Regardless of the reason for leaving one’s library – whether a new opportunity, retirement, or something else – there is obviously business to attend to before departure. Everyone’s circumstances are unique, and you may not have the luxury of time to attend to things as you wish. If you do, here are some things to consider before heading off into your next chapter, with thanks to Liz Gray, Sandy Gray, and Dave Wee for their insights!

Get your collection in order.

An inventory and/or weed may be overdue, so this is the time to get work done that you’ve been putting off. Perhaps this means dealing with a non-fiction print collection that is underused, with the goal of creating valuable extra space. Don’t forget about attending to your digital collection as well!

Have policies, procedures and lessons updated, documented and organized in one place. 

Use a shared drive (Google or school network, depending on school policy) to house all library documents, ensuring that nothing is left living solely on your own computer’s hard drive. 

Be specific, for example: ” When a box of new books arrives, here is a bulleted list of the 14 things that need to be done before the book gets placed on the new book display for students to check out” (Wee, 2024). 

Sandy remembers an AISL conference where recently retired Sara Kelley-Mudie presented on this topic, discussing “high-level considerations right down to explicitly labelling all keys”. She suggested not only leaving contact information for all vendors but also reaching out to them to introduce your successor (if known).

Leave a detailed budget with supportive documentation to support line items

Provide your successor with as much data as possible to support budgetary decisions & priorities. 

Address any personnel issues within your staff

Similar to getting your collection in order, do this to make your successor’s transition much easier.

During transition, focus on function and avoid the drama

Approach the transition with an objective mindset. In Liz’s words, “one woman’s nemesis might end up being another woman’s best friend, and the person who never collaborated with me might end up making beautiful music with my successor.” This is relevant for both internal & external hires.

Make sure your job description is up to date

This is particularly important if the people hiring are less familiar with your day-to-day work, especially regarding changes that have occurred since your hiring. You want the description to reflect what you currently do, with an eye to the future as well.  

And if your successor is a current colleague, include them in decision-making processes (such as database renewals, lesson planning, and acquisitions) wherever possible. Have them invited to meetings alongside you, and ensure they are included on relevant email distribution lists.

Exploring Book Genres through Makey Makey & Scratch
Fifth graders combined literacy and technology in a unique project.
Step 1: Read & Analyze
Each student pair read a Caldecott Award–winning book and explored its genre, discussing story elements, themes, and illustrations.

Step 2: Write & Script
After identifying the genre, students wrote short scripts that captured key aspects of their book—like a mini book trailer or dramatic reading.

Step 3: Code & Create
Using Scratch, they programmed their recordings and animations to tell their story.

Step 4: Tinker & Play
Finally, they connected their projects to a Makey Makey, turning physical objects (like book covers) into interactive controls to play their recordings!
Visitors can press a touch a sensor to hear students’ book summaries and learn about the genre and book—an engaging blend of reading, writing, coding, and hands-on tinkering!

Hello again! I am back with the promised Gingerbread Competition!
I took what I learned hosting the pumpkin carving and made some changes and we ended up with a 60 (!!!) gingerbread houses decorated this past week. Riding a sugar high over here.

This time, I advertised the program starting the Monday before. We shared a flyer in the student e-news, displayed it in the library, and ran it on the TVs around campus. I skipped advance sign-ups and instead made it clear that supplies were first come, first served, with a limit of ten houses per day. This took some logistical pressure off me.
I gathered all the supplies the week prior and built the first round of houses on Friday before the weekend. Gingerbread is a bit of a misnomer here, as the houses were built with graham crackers. I pre-built everything for two reasons: children are messy creatures, and graham cracker houses need time to set before decorating. I wanted students to spend their time creating, not waiting for walls to stop sliding apart!

Full disclosure, I have been building these houses for groups for years. I am pretty good at them. A middle schooler timed me this week, and I can assemble a house in 42 seconds! If you want a tutorial, I am always happy to share. My two biggest tips are to use Walmart brand graham crackers and the cheapest store-bought icing you can find. That icing dries like concrete.
We set the houses out on plates around a large table covered in plastic dollar store tablecloths. I offered icing in disposable piping bags in both white and green. Do not dye green icing yourself! You can buy tubs of it at the dollar store and save yourself the trouble.

For decorations, we had lots of options, but the most popular were Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, mini candy canes, mini M&Ms, pull-and-peel Twizzlers, pretzels, and of course the icing. All candy was kept in bowls on a table where I stationed myself, and students came up to select what they wanted rather than having free access at the decorating tables. This encouraged more intentional choices and allowed us to gently remind them not to eat the candy, given how many hands had been in those bowls.

They still ate the candy. I did what I could!
Monday was slow, and I once again had to remind myself that the beginning of a program is not a measure of its success. Students do not read emails, and word of mouth takes time. I recruited a few of my frequent library visitors to decorate that first day, and later that evening an entire basketball team came in for study hall and enthusiastically built houses they were genuinely proud of. After that, the floodgates opened. Students streamed in all week asking about the gingerbread houses!
This time, we posted the ribbon categories ahead of time, and several students decorated very intentionally with winning in mind. I recruited our Head of School to award a ribbon as well this time, and the kids thought that was particularly exciting. They checked back regularly to see when prizes would be awarded, and the students who earned ribbons were incredibly proud. As they should have been!

Watching this program unfold was such a joy, and I cannot thank the Vision to Reality Grant team enough for funding this kind of library fun. I will be back in February with another program and, if all goes according to plan, another full library!

Welcome to my first AISL blog post!
This is my second year as a K-5 independent school library media specialist and eleventh year as an elementary school educator. Thanks to the generous award of the AISL Vision to Reality Grant, I was funded and able to host an author visit for second through fifth grade students. We were thrilled to welcome Shamim Okolloh and her son, Liam Sprinkle, co-authors of the 2023 children’s book Ella the Banker. Both authors are Native Arkansans based in Little Rock, and they made the trip to visit our school in Fayetteville, AR.
Their book focuses on the importance of introducing financial literacy at an early age through the story of Ella, a second grader who takes a field trip to a bank and learns about its behind-the-scenes operations and the different types of banking. The message aligns beautifully with a beloved project at our school—the second grade Holiday Store.
Each year, our second graders visit a local bank, apply for (and receive!) a loan to purchase
materials for the crafts they create. They then sell their handmade items at school, and the
funds raised are used to buy gifts for families in need within our school and community.
Ella the Banker provided the perfect narrative connection to this real-world learning experience, and having the authors on campus made financial literacy and banking feel even more exciting, real, and accessible to our students.
Ella the Banker is available for purchase at Walmart, Target, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. Add a copy to your library, more than 5,000 copies have already been sold!

Welcome to the first post in my series about luring students into the library—with programming, not bribery. Though honestly, both can be effective.

This is my second year as Director of Library Services, and my focus for the year is building community. Last year was all about the logistics—reworking the collection, rearranging furniture, and figuring out which light switches controlled which parts of the library. This year, I’m leaning hard into the fun stuff: being everywhere, doing everything, and getting students to do all the library things.

Thanks to the AISL Vision to Reality Grant, I get to go big with that goal. My proposal centered around the idea that a little friendly competition can go a long way toward creating community—and filling the library. I’ve always believed libraries aren’t just quiet study spaces or shelves of decorative books. They’re safe, lively spaces where everyone should feel like they belong. And when programming makes the library approachable and fun, the books practically start walking off the shelves themselves.

Our school is a 6–12 boarding school, with about half our students local and half international. One thing they all share? A deep, abiding love of competition. Give them a ribbon, a pin, or even bragging rights, and they’re all in. And let’s be honest—sometimes the lower the stakes, the higher the bragging rights. So this fall, I kicked off our competitive programming with something delightfully old-school: a Pumpkin Carving Contest. Nostalgia meets rivalry—it’s the perfect recipe. In just three days, 35 students carved pumpkins. I call that a serious programming win.

How It All Came Together

Step one: confirm I was, in fact, allowed to give students sharp objects. (An underrated but essential step.)

Once I had the official thumbs-up, I started promoting the event about two weeks out. It’s hard to identify a sweet spot for programming —too early and they forget, too late and they’ve filled their schedule with other Very Important Teenage Things. But two weeks seemed to work out for this.

Promotion went out in the weekly student e-news, on the TVs around campus, by the library sign-in station, and via a community-wide email. Students signed up through a simple SignUpGenius—five slots per class block for upper schoolers, and a separate lunch option for middle schoolers. About two-thirds of our carvers signed up in advance, which, for a first run, felt like victory.

Then came the pumpkin hunt. I checked local farms and big box stores, but Walmart’s $3.97 pumpkins beat everyone else’s $10 price tags. Supporting local business is wonderful—but so is staying within budget. I enlisted my oldest child and my husband to help me and we relieved a few local Walmarts of their pumpkins purchasing 40 pumpkins overall and drawing a lot of attention from other shoppers.

Our activities department already had carving tools, so all I needed were blue ribbons for prizes and battery-powered tea lights from the dollar store—three for $1.25. Librarian math loves a bargain.

Our campus is spread across multiple buildings, with the library being its own building, so I was able to hold the event outside. Facilities set up tables, chairs, and a giant trash barrel, and I silently prayed to Mother Nature. Thankfully, she came through. I also pre-scooped all the pumpkins myself—partly to save students time, and partly because I didn’t want pumpkin guts decorating the front steps.

The Big Carve

When we returned from fall break, the library patio was ready for action. The first day started slow, so my library assistant and I began the old-fashioned way: walking up to kids and asking, “Hey, want to carve a pumpkin?” The secret? Never ask just one student. Ask a pair. Peer pressure for good, not evil. Also don’t limit yourself to the library. I asked kids at lunch, during class, whenever I saw them around campus. There was no escaping me!

By the end of day one, I’d gone from worrying about leftover pumpkins to wondering if we had enough. The windows along the library’s front made perfect viewing for the pumpkin action outside. We popped out to chat, admire designs, and offer the occasional pep talk. Most students proudly called us over to admire their finished masterpieces—because no one, no matter how cool, ever outgrows wanting praise.

On Friday afternoon, I placed tea lights inside all the finished pumpkins and lit them up. The whole display glowed through the weekend, and it looked amazing. We awarded ribbons in five categories: “Ms. Pratt’s Favorite,” “Ms. Stiefel’s Favorite,” “Spookiest,” “Cutest,” and “Most Traditional.” The students were thrilled to see either their or a friend’s pumpkin get chosen!

Lessons Learned

All in all, a smashing success! I’ll absolutely run it again next year. There’s something magical about recurring programs—they become little traditions students actually look forward to.

Next time, I’ll lean harder into the competition side. Bigger signage for categories, maybe display the ribbons ahead of time, and definitely turn the awards and lighting into a mini-event. I picture pumpkins glowing after dark, hot cocoa in hand, and everyone pretending to be serious judges.

Also, note to self: wipe tables daily. Dried pumpkin residue can rival super glue in strength. 

How You Can Adapt It

I’m lucky to have outdoor space, supportive colleagues, and a schedule that allows time for carving chaos. But even without those things, you can absolutely do your own spin.

Try smaller sugar pumpkins with acrylic paint pens, or paper jack-o’-lanterns hung in the library windows. The key ingredients—creativity, friendly competition, and a dash of seasonal spirit—are free.If you have questions or want to trade programming ideas, feel free to reach out. And stay tuned—next up in my quest for programming domination: gingerbread houses.

A few weeks ago, Patricia de Winter posted to the list opening up opportunities to write for this blog. While this is not the first post I am writing up against a deadline (and will not be the last), I’m nonetheless writing to encourage each of you who has found this blog useful at some point to consider participating.

One thing I have learned about school librarians is that so much feels high-stakes in our work lives, the idea of taking on a blogging opportunity feels quite risky. We worry we are not enough. We want things to be complete, and proven-to-be-perfect, before we feel comfortable sharing it with others.

I’d like to propose that professional sharing communities (such as writing for this blog, presenting at conferences, and even sharing on our list) are specifically the place to share your halfway-there ideas (really, when do we ever actually have all-there ideas?). A supportive and — more importantly — engaged community such as this one offers the chance for asynchronous collaboration that so often is how my own work gets better. Historically, my conference proposals are almost always on topics I really want to set aside time to think about and work with, and submitting a proposal makes me commit to finding the time to do the work. Blog posts are something of a similar animal. One can share ideas, things you tried, and hopefully spark conversations over time that allow you to circle back and improve with input from across the continent.

For example, several years back I wrote a post about an evidently effective, but also super-convoluted, lesson I wrote to teach my seventh graders how search works. Writing it up was my first step to towards realizing that it did not make quite as much sense outside my head as it did inside. Over the years, I’ve gotten various questions about that post that further helped me step back from my chosen method. To my great good luck, Stephanie Gamble posted a much more solid lesson idea a few years later, using Legos. By looking back at conversations I’d had about my original lesson, I was able to better determine what seemed effective to keep and what needed changing.

As a result, I’ve had increasingly effective lessons over the last several years (thank you, Stephanie!) into which I was able to integrate the stronger concepts from my original lesson.

This blog does exist as a vehicle for communal learning, so of course you don’t need to author it to get ideas. However, it does help. As does interacting via comments or emails to post authors.

So, whether you think you have “big ideas” to share, or whether you wish your ideas could get bigger, I recommend stepping up to write, collaborate, and interact. It makes all of us better, working together.

Interested? Maybe even willing to write a single post as a guest blogger? Search your email for a posting dated Sep 16, 2025, subject line: “AISL Blog” — this is the perfect time to raise your hand!