student teaching week four

I think I left off the weeding project last week having pulled books. This week I went over my justifications for what I pulled and discussed with the librarians what could just be thrown out and what really needed replaced. I then got to go hunting for the replacements, and was pleased to discover later that the library already owns one of the books I'd picked out (it's just in reference instead of in non-fiction, was why I hadn't seen it). It made me feel clever, like I'd gotten it correct, that a real librarian had already picked it out and ordered it. :) The other thing I quickly discovered while picking out books was that Follett, which is where pretty much all of the ordering here goes through, did not have the most current editions of fully half the books I was looking into. That may be a coincidence, that Follett's just low in music books or something, but only being able to tell you about a 1997 book when there is in fact a 2007 edition creates a problem if you're only doing your ordering in one place. So I guess I learned to shop around not just for price. :)

Then I had a fun project this week that grew out of the weeding/ordering discussions, because Paula was remarking that she hesitated to sink a lot of budget into replacing books when she wasn't seeing a lot of music books circulate. I pointed out that they seemed like they really ought to be a high-interest section, but that they were buried way in the back of a ginormous library and maybe kids just didn't know about them. I'd been looking at the library space for my reorganization project (which we're doing! the movers come next week) and had noticed a column right at the entrance that I thought wasn't being used real well currently, so I suggested making that into a display space for bringing little-used sections up front, rotating its contents every so often. They thought that was a good idea, so I've moved shelves around and made signs for the space and put a bunch of those music books out to just see if they circulate better, and three have gone home with students from that shelf already--victory! I'm working on a sample calendar of a year's worth of suggested exhibits to leave for them to put there, and I'll probably change it out for Black History Month books before I leave and go to my next school.

Let's see, what else this week...been doing a lot of work on my inservices coming up next week, and I taught three more classes about catalog and databases. That teacher did change her topics on me the day before the lessons, so I had to go rewrite them, but she was real nice about it, so I'm counting it as a learning experience about the quickly changing needs and wants of teachers rather than something obnoxious. :)

I guess something else worth noting is the value of hanging out with the classroom teachers and just getting to know them personally. I am NOT a good socializer, but I've been eating lunch with a group of teachers who eat in the kitchen behind the library every day, and that's been a really good experience for just sort of working my way into the group. It's a good opportunity to figure out their concerns with how the curriculum is going, because they're basically sitting back there gossiping and it's often about work, and it's a good time to sneak in my ideas (as in "Oh, you're upset about the new ACT testing requirements? Yeah, that's real bad. Did you know about the database with practice tests we have through the school? I could show it to you sometime...") instead of waiting for them to come ask the librarian for official help.