Of course one can track stats on various elements of library life…but what kind of audience and attention do they actually receive?
In July, I wrote about embracing joy — tracking everyday joyful experiences with a simple quilting, paint, or paper craft project — as imagined and shared by Kitty (@nightquilter), the founder of the Quilt Your Life Crew aspirational data visualization project. In addition to tracking joy, members of the group pick something to track for a period of time (usually a year) and we support each other in designing an effective visualization. They can be simple patterns, or more complicated tangible or abstract designs, as well. A favorite of mine tracked what kinds of tacos a quilter ate over the course of a year.
I tend to track something from my work life. For the 2023-2024 school year, I chose to track the library’s instructional collaborations:
A brief legend of what each square represents. This pattern, “Renew” by @jitterywings, was perfect to convey a very complex data set. To see a lengthier legend, click here.
I worked hard to complete and compile the sixty-nine blocks of the quilt face and also the legend before returning for our new school year. (I have been told to communicate that construction lasted through 10 audiobooks + 7 seasons of the Great British Baking Show + a weekend-long quilting retreat + a live SF Giants game + the summer Olympics.)
In our opening days, before students officially returned to campus, I displayed the front and back of the quilt outside the library.
The work paid off! Many of my colleagues stopped to look it over, to try to identify their block(s), and — in at least two cases — note: “Oh, I did not have you in my class very much, did I?”
And now? I am in their classes on a regular basis this year. I believe that the collaborations here (across all departments and all grades) normalized the idea of having research skills instruction for some colleagues.
Another fun outcome is that the colleague from maintenance who helped me hang the quilt commented that it might be helpful for him to make a visualization of the work orders he undertakes for the school. I offered to help him (though not to make a quilt), and am looking forward to the rather unique collaboration that will spring from that conversation.
Of course, being a librarian, I felt it important to cite my sources, and I think I will try to do this for any quilt using new fabrics in the future! (Most fabrics have an edge, called a “selvedge,” that gives the title, creator, and manufacturer of the fabric.)
The bibliography for the quilt, showing what fabrics and pattern were used in its construction.
Not everyone can — or wants to — spend a gazillion hours making a quilt, but as the Quilt Your Life Summer Joyfest has proven, there are many ways to undertake such a visualization. Pick a medium that works for you! It is, however, helpful to find a nontraditional form of visualization that will engage your colleagues and make them want to stop, look, and engage.
What might you want to track for public consumption? How might you like to construct a data visualization?
We are a week into having students back for a new school year, and so far it’s been a rough one. Issues with a new campus wifi network (which in turn is affecting the only printer students can access – the one here in the library), an afternoon without power, and a personal case of covid have me feeling like I’m behind already. So there’s my excuse of why my homework… I mean this blog post, is late. And also my excuse as to why I’m following Diana’s example and sharing some of my goals for this year.
I need to weed
And weed. And weed and weed and weed and weed. I did a truly massive weeding campaign as part of the move to a new library space in 2020, and since then I haven’t really weeded at all. The shelves are getting quite full, and even with things checked out, I’m running out of room for everything. Plus, if I do indeed try out dynamic shelving (see below), I need more space.
I want more signage, especially in nonfiction
My genre signs are several years old, and while I loved them when I created them, I think I can do better now. I also want to really beef up my nonfiction signage. I tried adding the little magnetic labels that sit on each shelf last year, but I ran out of labels and they’re moving around a bit too much for my liking. So I’m thinking I want something that sits at the front of each shelf with the books, or even in between books if the topic changes mid-shelf, but doesn’t distract too much from the books themselves.
I saw these on a library tour at ALA Annual this summer, which sparked the idea for new signs
I want to try dynamic shelving
My students don’t search the catalog – they browse. And I’m not sure my current setup is particularly conducive to browsing. so, I want to try dynamic shelving. Dynamic shelving was created by Kelsey Bogan of the blog Don’t Shush Me.She argues that traditional spines-out shelving, what she calls static shelving, is good for the library worker, but not necessarily the library user. Dynamic shelving puts the library user first by making more books front-facing and adding visual interest with chunking, stacking, and other display methods, like how bookstores organize their shelves. Some of her suggestions were things I’ve already been doing, like organizing by genre and adding my own series numbers on book spines. But it’s the front-facing of more titles and visually interesting display techniques that I’m most interested in. I know it will work on my fiction shelves because they’re tall and around the walls like all of the example pictures I’ve seen. But my nonfiction is on short shelves in the middle of the room, and I’m wondering how this will work when the books aren’t at eye level. If you’ve tried out dynamic shelving in your library, I’d love to know how it worked and what tips you have for me!
An example of static vs dynamic shelving from Kelsey Bogan’s blog
So those are my not-very fleshed out, still in the early stages goals. If the printer ever starts working, maybe I’ll actually get to focus on them. What are your goals for the year? And if you’ve successfully done any of the above in recent years, I’d love to hear your experiences and tips – I’ll take all the virtual help I can get!
As someone who grew up at a time when Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret was one of the only middle school books even mentioning menstruation, it’s refreshing to see somewhat of a proliferation of titles to help menstruators through this coming-of-age milestone. You can see some lists here and here. I’m hoping the next puberty-concern authors will bring into the light is body hair. Society levies such immense pressure, especially on those identifying as female, to eradicate any hint of body hair beyond eyebrows, eyelashes, and head hair. As someone whose genetics “blessed” her with an excess of body hair, which I’ve spent years and untold dollars painfully removing, young-me would have found such comfort in a “Margaret” book for body hair. I think there is hope, as I did find a few books when I went searching, but only a few. If you have more to add to this list, please do! Summaries from publishers/Worldcat. Links to GoodReads.com.
“High school debater TJ Powar, after she and her cousin become the subject of an ugly meme, makes a resolution to stop shaving, plucking, and waxing, and prove that she can be her hairy self and still be beautiful… but soon finds this may be her most difficult debate yet.” –Worldcat.
“A biracial Indian/Caucasian girl is nervous to begin middle school, especially since her mother is now the breadwinner of the family, her best friend may no longer be a bestie, and the appearance of the seventeen hairs over her lip that form a very unwanted mustache.” – Publisher
“Follows the endless humiliations, unrequited obsessions, and all-consuming friendships of fifteen-year-old Evia Birtwhistle as she leads a body-hair positive revolution at her school.” –Worldcat
Laxmi’s Mooch. Shelly Anand, author. Nabi H. Ali, illustrator (Picture Book)
“After Laxmi’s friend Zoe points out the hairs on her lip, Laxmi is very self-conscious until her East Indian parents help her to accept and celebrate her appearance.” –Worldcat
“Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister’s place in Panem’s Hunger Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before—and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weight survival against humanity and life against love.” –Publisher
When asked to picture creative output, how often do we default to a thing? Something that can be seen, or felt, or heard. It might be a painting or ballet, a poem or a song. But what about curation and collation, aren’t they creative acts as well?
Back in high school and college, I took part in a steady trade of personalized mixtapes. These tapes and CDs were created to reflect certain moods, often with album “titles” and occasionally with customized artwork. The modern streaming equivalent has never seemed quite the same; they just feel like more lists on my phone.
Personal “2023 in an Hour”
While scrolling through various playlists this summer, it’s obvious how much work I’ve put into various vibes, and how uniquely they represent my musical taste. One of my colleagues collects a list of the songs he encounters throughout the year. …currently the aptly-titled “2024.” At the end of the year, he makes an hour-long playlist of the songs that most resonated with him, an idea he took from another friend. I tried it too last year. It fulfilled me much more than I expected. It was fun. But also cathartic. And time consuming. Choosing the songs brought me back to previous months, and Spotify makes it easy to test your song transitions time and again. I already have almost four hours on this year’s playlist and have been thinking since January about which songs are going to make the final cut for the revised “2024 in an Hour” I’ll create in December. What an odd – and impermanent – time capsule.
As part of our freshmen English course, that same colleague has students create their own poetry anthology. Since my graduate thesis focused on student resistance to poetry and ways to increase engagement, I love this project because it allows students to capture poetry on their terms.
Poetry within reach
The teacher raids the library for about a hundred poetry books. These, along with those in his substantial classroom library, are piled in the center of a Harkness table for students to grab as covers or titles interest them. Each student has to choose 10 poems on their own to go with a preselected grouping of five that represent a variety of poets and styles. The goal is to create an anthology meaningful to them, with a title and page-long introduction that describes the theme holding the anthology together. For each poem, they have to write either a brief analytical or reflective response. The final copies are printed as books.
There is so much personality and care that many students put into their work, and I feel like I’ve gotten to know some of the students better as a result of the poems they’ve chosen and their reflections on them. Just look at some of these titles…
For both the playlists and poetry anthologies, it’s not just the individual pieces but how they connect to create something larger than – and separate from – the selections themselves. It’s assuredly a creative process with a product that reflects the individual creating the collection.
In terms of librarianship, there is such importance in curation, how items in a set interplay with each other. Seeing students grapple with that creates a fascinating window I didn’t expect. And if anyone wants to join me remixing your year into a playlist, I welcome the company.
My family considers August as the start of the new year, and it has been this way for as long as I remember. My mother was a school librarian, I am a school librarian, and my husband is a high school teacher, so new beginnings happen in August. And I’m looking forward to this year. From new school supplies for both me and my children, to new programming ideas (school wide Shakespeare Festival, anyone?), to a new attitude as I walk into the building….I’m ready. I’m not really one for resolutions – they feel like too much pressure to maintain –but I’ve decided to set some goals for the year.
Increased programming. I spent last year experiencing the full year of a middle school in action. My previous part-time experience in the building gave me glimpses, but I was really able to dig into all that middle schoolers bring to the classroom. I connected with students and was able to pinpoint areas of weakness that I can build up this year. Last year was about passive programming and while I’m not abandoning that concept, I am embracing some active events. The highlight of the fall will be a one-day Shakespeare Festival that pulls in work that all three grades do in the classroom. My principal is 100% on board with the idea and I’m pinning down details over the next few weeks. This is out of my comfort zone, but I am excited to give this a try.
Low tech maker space. Our students have access to quite a few technology tools from iPads for daily work to robots and 3D printing in STEM classes. I want to give them the opportunity to slow down….to think about nothing but the activity in front of them…to laugh together with no pressure about assignments or grades. I’m gathering thread and beads for friendship bracelets; felt, stuffing and needles to sew together little critters; puzzles; Lego building blocks; and coloring books are waiting for me at the library.
Student library helpers. I have students who recommend books and give up a few minutes each day to help me shelve books. My goal is to make this a formal group that can help me with some of the routine tasks and also build more connections with students.
Focus on joy. As much as I love books, the library, and my students, the days are not always joyful. I am not naïve enough to believe that I can just wish “joy” into my life, but I do want to find moments of joy every day. It may be something as simple as spending my plan period with my teacher-bestie or it may be watching a student’s face light up when they “get” the research concept that I teach.
I report back to work in 2 weeks and while I am not wishing away the last days of my summer break, I am looking forward to the new year. What are you looking forward to in the upcoming year?
I was sitting at my desk as the year wound up, students and faculty scattered to the winds, wondering what to write about for my July blog post. It was then that I heard my colleague, who was busy in the stacks, chortling away. Like me, she’s an inveterate audiobook reader, so I knew she was listening to something (rather than plotting nefarious pranks involving fake books and glitter bombs, not that I’ve ever thought about doing that, nope, never—do you know what glitter abatement costs? Me neither, but I can imagine my admins’ response to receiving that check request…). While I enjoy many books with humor, it takes a lot to get me laughing out loud, so a book with that capability becomes a precious favorite. Thus for the lazy days of July, what could be better than a book that makes you laugh so hard you re-separate a rib cartilage injury from your teens (for example)? Here are my favorites, starting with MS books and moving to YA and Adult books. I’ve included either my own GoodReads summary or a publisher/WorldCat summary, and a link to my full TL;DR GoodReads reviews. Please share your own favorite laugh-out-loud books in the comments!
The war started over Poptarts. Maybe. Whatever; the start doesn’t matter so much as what followed. Claudia and Reece were out to get each other, and things just keep escalating. There was the fish episode, and the ill-conceived video episode, and the Megaworld episode…where will it end? Told by Claudia as an audiobook, with frequent interruptions to add in text threads between the parents, chapters by Reece or just commentary by Reece, and other characters as well.
It’s 7th grade, and Rahul, an Indian-American boy from Indiana, has a pretty good life. He’s got great parents, an extended “family” of other Indians and Indian Americans who’ve known him forever and love to feed him, a wonderful grandfather who lives with them, a younger brother who can be annoying but is basically ok, good grades, and a super-best friend in Chelsea. But there are down sides, primarily Brent, the local bully, and his football cronies, one of whom used to be a friend of Rahul’s, but they drifted apart. Lately, though, Rahul finds his eyes keep drifting back to Justin, and he doesn’t know why. He does know that he’s feeling the need to be “best” at something, though, and his attempts are both hilarious and painful to watch. He’s gamely supported by his parents and Chelsea, but more and more Rahul finds himself pushing everyone away, and has developed some worrisome OCD habits. 7th grade is not turning out to be his best year…but is there a way to save it?
Ninth graders T.C., Augie, and Alejandra tell the story of their most excellent year. During this year, they all fell in love (Augie first had to realize he was gay, and T.C. had to stop taking dating advice from his dad), fought for social causes (T.C. taught Alejandra how to spam the Senate to get a baseball diamond built at Manzanar), performed brilliantly onstage (Augie’s interpretation of “Too Darn Hot” brought down the house), adopted a deaf six-year-old foster kid obsessed with Mary Poppins (he kept expecting her to come rescue him), and generally grew into their potential.
My Lady Jane. Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows. (YA)
Let’s face it: Tudor history has needed a reboot for a long time. Everyone knows all the scandals and battles and wives and what have you. Time for something new. Imagine that the world includes two kinds of people; those who can turn into animals, and those who can’t. The Tudors include many of the former, including Henry VIII (a lion who eats messengers). Because humans are human whatever their shape, there’s tension between the two types of people, which is about to come to a head. Henry VIII is gone, and his sickly teenage son Edward is on the throne, but dying slowly of ‘The Affliction.’ In a moment of weakness, he is persuaded to do two things: order the marriage of his book-loving cousin Jane Grey to the son of his most influential counselor, Lord Dudley. Gifford (or G, as he prefers), is a fine young man–when he is a man. From sunup to sundown, he’s a horse. So, Edward orders Jane to marry G, then appoints Jane his successor. What do you think the odds are for Edward at this point? Well, better than in the history we know, is all I can tell you.
“Stop. I won’t let you take your trousers off in the middle of the street. That is a terrible idea.”
“Right. Well. Shall we keep kissing until we think of a better one?” In the 1700s, 18-year-old Henry Montague, Viscount of Disley, is a terrible rake. Expelled from Eton, he spends his time drinking, gambling, and tumbling in and out of bed with boys and girls rather indiscriminately, all while nursing a painfully unrequited crush on his best friend Percy. Their last hurrah–and Monty’s last chance at his inheritance—Is a year-long Grand Tour, at the end of which Monty and Percy will likely be parted forever and Monty will be stuck at home with his monster of a father. Despite being saddled with a “bear-leader” determined to make the boys—and Monty’s younger sister Felicity, who will be dropped off (most unwillingly) at finishing school)—behave, it doesn’t take Monty long to make some spectacularly bad decisions (nudity and theft are involved) that have them fleeing Paris. Beset by highwaymen, the three young adults lose their guardians and their possessions, and then find themselves being pursued across Europe by armed guards (thanks for that, Monty). Will they survive? Will Monty and Percy ever get together? Will Felicity sell them both to pirates for being SO annoying and useless? Stay tuned…
YOLO Juliet. Brett Wright, William Shakespeare (YA)
“Imagine: What if those star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet had smartphones? A classic is reborn in this adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays! Two families at war. A boy and a girl in love. A secret marriage gone oh-so-wrong… and h8. A Shakespeare play told through its characters texting with emojis, checking in at certain locations, and updating their relationship statuses.” –WorldCat.org
Linus Baker is different than all of the other drones—uh, case workers—at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. For one, he’s been there 17 years. For two, he actually cares about the children in the orphanages he investigates. His job is pretty much his life. He’s 40 something and lives alone with a cranky cat and nosy neighbor, and only vaguely dreams of more. So when he’s assigned to spend a month on an island, investigating the highly classified Marsyas Orphanage, he’s puzzled, dubious, nervous, and very slightly excited. The children on Marsyas are like nothing he’s ever encountered—a female gnome who wants to bury him in her garden, a tentacled green blob who wants to do his laundry, a sprite who wants to turn him into a tree, a wyvern who wants all his buttons, a were-pomeranian who hides from him, and, of course, the antichrist who loves doo-wop. Then there’s the master, the enigmatic, kind, slightly rumpled Arthur Parnassus, who sees something in Linus that he’s never seen in himself.
Elliott’s mother left when he was young and his father basically stopped living—and stopped being a father—at the same time, leaving their snarky, too-smart, redheaded son to bring himself up, and he’s not doing the greatest job. He knows he has an abrasive personality and has no friends. Then a strange woman takes his class on a field trip to a, well, a field, and Elliott can see an immense wall the others can’t. He’s offered the chance to attend school in the Borderlands beyond the wall, and, having nothing to lose, he takes it; maybe he’ll get the chance to see mermaids? The camp that serves as a school for the Borderlands guards is nothing like what Elliott thought it would be, and he flat out refuses to be in the Guard side of the training because violence never solved anything—he’ll do the Council training course instead. His loathing of violence doesn’t stop him falling madly in love with a gorgeous elf called Serene Heart in the Chaos of Battle (“That’s so badass!”), and he pledges himself to her immediately, which doesn’t turn her off because in elf culture, women are the strong ones and men stay at home and embroider. Elliott’s not thrilled with most of the other recruits, including the impossibly charismatic Luke Sunborn, who reminds Elliott of all the boys who have everything and like to bully the kids who don’t—including Elliott. Unfortunately, Luke and Serene have already bonded over their love of sports and battle and everything else, and Elliott will have to put up with Luke if he wants to stay close to Serene. And so begin their years of training.
In the 1940s, Brooklyn Jewish kid Joey is plagued by nasty bullies and the lack of a father. He decides that Charlie Banks, third baseman of the NY Giants, will become his best friend and fill that gap. Through cunning, deceit, and smarts, he finds Charlie’s address and starts writing him. Charlie is less than thrilled, but just can’t seem to shake Joey. There’s just something about this persistent, annoying, resourceful, fearless kid that Charlie (like many, many others) can’t resist, much as he might want to. The book consists of their letters and notes, Joey’s notes to his local best friend Craig Nakamura, Joey’s report card (Obedience: F), letters to Joey from the White House Press Secretary in response to Joey’s letters, letters from Hazel, the Ethel-Merman-hating singer who is Charlie’s “Toots,” and so much more. Life is exciting and profane and sad, and a world war is just on the horizon.
“This is the story of Arthur Dent, who, seconds before Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, is plucked off the planet by his friend, Ford Prefect, who has been posing as an out-of-work actor for the last fifteen years but is really a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Together they begin a journey through the galaxy aided by quotes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, with the words don’t panic written on the front. (“A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.”).” –Publisher
Gus sometimes wonders how this got to be his life. He runs a video rental emporium (who even rents videos anymore? Very few people, which is still more than Gus wants to interact with) in a tiny town in Oregon, he has an accidental albino ferret named Harry S. Truman who goes everywhere with him (you really don’t want to deal with a pissed-off ferret if you don’t), he reads encyclopedias for fun, has a flip phone and no internet, can quote all the Oscar winners in any category for any year, and his “best” friends are three elderly, possibly-sisters-possibly-polyamorous-lesbians who drive Vespas and wear pink leather jackets (I think). It’s an okay life, it is, really, but he can’t even quantify how much he misses Pastor Tommy, his sweet, loving, outgoing, usually-totally-stoned father. Gus doesn’t interact with many people, and he’s beyond awkward when he does, so when he encounters Casey, an asexual stoner hipster who seems to think Gus is beyond awesome, Gus is completely flummoxed. Maybe the Internet could teach him how to be a normal person?
Hapless time-travel historian Ned Henry is in search of a horrendous Victorian artifact called ‘The Bishop’s Bird Stump,’ as part of a project to recreate Coventry Cathedral exactly as it was before it was bombed in World War II. Unfortunately, Ned has been doing so much time travelling that he’s suffering from time-lag, which disorients its sufferers and starts them quoting melodramatic poetry. Ned needs a rest, but the project’s financer, Lady Shrapnel, is ruthless in her pursuit of perfection–and the historians who will get it for her. Ned needs a safe place to recuperate, so travels to the Victorian era for a peaceful holiday drifting down the Thames River. Of course, nothing goes as planned, and Ned is soon embarked on a hilarious series of misadventures closely related to those encountered by the hapless heroes of Jerome K. Jerome’s hilarious ‘Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog.’
“Set to have a vacation away from her home life and the tax man, young barrister Julia Larwood takes a trip to Italy with her art-loving boyfriend. But when her personal copy of the current Finance Act is found a few meters away from a dead body, Julia finds herself caught up in a complex fight against the Inland Revenue. Fortunately, she’s able to call on her fellow colleagues who enlist the help of their friend Oxford professor Hilary Tamar. However, all is not what it seems. Could Julia’s boyfriend in fact be an employee of the establishment she has been trying to escape from? And how did her romantic luxurious holiday end in murder?” –Publisher.
The town of Caerphilly, VA, finds itself in a unique position this July; their rat of an ex-mayor mortgaged the town buildings then fled, at which point the ‘Evil Lender’ evicted all town employees from the buildings–except for Mr. Throckmorton, who barricaded himself in the courthouse basement with his beloved Archives. Unbeknownst to the Evil Lender, there is a secret tunnel into the Courthouse, through which those town residents in the know have been ferrying supplies and information to Mr. Throckmorton for the past year. Now, though, the Evil Lender seems to be stepping up its efforts to get Mr. Throckmorton out–including getting him accused of murder. It’s up to blacksmith Meg Langslow and her town friends to find out the truth and save not only Mr. Throckmorton, but the whole town.
Travis and Craig met at boarding school and fell in love their senior year, 1978. After a passionate summer together in NYC, they went to the opposite sides of the country for college, and fell out of touch. Travis became an unorthodox professor of American literature, who asks his students about Alexander Hamilton and baseball, as well as what to do about his 27th boyfriend. Craig becomes a lawyer, falls in love with Clayton, and they’ve been together 12 years. Then Travis finally has a revelation in 1998 that Craig is The One for him, and starts off on a picaresque journey to find him and get him back. What does Craig think about that? Well, that would be telling…
“‘We agree that we are overworked, and need a rest—A week on the rolling deep? —George suggests the river—’ And with the co-operation of several hampers of food and a covered boat, the three men (not forgetting the dog) set out on a hilarious voyage of mishaps up the Thames. When not falling in the river and getting lost in Hampton Court Maze, Jerome K. Jerome finds time to express his ideas on the world around—many of which have acquired a deeper fascination since the day at the end of the 19th century when this excursion was so lightly undertaken.” –Publisher.
Hi, my name is not Sir Timothy Berners-Lee. (Surprise!) My name is Nicole, and while I – like you – use the internet a lot, I find it can be a tricky thing to teach. While it can be manipulated (apps opened, searches conducted), it can’t really be touched, or grasped, or handled. So, I made a box. The Internet Box. A physical representation of the thing that dictates so much of what – and how – we teach. This post serves two purposes: it’s a “Look! I made a thing!” memory share, and a “How else can I use this?” brainstorm offering. (Honestly, this may sound like something published at the turn of this century, but golly it’s amazing the skills and terms I take for granted that our students know and understand.)
So, once upon a time (as in, maybe 2 years ago), I asked a class of 3rd & 4th graders (our grade 1-2 and 3-4 classes are a multiage mix) to “Look it up! Let’s google it!” I think we were discussing dog breeds, and I wanted them to compare what came up in our databases vs. results found via Google.
They looked at me like I had a Bichon Frisé on my head. The teacher explained that Google wasn’t something they used, and that if the students ever needed to access a specific website, the teachers made direct links or QR codes available for them. I’m sure I looked at her like she had a Shar-Pei on her head.
So. Many. Questions! (But. No. Judgements!) Getting to serve grades K-12 is a blast, but it does mean I don’t often have the time to deep-dive into the nitty-gritty of every possible path a lesson could follow. Maybe every student in one class wants to search their own favorite breed (see: 24 individual qr codes). Maybe the American Kennel Club’s website is undergoing maintenance later that same day (see: links to multiple dog-related websites). I might even decide to search dragons instead of dogs just before the class starts!
I want to have lessons about Google. I want to have lessons on internet skills, etiquette, etc. I want to offer a way to be prepared for the not-necessarily-random-but-still-unexpected things that come up. Sometimes, yes, I just want the kiddos to just get to the page so we can find the link to the author’s bio together. But sometimes “How do we find it” and “What keywords should we use” and “Let’s see where we end up” is the lesson itself, you know? How to make this – this abstract, intangible thing – accessible, considering I might be starting before square 1?
Cut to a brilliant montage of me scampering all over campus as I collect butcher paper, VHS cassettes (stay with me), newspapers, magazines, scraps of cardboard, screenshots of various search result lists and website homepages, and toys from my desk to complete …. The Internet Box:
On the outside of the box are the logos for different web browsers. (There’s a mini-lesson!)
On the inside of the lid are your search engines (another mini-lesson!) and search bar (and another one!)
Inside is a BUNCH of stuff. Email (ooh, a lesson on passwords … and maybe we practice writing an email to our teacher!) and well-known websites like YouTube (here, the students get to lead: what should we watch?). Image results (you mean … search filters?!) and silly stuff (cue my Pinkie Pie My Little Pony figurine … which seems to have disappeared). Weird, old stuff (here’s where we spend some time gawping over those cassettes I mentioned, and discuss the importance of publication dates), kinda boring but important stuff (cue: academic journals), and useful information (screenshots of recipes, movie showtimes, a map of Africa, etc.)
While I’ve shared this mostly with our ES classes, there have been a few opportune moments to drag out The Internet Box with our 6th graders and 10th graders, too … it gets some laughs, but has proven to be a fun and effective means of teaching the basics of something that can be difficult to grasp. (Literally. Because the internet isn’t tangible. But The Internet Box is!)
If you have any suggestions, I’d love to know: what else to include in The Internet Box? How might you cater this for middle and high school? Do you have The Internet Box too?
Last summer I learned that the act of mindfully seeking and embracing joy had a transformative effect on my state of mind. Now, I am passionate about sharing the approach that helped me with you, my professional colleagues, and also with my students.
I am part of a personal, aspirational data visualization quilting group (@nightquilter’s #QuiltYourLifeCrew on Instagram). In a later post I am going to share the strategic quilts I am making for work under its auspices. Last summer, however, the group experienced its first #SummerLovingSeaglassSAL (Sew-a-long), based on @Nightquilter’s tracking system and @ExhaustedOctopus’ method of sea glass quilting. One participant renamed the summer exercise “JoyFest2023” and the authenticity of the moniker caught on for all of us.
Example of a sea glass quilt, courtesy of @sewladybug. Quilting method by @ExhaustedOctopus.
And a #JoyFest it was! The goal was to decide on categories of activities that provided personal joy, assign a color to each category, and “earn” a color-coordinated scrap of fabric — a “piece of sea glass” — for each time you engaged with that activity. (This summer, the sew-a-long has expended into paper craft, painting, and other methods that move each particular participant.)
Courtesey of @Nightquilter and @Exhaustedoctopus
At first, I laid out activities that make me happy, such as pleasure reading and playing boardgames, but when I attended the launch party and heard that someone was tracking sounds they hear because their windows were open in summer (sprinklers, birds, dogs barking….) and another person mentioned a category for drinking coffee outside, I realized that my great joy comes from something else entirely: napping. So, I started tracking where I napped (couch, hammock, bed, during a car ride, outdoors/not hammock). I also decided that, since my spouse and I planned to spend our first empty-nester summer traveling to see friends and family we had not seen in a long time, I would do a “Re/Connecting” quilt that tracked from what parts of my life the people I was spending time with came.
Tasha’s Re/Connecting quilt with category key
Another participant came up with the idea of having a “joy jar,” as a place to add sea glass pieces as they were earned. As a result, we could actually see our jars filling with joy.
Tasha’s “joy jars” from Summer, 2023.
It turns out that the process of considering the acts that bring me joy, and the subcategories contained, brought about a huge change in my state of wellness. It made joy accessible, and helped me realize all the small areas in my day that brought happiness. But then, the tracking: Noticing I was earning substantially less of one color than others and asking myself if that activity really brought me joy, if I wanted to make a concerted effort to partake, or if I wanted to drop it? So very healthy! Paying attention to how much happiness I was earning each day and getting the visceral feedback of dropping bits of fabric into my joy jars? Priceless!
Tasha’s “Overall joy” pieces earned by the end of the summer.
I wanted to share this method with you now. It is the perfect time to give it a try for a month. What joy do you aspire to have and record in July? Below, I am including a public post by another participant, @quilting_julia, to give you a concrete example and get you started. (Please note: I am only redacting one username, as I do not know the individual and have not gotten permission to share.)
Again, I really am advocating for introducing this method through advisory to each grade level at school. The administration is also excited by what this method has to offer. I think that individual definitions of, and attention to, daily joys could be a wonderful thing for the whole community.
Wishing you awareness of your small experiences of joy, and a rejuvenating summer.
Courtesy of @quilting_julia. Full post used with permission
As I followed the “reading culture” thread on the listserv last month and scrawled lists of related books I need to investigate, it got me thinking about all the ways I read nowadays. More specifically, I thought about how differently I read now than I did when I was a kid. When I was the age of my current students, reading meant a print book, or maybe an article in a print magazine or newspaper. Now, though?
In the morning and evening, as I get ready for work or bed, I listen to audiobooks. I also listen to audiobooks on long car trips. For short trips, I prefer podcasts, though often that means reading-adjacent storytelling podcasts like The Moth or StoryCorps.
Professional articles I mostly read on my computer, though my school does subscribe to print versions of SLJ and Hornbook, which makes for a nice break from staring at screens all the time!
In my father’s last years, I called him daily to read him articles from The New York Times, Smithsonian, or BBC Travel, all of which I read on my computer (though I do maintain a print subscription to Smithsonian).
I review books for SLJ and Kirkus, and these days, I read all those on my computer.
For travel, or for books I need to read as soon as possible, I have a Kindle, or the Kindle app on my phone.
Before I go to sleep, I catch up on Webtoons, and read fanfic recommended by my friends’ kids or my students.
And yes, I also still read print books and graphic novels!
I’m sure that most of your reading lives are equally diverse, and I can only imagine what my students’ reading lives include! So often I think our students don’t consider themselves readers because they don’t read print books except for class, but they may well devour (or write!) hundreds of thousands of words of fanfiction online, or listen to serial stories on podcasts, or read articles in areas of interest online, etc.
So how do we celebrate all kinds of reading as we build a reading culture at school? Chris Young mentioned a few things in their recent post on using Beanstack to foster a culture of reading, with Book Bingo that included articles and audiobooks. That’s a great start! Perhaps I could start the year with a board inviting kids to write down all the ways they read, and then work from there? Perhaps I’ll get amazing ideas from books about reading culture, as well. I don’t yet know how I’ll approach it, but I know I want to take into account all kinds of reading.
Tell me in the comments all the ways you and your students read!
Covers of all the books I read in the last twelve months, flanked by my favorite Webtoons.
A recent conversation with a colleague about that perpetual, one-time-a-year “collaboration” request for “just a quick introduction to databases” made me reflect carefully on why I don’t really get that particular gem of an assignment anymore.
This colleague had just received that same ask and felt saddened – as it did not resonate with what she thought students actually needed.
So, we began discussing what skills her particular students do need to move forward in the word, and then we began plotting a “database lesson” that would deliver one of those skills, instead. The process reminded me of a closely-held principle I’ve had since before entering school librarianship: what we teach is mostly thinking skills; any technical skills will need to be about flexibly adapting to change over time and across tools, in any event.
This is where I began to reflect on strategies I used in the early years at my school when this was a frequent instructional request. Now, I do teach the basic intro in ninth grade (and my colleague in sixth). Otherwise, whenever I was asked to teach databases, I instead taught a skill that was useful in a broad range of research situations. Of course, we used the databases to practice, so I was delivering on my colleague’s desires. These lessons include, but are not limited to: *How search tools work (I’ve pivoted to using Stephanie Gamble’s lego method, far superior to my prior attempts); *Mind mapping pre-existing knowledge to expose potential search terms; *Using stepping stone sources (reading for useful search terms); *Imagining sources (for example: most newspaper articles on sports do not mention the name of the sport, but tend to mention team names; articles on psychology do not tend to use the word “psychology” – unless it is in the journal title – but instead refer to specific conditions and possibly the subject group tested); *Close reading of non-fiction to determine POV; *Accessing multiple perspectives; and so forth.
I have recently realized that this approach not only delivers more skills to my students that are more flexible across their needs, but it also demonstrated to my colleagues the greater range of what I have to offer and has led to many fewer requests for “just the databases,” and colleagues coming in the door looking for more meaningful and applicable (and less repetitive) engagements.
