on more name calling ...

Oh my! This whole, "What are we? What should we be called" issue in the 'berry world has some kind of LEGS!!! People are STILL talking about it!!! A 'berrian pal over at the Archipelago Blog ran a post on the issue yesterday.

I do have to say, it is amazing to work at a school where we don't have to go to the mat and fall on our swords over whether we're called "school librarians" or "teacher librarians" or "librarians" or heaven forbid, "school library media specialist."

Intellectually, I realize that there are many people out ther for whom this matters greatly, but I read all of this and I can't help thinking, "Geez ... Let's all un-knot our undies and talk about stuff that really matters." In my case something that really matters would be, "Why on Earth would our Computer Services Department set up the computers in our labs so that they cannot play DVDs? Why should it be SO HARD to show a clip of a demonstration debate to my class??? WHY??? ... WHY???"

I know that in the scope of all things this is a small and rather trivial battle to fight and I guess that it is a good sign that I spend my time and energy fighting small trivial battles because it means I'm not fighting big ones over budget and staffing cuts that most librarians out there face.

But back to the "what are we?" thing ... I guess what I don't get is why "librarian" should be the same as "old fashioned." When people say "doctor" they don't think of some dude sticking a leech on your head because you have a headache. Why? Because people see what "doctors" do and see that modern doctors use fancy 'puters and stuff and then they associate "doctors" with modern medicine. If "doctors" kept chaning there name from "doctor" to "extra superb modern healer" to "fancy pharma technician" every few years, of course the public would be rather confused about what the heck it is that they do ...

For the record, then, I'm a "librarian" and I like being a librarian.

So I ask again, "Why is it that I can't play a DVD for my class in our computer labs??? WHY???"

BAH!!!

on name calling ...

I've been employing a bit of news and information embargo for the past few weeks. I feel like I'm overloaded. I'm normally an NPR, newspaper, magazine, and RSS feed junkie, but I felt like it was time for a break. When you get to the point where you just do not care about what happens with the health care debate, or what is happening with the jobless rate, or what the ALA has decided to call people who are certificated personnel working in libraries that happen to be located in K-12 educational institutions, you know it is time to step back from all the information and listen to the CD of Glee tunes for the commute home and that's what I've been doing.

I am still plugged in, simply because I have to be for my job, but in my personal life, I'm going for as much of a news/information embargo as I can manage for now.

Apparently during my listserv embargo, a whole bunch of people got their undies in knots because ALA decided that we're "school librarians" instead of "school library media specialists." Seriously, who cares?

And by the way, I like being called a "school librarian." I suppose that "teacher librarian" also describes my work well, but the whole "school library media specialist" thing ... Well ... I just never got that ...

on ni hao ...

Chinese language has been offered as an elective at our school for quite a while, but last year, Chinese became a language that students could take in order to meet their foreign language requirement for graduation. As a result of this change, our Chinese language program has exploded! Two years ago our Chinese language teacher taught a few sections of Chinese and she was assigned to teach a few sections of a beginning Library and Technology class. The program grew so quickly that last year the teacher taught Chinese full time and this year the school hired a second middle school Chinese teacher who also teaches Chinese full time.

The greatest thing about the growth of the program is that our two Chinese teachers are so wonderfully resourceful. Our Chinese students record dialogs in the tech center, then upload the files to the class Moodle site. At different times during the semester, they go back and compare their current oral dialog with dialogs they have recorded in the past and assess their own progress. Chinese students also create Chinese language music videos, participate in Chinese song contest, and come into the Tech Center to compose essays (or, I suppose, sentences) in Chinese. The Chinese teachers have brought in Chinese language DVDs for us to add to the colleiton, books in English-Chinese, and they just brought in a Chinese-English magazine that they want me to add to the periodical collection.

The thing is that they've had us add this stuff to the collection AND the create assignments that required their students to come in and use the material.

How cool is that!!!

on the biblioburro--the donkey library ...

This is amazing!

on taking sides ...

Besides working in the big building with lots of books, I teach a class on debate to 8th graders. The 8th grade child is, I think, just about the perfect person to teach in a debate class. As 8th graders, kids are beccoming world aware, they have the linguistic skills, they have enough background knowledge and most of all the 8th grade child LOVES to argue!!! I just came back from watching six of my kids debate the resolution, "People should not eat meat." The proposition side won the debate very narrowly over the opposition (which included an Indian-American girl who is vegetarian and who did a dynamite job of arguing the side completely counter to her personal beliefs ...).

I have to say that even after twenty years as a teacher, the amazing feeling that you get when you teach something to kids and they "get it" just never gets old!

on catching up ...

I guess that I've been neglecting this blog for a while, huh? I've been in a bit of a reading slump, but this is what I've been reading of late. No energy for summaries so here it is ...

on gettin' old ...

We've been workin' hard in the 'berry of late! Our Frosh have the first part of a major history paper due so we've been besieged by Frosh doing research. The upside is that they ACTUALLY DO know what they're doing!!! Understand that we've built a library curriculum around teaching them how to do research, but it really does shock me that they know what do to ... Is that weird???

Anyway, more importantly (since it's all about me), we've been so busy that we've been doing a LOT of shelving which usually gets done by our crew of really great parent volunteers. Boy either I am really out of practice or middle age is not being kind to me in the least because my knees, back, and behind are not feeling so fine after just a week of light shelving. So sad, huh?