Gratitude through Graphics

This is officially my first day of summer. My well of words is fairly dry, but I wanted to use this time to ink out a few reflections as all of us embark on a summer of new possibilities. This is the most exhausted and exhilarated I have ever felt at the end of a school year. End-of-the-year meetings, honors nights, and graduation ceremonies in which we begin to gather again closer in form to our former ways; they seemed more poignant, present, and precious. The themes for my year were gratitude and grit while I recognize for many it may have been grief. As we grinded through the year starting with fear, anxiety, and uncertainty it gave way to gratitude and extraordinary grace due to my colleagues and friends weathering the year together. I am forever grateful for all the camaraderie, advice and wisdom we have all exchanged during this time. I wanted to create a summer send off through images as I am tongue-tied at the moment.

The following images I created on Canva. I know many of us use it for library promotion, but I stumbled across a new feature I noticed that I wanted to share. So before we get to the whimsical I also want to share one practical tool. There is now a section of Canva that is for education https://www.canva.com/education/. Signing up for an educator’s account instead of using a personal account allows you to create a class in which you share a code with your students or import through google classroom. Now students can use the design features without having to make their own accounts and you can see their work. One limitation is that it looks like you can make only one class, but the system does allow you to make groups, so if you want to share this with teachers, and they want each of their classes to have a space, making groups for each class is the way to go. I am always looking for ways that students can be creative with projects. Canva for education gives students another angle to make stylish graphics for projects without just google image searching everything.

 And now some crazy canva fun as a collective card to all for finishing the year-

A jarring year. What I want to keep to show my gratitude and what I want to fade in the background.

Wishing everyone a relaxing and restorative summer. Only screen time is sunscreen.
Enjoy your journeys through books and safe travels wherever you go this summer.
A wishing all a wonderful walk, hike, or stroll outside finessing your flaneur instincts.
May you spend many hours browsing in bookstores.
Let your creative juices flow.

I look forward to learning about all your summer adventures.

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