Auntie Librarian

This year is off to a great start. Showing the laminator who's boss certainly helped get things going in the right direction. But, I have to say the one thing that has truly made a difference to me this year is our school-wide reading of the book Wonder. I simply cannot say enough about it, and it is all good. Deep down good, warm fuzzy good, jump up and holler good, macaroni and cheese good.

I start off every school day with pure, wide-spread goodness. It is so awesome.

You think I am over-reacting don't you? That's okay, because you don't know the details. Why am I so happy about a school-wide read aloud?

I think it is because I work in a middle school. Do you know how hard it is to impress middle schoolers? With anything? And unfortunately, for the most part, the magic of read-aloud fades away at this level.
There are many reasons for this.

The Wonder Girls

But, at my school, every morning for twenty minutes, it is story time. And I am a kid again.

And it's magic.

Because so is everyone else.

The story, of course, is great and perfect and powerful. But, I think much of the credit for the success of our particular project goes to the two teachers who are reading to us each morning.

It just so happens that two of the most amazing read-out-loud teachers on the planet work at my school. (pictured)
I begged them to read Wonder for us because I know how incredibly important delivery is when someone is reading aloud. They are doing a phenomenal job. I don't think a day has gone by since we began reading four weeks ago, that someone hasn't said something positive about the read-aloud. It makes my heart sing to hear people say these things. We cry and we laugh. We talk about it at lunch and in the halls.


I am not forgetting the teachers who dutifully follow along with their books in the classrooms. The whole idea would go kaput if they didn't do their part.  ELA teachers are using the book in their lessons. The students are listening and following along. It's all so yummy good.


This is probably one of the coolest things I have ever done at school. Ma would be so proud. She would cry if I told her about this. Happy tears. We used to watch Oprah! together and just boo-hoo over all kinds of stuff. Ma would know that Mr. Browne's first precept about choosing kind is from Wayne Dyer whom she loved.

If you've read Wonder you may know the song that August and his dad sing together in the car. "I'm the luckiest guy on the lower east side."

Well, I'm the luckiest girl in the upstate, cause  I've got a story and you want to read for a while.

Thought of this while I was pulling weeds today in my back yard. I couldn't get it out of my head, so I had to make it.

I read the book  Wonder by R.J. Palacio  after hearing Donalyn Miller book talk it at the SCASL conference.  I enjoyed the book and especially loved the quotes at the beginning of each section. Of course, I passed the book on to my students and teachers, urging them to read it. Not long after I finished reading Wonder, our school began forming and training an anti-bullying committee. I knew this awesome book would  perfectly compliment our school's anti-bullying efforts.

Dr. Lodge McCammon was a featured speaker at the Upstate Technology Conference in June. I enjoyed his keynote address as well as his engaging enthusiasm and energy. While I had heard about the concept of flipping the classroom before, I had never been presented with compelling data to support it, and I had never seen it done in McCammon style. Flipping the classroom essentially moves the lecture to being homework and the application, drill, practice and activities to being classwork. It makes sense. In a flipped classroom the teacher spends more time with students practicing a skill or concept and less time lecturing. The lecture is video recorded using a simple flip camera and white board tiles or chart paper rather than power point or movie maker slides as seen in the video clip below. No fancy technology is needed.


After listening to Dr. McCammon speak I think that even if a classroom or a school isn't completely flipped, there are benefits to using McCammon's flipped classroom techniques to improve teaching and learning. According to McCammon, a 60 minute in-class lecture is equal to an eight minute video lecture. This is purely due to classroom management. I am not saying poor classroom management either. It is simply the regular management of 25 or more students in a classroom that makes delivering content take a long time. Most teachers know this as their daily reality.

In a truly flipped classroom students view lecture videos at home as their homework. Let's just say the  issues of students choosing not to watch the lecture or being unable to watch the lecture due to lack of technology at home make doing this unrealistic for you. Even recording lectures and playing them during class is  worthwhile.  If a teacher video recorded her lesson and played it to her students even during class, this would reduce lecture time, enable easy repeat viewing in class or at home, and allow the teacher to spend less energy giving the same lecture four to six times a day. In addition, there would essentially be two versions of the same teacher, one that is live and one that is on video. This would enable the teacher to be the ultimate zen master of classroom management during the lecture. The lecture would be able to be paused, repeated, forwarded, and used again. This approach would lessen teacher fatigue and enable the teacher to use her energy in a more meaningful way.

One of the points that McCammon made that really stuck with me was that the relationship with the classroom teacher has a direct influence in the student's learning and performance. McCammon provided convincing evidence that content is much more meaningful and powerful when it comes from the student's own teacher. That realization makes teacher-student relationships in traditional classrooms something to emphasize and re-evaluate. It gives weight to that old saying, "Your students will not care what you know, until they know that you care."

After hearing Dr. McCammon speak, looking at his website and videos, I am convinced that teachers can benefit from learning about this concept even if they have no intention of trying it out in their own classrooms.

In June I  attended the amazing and free Upstate Technology Conference in Greenville, SC. Of course, I learned about the conference through my invaluable SCASL network. Silly me, I neglected to register for the conference. I heard rumors of a limited amount of first-come-first-serve onsite registrations. So, I decided to get up at the crack o' dawn and head on over to Greenville to see if I could snag one of those onsite tickets. Lo and behold, I was one of the first people there, which means I also got an awesome parking place. I enjoyed the oatmeal and coffee I brought while I waited for the conference folks to get the tickets. I later learned that they turned away over 100 people after the onsite tickets were gone.

I got a golden ticket!

Now, would this conference be worth the early morning rise? I had never been to one, so I was was eager to find out. It was most definitely worth getting up early for. The conference is extremely well organized, and the variety of sessions offered are unbelievable. Below are some session notes.

This year I decided to check out books to students over the summer. "You'll never get 'em back!" says the wicked witch in my head. It reminds me of the "You'll shoot your eye out! You'll shoot your eye out!" sass from Ralphie's teacher in A Christmas Story. I thought it was a revolutionary idea, because all I ever heard was, "You'll never get the books back." Well, it's NOT a revolutionary idea and lots of great librarians do it. I posted a query to the SCASL list-serv asking, "Do you check out books over the summer?" and one person replied "as many as they want. . " that's when I knew I had to do it. Here are some other reasons:


1. The only students who are going to check out books are the ones who love to read, those are my regular customers and they are pretty reliable about returning their books to the library. We need to make more students who love to read. But for me right now, the number of students interested in summer book check out is not overwhelming.


2. Which is more important? Getting all the books back or kids reading over the summer? Students reading over the summer is much more important than the potential loss of a few library books.


3. I used it as an incentive for students to clear their library account and return all of their books on or before the last week of school. Students could not check out books for the summer unless they had no check outs or overdue books or fines on their library account.


4. Checking out books over the summer helps build a culture of reading.


5. I decided to allow only the 6th and 7th graders to check out books because they will be returning to the school next year. I did check out a few books to 8th graders who asked about checking out books and told them to return the books to the High School library or our public library.


All in all this has been a positive experience that I will almost certainly repeat next year. I started a summer book club with four books to choose from and scheduled meetings on the two dates I opened the library.
Even if we don't get many people, this is a start. I will be able to kick the year off by continuing the summer book club into the first two weeks of school.


Check out the SMS Library Blog to see what we read and some of the activities we tried.