The Book Charmer

I'll be honest: I haven't been very good at accomplishing my goals for November. Hey, we're all human. The midterms just kept rolling in. But I've been lucky to stay involved at Edison Elementary, and I hope I can take on more hours, now that my class load has been reduced by half next term!

What I've gotten done recently:

- THIS MAP! I spent a few hours designing this in Illustrator, while my friends screamed at a college football game out in the living room. It's absolutely not perfect, but much better than the map created in Microsoft Word out of circles and rectangles. I improved on the original by making all of the text as easy to read as possible. I wanted the volunteer to be able to look at it straight on and be able to read all the section headers. With the exception of the Reference and Ready, Set, Read books on the left side that I had no control over, none of the text requires you to turn your head around to read what it says.

Patti was thrilled at how it turned out and is thinking of blowing it up for the children to use! I may have another map to make over break...

Edison Elementary Library Map 

- Oregon Battle of the Books is a statewide reading motivation and comprehension competition sponsored by the Oregon Association of School Libraries for students in 3rd-12th grade. Students form teams to read a set of books for their grade level and answer questions about them in rapidly paced school, regional, and statewide tournaments. It's like trivia or debate for bookworms.

Edison is holding mock battles in December and January, so I'm reading as many of the 16 books for 3rd-5th graders as possible, in order to create practice questions for the students. I've read Charlotte's Web, 11 Birthdays, and am now onto Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and Who Are The Beatles? (lol, right?) for Thanksgiving break. I wish we had this kind of project when I was young! It's nice to see so many kids clamoring to participate in a competition about books. I'm a little concerned that they place too much focus on memorization, but if it gets kids to read and leads to analysis, then alright.

So a month in, and I'm still loving it.

This morning, I received this comment from Ms. Yingling Reads:

It's good that you have strong feelings, but as a former Latin teacher who became a librarian when I couldn't find a Latin job, I can't recommend your course of action. If our school levy fails, they could lay off all the librarians in the district. Since you're young, you might want to consider a career in the medical field! Of course, my advice is not the best. I almost double majored in Latin and ... home ec. Which no one teaches anymore!

I was tickled to hear thoughts from someone I'm not even connected to, and she gave me some food for thought. Not everything here is directed to Ms. Yingling, but please forgive me if I sound defensive or flippant.

1) Medical field? I am obviously not a person who makes sensible actions :)

2) While I'm beginning to lean towards school librarian services, that's primarily because, well, I volunteer in one. Of course I'm going to start loving the environment and envisioning myself in it. However, that doesn't mean that I am exclusively preparing myself for school librarianship or even librarianship in general. I already have a marketing and writing background, which I plan to keep using wherever I go. I also hope to expand into HTML and email marketing, eventually. So don't worry. I plan on having plenty on my utility belt.

3) Is this how we're encouraging young professionals? I've read enough about what you should know before entering the field. I've read enough to scare me off. Be real, but never discourage someone from following a dream, if that person has thought it through. (I'm not sure I've been clear on this blog about the research I've done.)

(On a side note, I feel like this "scare the youngins' away" tactic occurs more often in librarianship than in journalism. Why is that?)

by DieselDemon

4) Have some guts and optimism.

5) See past the picture. Just because I'm a journalism major doesn't mean that I'm entering the "dying" newspaper industry. If I become a librarian, I'm not confined to a library.

I appreciate advice from anyone who takes the time to give it. But I take offense when someone thinks I am blind to the potential consequences of pursuing a career path. (This happens so often that sometimes I leave out my major when introducing myself to people who aren't in college.) That probably wasn't Ms. Yingling's intent, but it no doubt happens when people give advice to young people.

What are your thoughts?

It's November 1st, and only four weeks of school remain! It's been a demotivating term, and I'm ready to get the hell out of here. Our winter break is a week longer this year, and it'll be nice to be in the city again. And then I'll only have THREE classes until I graduate! I plan to use the free time in my schedule to teach myself instead of parking my butt in classes run by bored, droning professors. I'll also be volunteering more often, if they'll have me :)

But before I get there, here are my goals for making the most out of November:

1. Read at least eight books, half of what's left in my Goodreads challenge! (Yes, I set the bar really low. I also started it late summer.)
2. Read more picture and children's books. Celebrate Picture Book Month!
3. Shelf read half of the fiction section. I finished the picture books on Monday!

WOOT!

4. Finally start a book I checked out a few weeks ago on evaluating children's literature.