A Job

is the reason I haven’t been writing much lately. Or at all in almost a month?? Seriously? The good news is….I have a job! I’m a librarian! For real! It’s exciting! I keep putting up exclamation points about it!

What’s interesting about a job like this, and I suspect most teaching jobs is that you come out of school with a particular ingrained philosophy. Essentially it’s based on whatever is trendy at the moment and I have discovered I am no exception. So far I find myself not trying to fight the system, understanding that all an administration cares about is test scores, and encouraging kids to read outside the box anyway :-).

The school I’m at does Accelerated Reader (of which I’m not the hugest fan) and is a PBS school and is a massive school! The first week I lost my assistant, which was not fun. 680 students, more than 30 teachers, and I’m it for the library. While we have some amazing volunteers, as you can imagine they are not the same as having paid professionals.

The best part of being a school librarian? I get to see every child here. I don’t get to know them as personally as I would as a classroom teacher, but can share in some of their excitement- from one of my students getting written up in surf magazine, to another’s cheerleading squad winning their competition and heading to states to watching as the younger students grow in such leaps and bounds that sometimes I suspect their brains have been replaced. I am on the verge of tears when a reluctant reader admits he or she actually enjoyed reading a book.

Adventure? Without a doubt! Anguish? Every night I find myself falling asleep at approximately 9:30. But every day I’m learning and for the first time in a long time, I’m excited to go to work.