All gone?

Today marks a definite turning point in the year. Today was 5th year Induction Day. Tomorrow is 6th year Induction Day. The old 6th year are definitely gone now. I’ll probably never see most of them again.

Fortunately, before I got like Blanche in Grease, it was a lovely surprise to see not just a just-former 6th year, but also another who turned up out of the blue from a couple of years ago. It was a real shame we couldn’t sit and blether more than “how’s uni?”

I’ve spent hours talking to both these people. They helped me get my work done - and ok, I helped them too, but I’m supposed to do that - helped me form opinions, helped me make decisions, and then they sit their exams and leave. Just like that.

Leaving school is a rite of passage; it should be celebrated. But sometimes it’s just a little bit sad to be left behind.

Promotion or demotion

I had a very sweet supply teacher in the Library a lot this week, ex-pupil actually. He commented on the level of “teaching” I do (his words).

And then he went and spoiled it all by wondering aloud why I wasn’t promoted to teacher.

I have added him to my list of “pupils educated” and he knows better now.

Comic strip miracles

A couple of weeks ago I was approached by the Principal Teacher of RE, who wanted her S2 class to investigate some of the miracles accredited to the shrine at Lourdes.

After a quick online search, I suggested we focus on the story of Jean-Pierre Bely, a man apparently cured of Multiple Sclerosis during a Lourdes pilgrimage.

The investigation was organised into two halves: we gave pupils one of four different articles about Lourdes and Jean-Pierre and asked them to underline the most important points. When they were feeding back to the rest of the class, one half of each pair would read out some information, and other would add it to a mindmap on the SmartBoard as keywords (with lots of help).

The second part was to organise the story into sections, give each child or pair a section, and ask them to turn the story into a comic strip. In theory each section become one frame of the comic, although pupils could choose to split their paper into smaller sections if they so chose.

So how did it go?

Well, it was confusing. I find pupils much more giggly in RE than in any other subject, so focus was a bit of an issue during the first lesson.

This morning, we had the second part of the exercise. We handed out the parts of the story, explained what was required, discussed the use of stick people (for ease of drawing), told the class it would be displayed in the classroom - it was all sorted. Unfortunately, I hadn’t foreseen a major problem:

they didn’t know what a comic strip looked like.

!!!!

Not having a working Smartboard, I couldn’t just find an online example, and most of the graphic novels are in fiction chaos. Eventually, I managed to demonstrate what we meant, but it led to all kinds of interesting issues:

what size should each element of the drawing be?
how do you tell stick people apart?
how do you know how big to make your speech bubbles?
what’s a speech bubble?

I could continue. But the most interesting issue this week was their vastly improved focus.

It also led to discussions between myself and the teacher about visual clues, Flickr, Comic Life, plagiarism, copyright, Curriculum for Excellence and how lost I am without my SmartBoard.

Still not lost, but looking vague

So,  got first uni assignment completed, passed (hurray!), had a week off, then back to next uni assignment, which is where I’ve been since.

I’ve discovered that trying to work fulltime, run after family and complete postgrad stuff is quite time consuming! And it’s a shame because there’s been lots of interesting stuff to discuss.

For example, I never realised until recently just how isolating it could be, being a teacher. A librarian’s job is all about making contacts, although it can be really difficult at first until you learn to work and think in teacher-ese, made more difficult if no-one around is prepared to translate.

When you’re a librarian surrounded by teachers it seems like you’re the odd one out (well, odd anyway). But then last week, it suddenly occurred to me that (if they chose) a teacher could spend their entire professional existence alone with 30 odd weans, with no other adult input.

Why would anyone choose that?

No Smartboard!

Not fair. The bulb in my data projector has retired disgracefully, which means I am Smartboard-less until it’s replaced.

They are not cheap, so I’m waiting to see what happens from the ICT Technician.

In the meantime, it’s back to trying to describe how to find information and point out web issues without being able to scribble all over a search engine list; no more mindmaps; no more sharing excellent websites with the whole class.

Not the end of the world, but it’s not easy either.

Not lost

It’s been ages since I posted, but I’m not gone forever - just trying to complete my first uni assignment.

I’ll be back at some point.

We got it!

The Commonwealth Games are coming to Glasgow!

 This is a fabulous opportunity to enthuse and inspire some of our kids - a real, actual, wordwide competition, right in our back yard.

 Wonder how many of our kids will be thinking tonight - I could do that!

Elegant vowels

This afternoon, I was sitting with Zebra Boy trying to keep him occupied, never the easiest of tasks. And then for some reason, he came up with the phrase “elegant vowel” and followed it with “a, e, i, o, u” in a musing sort of way, as if he was trying them out - which one was most worthy of the description.

Now, you will find no-one more inclined to proclaim the genius of my children than myself, but “elegant” isn’t a word I would expect ZB to use. There was something about the way he phrased it though that nagged at me. I’d heard it somewhere before.

Eventually he repeated it, followed by “how charmingly sweet you sing!”

The Owl and the Pussycat is a family favourite that ZB’s known by heart since he was wee. My mum told it to me and I told it to my two, and we’ve always added a kind of cat-like purring to the “You elegant fowl” line that ZB caught and repeated, replacing the final word.

I’ve heard him repeat the poem on umpteen occasions correctly so I have no idea why or how he came up with “elegant vowels”, chuffed to bits though I am. 

I have no doubts however, that the time and effort spent telling stories and reciting poems to our children will be repaid a thousand fold in allowing them to understand and play with the language we demand they use.  

Flattened

I discovered today the new flat fee for CILIP membership. For the privilege of being able to put a few letters after my name, a couple of journals and a lack of support when requested, I am now being allowed to pay out £172. This is a rise in membership fees for anyone earning less than £30,000.

This will include the vast majority of school librarians because our professional organisation does so little to fight for us. A lot of librarians are going to be facing an interesting dilemma come December. We’re all clued up on Best Value: will we find it in CILIP ?

More hazards

The earthquake and volcano research continued today.

Wait for it, here it comes….  “Miss, how are you supposed to tell which book you need - all the numbers are the same?”

So I remind them (again) about the Dewey Decimal System and how each number can contain any number of different books because they’re all about the same subject, and the number refers to the subject: 551.21 = volcanoes, 551.22 = earthquakes, and so on. So find the number you need, then check for the exact title and author.

Then I demonstrate and make sure they understand, and they say, “Oh, right” and they do find resources, but they sometimes have that air of not really being convinced. It’s frustrating for me and frustrating for them, and it will be repeated next time they come to the LRC to investigate anything. 

School librarians have a responsibility to teach information literacy, which includes knowing how Dewey works. When I arrived here there were twelve weeks’ worth of  “library skills”  worksheets. I used them for a couple of years (forgive me, I was young and naive) then chucked them out.

Ever since, I’ve done a basic introduction to the LRC on their first visit, which basically means getting the class to share what they know. After that, they practise the skills in real situations and real investigations. And that means the perennial frustrated cry of “Miss?”

Bring it on.