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! 

Another Week: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Let's work in reverse order for this post. I love sharing my week with you and all my adventures in the Media Center but not all of them are good and I am a firm believer in transparency.

Let's start with the ugly first:

In the past two weeks I've been told that...

• I make people feel inadequate
• that I'm too much
• that I'm just high energy
• No one reads as much as me

I kid you not. This is real. These statements came from people I would call Literacy Leaders (Media Specialists, Literacy Coaches, Literacy teachers). All these things were either said to my face, or about me to someone else, and all said with a laugh. Like it is funny to tear someone down. 

Don't get me wrong, I've also had SO VERY MANY people encourage me, tell me they believe in me, lift me up, HELP me carry my load in the last two weeks. I'm not telling you these things because I want a pity party or need a pat on the back. I share this because it bothers me that people think it is okay to say these things about anyone, not just me.  

It's true that I'm "extra" but why is that bad? I would never classify myself as high energy because I'm highly exhausted every day when I get in my car. I would classify myself as highly motivated to give my best to these kids and our staff. It's true I read a lot but IT'S MY JOB TO READ A LOT! If you are in a position that involves developing a love of literacy and you don't read often and regularly then you, my friend, are not doing your job. You cannot build a love of reading if you have no idea what books to give to kids. I read in pockets of time. Bathroom break? Read a few pages. Computer work or a car ride by myself? Audio book. Bedtime? Read until I fall asleep at least three times before I put the book down. Today I read at my daughter's volleyball game while her team was warming up and we were waiting for the previous game to end. Then I put it down and cheered her and her team on. 

I work really, really hard. I give and give and give and I do it for several reasons. I do it for these kids because we claim we are serving them with excellence and that is what I want to give each and every one of them--excellence. I give them my best as many days of the week as I can because they deserve it and many of them don't have anyone else doing that for them. I also do this because I am a woman of deep faith and Colossians 3:23 says to work as if I am working for the Lord and not for man. I firmly believe God uniquely gifted me with the talents I have exactly for this position and I work hard because I believe I was created for this job, for these kids, for this staff. The third reason I work so hard is because that is exactly who my parents raised me to be. Both of my parents gave and gave and gave. They worked hard all day and then they worked hard at home. They gave my sister and I their very best, always. I've had so many conversations with each of them about what it means to do our best and why that is important. The last reason I work so very hard is because the Media Specialist position is always on the chopping block, especially when budget cuts are coming. Many School Board employees and administrators think that what we do is simply check out books all day. I work hard to make myself a valuable member of the staff and to make sure my admin team knows exactly how valuable my position is for our school. I work to make myself hard to replace because I want to keep my job.  

Also, there is literally nothing I do that is done by myself. I have a team of incredible teachers who are willing to go above and beyond the scope of their duties for all my insane ideas and I have an admin team that will let me shoot for the stars. WE do it all together. THEY are the rockstars. I'm just the one that signs my name to everything. 

There are other Media Specialists that I hold myself to their standard because they are freaking amazing! Ana Woodbrey is a Media Specialist at another middle school in my district and she is nothing short of incredible. Instead of seeing her as someone who makes me look bad, I see her as someone to work with and learn from. We email weekly, collaborate, bounce ideas off of each other, share resources, and plan things together. There are other Media Specialists and Literacy Leaders that I follow on social media to see all the great things I can keep working towards. 

So please hear me on this. It has never, ever been my intention to make someone feel like they are less than, like they can't measure up. It has always been my goal to share where I came from, the things I try (never knowing if they will work or not), and to encourage other people who are champions for the love of learning. I see a lot of people who have better ideas than me, are more qualified than me, and have more experience than me working hard every day. Instead of feeling defeated, I learn from them. I borrow their ideas (with permission) and make it my own for my kids. One of the biggest problems in education is educators tearing each other down. We don't have to step on each other to rise. There is plenty of room for all of us to be great and honestly, that's what these kids and families deserve. They do not deserve people who sit at their desks and make excuses for all the reasons why they can't do something. 

The bad from this week:

This past week was Banned Books Week which is one of my favorite weeks of the year. I started out so excited because I read this amazing novel about a school that took banning books too far and I was pumped up to share it with the kids. I've had plans for WEEKS for these cool activities I was going to do during Banned Book Week. 

Guess what? 

I didn't do any of it. Seriously. 

I realized that when I scheduled classes for this week, I didn't schedule classes to do book visits. I scheduled classes for computer usage and technology lessons. 

I also couldn't find my caution tape ANYWHERE to set up our display and then when I went to pull our books that have been on the Banned or Challenged list almost all of them were checked out. 

So I just didn't do it. 

I sent out a cool infographic to our staff and put some things on the announcements and then talked to kids as they came in about books that people are trying to ban like The Hate You Give or All American Boys.  So it was something, but definitely not what I wanted it to be. 

The good from this week: 

There was SO MUCH GOOD. 

First of all, our students are so excited about Kwame Alexander coming to visit this coming week. They have been logging books like crazy to try and earn a seat in the Media Center for his visit. Which means that I've been scoring responses like crazy to see who earned a seat in the Media Center. Almost 400 of our 840 students have logged books in our 20 Book Challenge and many of them have logged more than one. That's AMAZING!!!! It's only the end of September and already almost half the school is reading. I'm so proud!

Wednesday was See You at the Pole which is a day across the nation where students and community members join around the flagpole at schools and pray. Our SYATP was amazing! We had tons of students and staff members join our FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) club that I sponsor. I was moved to tears. 

The other really great thing that happened this week is that our Girls PE teacher, Mrs. Casey asked me if we could partner up this year and do some projects. Our first one was a character education project. I did a lesson with the girls on positive character traits, showed them how to use Destiny Collections , and then tasked them with choosing a woman who has had a positive impact on the world displaying one or more of those traits. They loved it and it was fun trying this out. Destiny Collections is kind of like curating an academic digital bulletin board that can be shared with others. The girls researched these role models and then saved articles, videos, images, etc. that they found where this person was demonstrating that character trait to their Collection. I've built several collections myself but I'd never tried letting kids do it. It was interesting to watch them do it. There were a few minor issues that I'm planning on working with our Follett rep to see why those things happened but they were minor. 

I found out that I won a $250 grant from Publix Charities to go towards our 20 Book Challenge and reading promotion! I was thrilled because that is $250 more than I had before I read that email!

Project Lit for this month was small, but mighty! I didn't do as great a job as I should have on promoting it, making sure kids had the Google Class code for Project Lit, and planning our meeting but the kids rocked as usual and Lara Watkins was a super hero and totally picked up my slack.

Last but not least, I've been working with our self-contained ESE classes to make sure they get to join in on the fun we have in the Media Center. This year they are going to read the Florida SSYRA 3-5 books and we will have a celebration with them with Maker Space activities tied to the novel when they have finished the book. The first book they read was The Magnificent Maya Tibbs and The Spirit Week Showdown. I wore boots and my cowgirl shirt. We watched a Maya Tibbs Fibbs video, listened to "She'll be Coming Around the Mountain When She Comes" and did several stations. Friendship bracelet making, beading crafts, drawing with Osmo, building activities. It was a blast! 

It was an excellent week in the Media Center. I exhausted myself but there was a lot of learning and excitement going on in our school. This coming week will be another big one with Newberry Award-Winning Kwame Alexander kicking off his Swing tour at our school. I'm so excited!!!!

The SWMS 20 Book Challenge

The #swms20bookchallenge has taken off and spread across the country which is pretty freaking exciting. I've presented several times at conferences and Professional Development days and it has spread across our district and even our state. Recently I began getting emails or direct messages on social media asking me questions about it from all over the country. It's a great program but it is so hard to explain in a brief way, especially in 140 characters or less.

So here ya go...the basics.

How We Started:
We needed something that would really, truly get our students to read. SO VERY MANY of our students come to us significantly below grade level in reading or they've just lost their love for books. Let me be clear, not all of our students meet this description. We had some students who are high-flyers and tons of kids who have always liked to read but we have a large number of students who really struggle. I was a brand new Media Specialist and our Literacy Coach at the time was also brand new to her position. Our school doesn't have Reading Counts or AR. Our school had tried some school-wide reads of a single book but that just wasn't really working anymore. One of the greatest reading teachers of all time, Diamelia Christie, came to me and said she'd been reading Donalyn Miller's books and wanted to do a 20 Book Challenge with her students. She asked me if I could help her with it and help them find books that fit in those categories. After looking at it and talking about it with our Reading Coach and English Department Head, we decided to try and make that our school-wide read for the year instead of just doing one book for the masses.

We took it to our administration and they told us we could try it but they seemed a little skeptical. We took the categories of the books and we ran with it. Within two or three weeks we had it ready to roll out to the whole school. We wanted some accountability so we built a Google Classroom and had a Google Form for each category. The students had to log in and "log" their book by completing the form with a short response question that would tell us if they read the book or not. Once the students logged their book, we read their response and either gave them credit or asked them to resubmit their response. Let me just add, that our ELA Department Head, Katy McGregor, is the Queen of all things Google and she totally rocks my socks off. She makes my life SO much easier. She builds all of our Google stuff and makes us all look smart. 😜

Our Reading Coach at the time, Brandy Griswell, is a rock star of epic proportions (who has since been promoted to an Assistant Principal of Curriculum at another school) and she called ALL the local businesses and got donations for us to give away as prizes. Once a month we'd go into the cafeteria and draw names. The more books logged, the more times your name was in the drawing. We gave away prizes like gift cards to the local Chick-fil-a or the local ice cream joint. The kids really started getting into it. Prizes are not something Donalyn Miller would go for but it works for us. It started out as an incentive and helped motivate the kids to get started.

In December, she started pulling their data and showing it to the team teachers and they were blown away. The students who were actively participating in our challenge had HUGE reading gains in just 3 months. Once they saw the data, the rest of our staff got on board and our admin team really became believers and started promoting the program as hard as they could.

We themed everything around the challenge so it was literally school-wide. I tagged the books on the shelves for which categories they could count as, set up book displays for some categories, and even tagged all the books in the book fair. We made Florida Literacy Week into The 20 Book Challenge Literacy Week. We printed posters and banners and hung our propaganda all over the school.

Results:
We ended up having a ton of books logged (2,828 to be exact) and had 25 students who finished the challenge. We built them swag bags with prizes and new books and then they all got to go to a local restaurant and have lunch with our principal and get to order whatever they wanted on the menu. I'm going to be really honest. We thought the prize was super lame but we couldn't afford anything else. I was blown away by how much the kids loved it and how excited they were to be able to pick whatever they wanted on the menu. We kept them out of class all day and then pulled all the kids who had logged 10 books or more into the cafeteria for a giant ice cream sundae party. They had a great time!

Changes for Year 2:
In the first year, our principal was very clear that the reading should be done outside of the classroom. He didn't want instructional time to be missed. Now, I could spend a solid 4 hours writing about the value of independent reading and discussion in the classroom and how it would meet all the standards and then some but that is another post for another day. We took what we could get in year one. In year two, the students were allowed to read during class for independent reading or as the assignment for when they had finished their work. The students were also given opportunities to log their books during warm up activities during class.

We changed our categories to be more flexible and meet the needs of our students. We found that many of the students who didn't finish the first year, didn't stop reading, they stopped logging because they found books they loved that didn't fit into the categories. We wanted to still challenge the kids but we also wanted to allow them the choice they so desperately crave. We wanted them to read what they love and be able to squeeze it into the challenge.

We worked to adjust the prompts to more closely mirror what they'd see on state tests but still feel like they are just talking about a good book. We wanted the skills tested to shine through with a text they enjoyed. Now let me be clear, we aren't trying to drill the kids to death. We use these prompts and logging their books as a conversation between them and us about the book they read. It isn't a grade or an essay or a test. The students write about the characters, the things that surprised them what they loved or didn't love. We prompt them to think and then respond and then we respond back to them.

We changed our feedback method and started using Google Classroom's grading feature to send individualized feedback to each student and really help them see what they were missing from their responses. With increased participation also came the need for additional grading so both of us (Literacy Coach & Media Specialist) took on that role.

We also added to our list of literacy-based events including Banned Book Week, Book Fair, March Madness Book Tournament, Book Bash, Book Launch Party, etc. and really worked to increase the hype.

We didn't give out any prizes throughout the year. We just had a HUGE celebration day.

Results:
We thought we had huge results for year one but they were just a drop in the bucket compared to our year two. We had the same numbers in December  (year two) as we had at the year's end of year one. We had 38 students finish and 12 teachers too. We scored over 10,000 responses and broke Google Classroom. 82% of our ENTIRE school willingly and actively participated in our challenge. Our students had books with them all the time and not just the ones you'd expect. I could share countless stories of students who had never seen success with reading that finished our challenge this year including students who struggled with English as their second language.

Our celebration day included jump time at a local trampoline park, a catered author lunch with Christina Diaz Gonzalez, an author session with her for all the students who logged 11 books or more, each finisher got an amazing t-shirt and they got a brand new book of their choice.

Changes for Year 3: 
Coming off of year two, the students are excited and so is the staff. We needed to solve some of the issues we found during year two so this year are going from one massive Google Classroom with the whole school in it to two Google Classrooms, one per grade. Katy is a genius and decided we should make one Google Form with 20 sections instead of 20 different Google Forms. This will help us cut down on students logging the same book for more than one category (be it on accident or on purpose). It will also help the students see which books/categories they have credit for and makes the whole process more streamlined for us and the students. We also have new categories that I'm SO excited about. We tie our Sunshine State Young Readers Award (SSYRA) books into the categories and our students can use our Project Lit books for this as well.  My favorite categories for this year are probably A Book Written in Verse, A Diverse Book--meaning a book about someone who is very different than themselves, and A Book You've Previously Abandoned. We are working to push the kids from thinking of reading as school work and seeing it as something they want to do and discuss.

We really love this program and what it does for students. We love the choice the kids have and how it has pushed them so far outside of their comfort zones. When one program can get so many students who come to us below grade level to be excited about the amazing books that are out there, you know you have something magical on your hands. 

This program can be adapted for a single classroom, a grade level, or for your particular school. It is being implemented in about 12 other schools in our district, several across our state, and a few in other states as well. If you aren't ready to start your own challenge but want to join us, please do! Just tweet out your books with our hashtag and tag me on Twitter. We'd love to see it! Currently NYT Best-Selling Author Tiffany Jackson is participating with us because she wants one of our shirts. 

Please feel free to contact me with questions about our program, how it works, or really just anything else. Also, make sure you follow our #swms20bookchallenge hashtag to keep up with all the great things that are happening.