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!
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!
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