and if you have questions or want to see more information, please let me know.

The week of Dec. 10-14 we had a lot of big/cool things happen. 

1. A committee came to watch me teach, interview me, and interview 3 of my peers and my admin to decide if I should be the Teacher of the Year for Brevard County Schools. At first I thought I needed to do something really big and amazing to show the committee that Media Specialists do more than just check out books but I decided to do what we do best...engineering stations tied to novels. It was an interesting day to say the least but our stations were awesome, the kids learned a ton, and we had a great day! The thing that sticks in my mind the most about that day (other than all the cool things our kids built tied to their books) is that my colleagues said the committee members asked them why I got picked instead of a "real" teacher since I'm just a librarian. I love that my awesome co-workers jumped right on it to make sure they knew that in this position, I get to teach everyone, including our teachers. It's a pretty incredible thing to work in a school where you are so supported. I wish everyone had what I have here. The committee spoke with my peers and my admin team, watched me teach, and then interviewed me last. They seemed to have really enjoyed the lesson that I heavily encouraged them to participate in and asked me all kinds of questions. My prayer is that I represented my profession and my school well. I know these kids did and I think it's pretty great that the committee got a glimpse into the great stuff that happens here on a regular basis. I think their view of what my role is and how it can impact a school has changed a lot. :) If you read the station cards you can see some of the challenges we issued to the kids.

2. Project Lit for December where we talked about Refugee by Alan Gratz. If you haven't read that book yet, you are making a terrible life choice that needs to be rectified immediately. Our book club kids are amazing! They had a Kahoot put together, tshirt designs ready to go, and completely ran the show. Our adult sponsors just had to show up. :)

3. We started the Jason Reynolds story contest with our GAPP students. It was in an issue of Scope magazine and it is an awesome contest! I can't wait to see what our kids come up with!

The next week (Dec. 17-21) I had:

1. Brevard Media Specialists Holiday Party which was super fun. It is so important to spend time with other people who do what you do and are passionate about it. It's also really important to cut loose and have fun sometimes. 
2. Maker space and book check out which are always some of my favorite days! Our maker space days involve design challenges for different stations. I usually set up 8 or so stations and the students have to complete at least 3 before they leave. They have a handout to document their work that walks them through the engineering process at each station. Sometimes these are general challenges and sometimes they are tailored to what is being covered in the content class they came with. Each teacher makes that choice for their kids and then I set everything up and walk them through it. 
3. The annual Ugly Sweater Contest and our faculty pot luck. Anything that involves costumes is my jam and I'm happy to report I am reigning champion. At our potluck, I used some of the games from our BPS Media Holiday Party and did it staff wide. We had a BLAST! We had a "snowball" (balled up paper) fight and we made some reindeer. We all laughed so hard. Everyone really needed that before the break. 

Over  the break I went to visit my mom and we went on a ski trip to Utah with my husband's side of our family. It was just what I needed to recharge for another big semester of activities. I also got to use all that travel time to read 12 really great books! 

Since returning to school we have:

1. Check out, announcements, and maker space with Ms. Ross's classes
2. A stupid cool vocabulary activity with Mrs. Watkins's classes. We had the kids take their vocab words, use Canva to create a graphic for it, and then posted it to a Padlet. I got the idea from my friend Andrea who is a high school Media Specialist in Alabama. It worked really well and the kids really liked it! Mrs. Watkins is going to print them and post them in the classroom as they continue their unit. 
3. I met with a furniture company to try and get all new furniture for our Media Center. I hope it all works out because this place will be AMAZING if it does. All of our tables are breaking or already broken and don't work for this space. We need flexible seating! 
4. I got to celebrate our ESE self-contained kiddos finishing two more books! They are at 8 books for the year. I could not be more proud of them! We built a motels from Home Sweet Motel and decorated rabbits to look like the main characters from Podkin One-Ear. 

1. Friday I got to work with our Art students. I got to teach them some Langston Hughes poetry and they are going to illustrate a poem that spoke to them. I had them choose a poem, jot down the title and then make a list of any images or objects in the poem. Then they made a list of any colors represented in the poem and then started sketching out ideas. This is an on-going project that will eventually be displayed in the Media Center. They had some incredible sketches and ideas. I'm really excited to see how their projects turn out. 

This week? All the crazy. 

The biggest thing is that we are participating in the Follett Challange and my school needs YOUR votes. You can vote for us here. Our submission focuses on our #swms20bookchallenge and I'm so proud of the video we submitted. These kids are awesome!