Earlier this summer, I asked our Twitter community for ideas about how to reserve spaces in the library during all school intervention and “open” time. Four days a week, my high school has “academic support time” where students can visit… Read More ›
Curiosity as a Learning Tool As a curious individual, I ask myself dozens of questions every day: What type of insect is that? What did this street look like 100 years ago? How does color affect people’s moods? I’m the… Read More ›
As we approach the end of the school year, there is a lot on school librarians’ minds and to-do lists: collecting books, taking down bulletin boards, all the other duties as assigned, and if you have a budget or some… Read More ›
High school students often get a bad rap. They’re accused of being lazy, wasteful, immature . . . the list goes on. Through my experience working with adolescents, however, I’ve found that what most people interpret as irresponsible behavior is… Read More ›
Students sitting on the carpet in a semi-circle listening to a captivating story is what comes to mind when I think of read alouds. Unfortunately, this is a rare sight in secondary schools; why do we stop reading aloud as… Read More ›
It’s a never-ending dilemma: how to get overworked high school students to read for pleasure. Too often, teens associate reading with mandatory curriculum books. The Scarlet Letter, A Tale of Two Cities, Things Fall Apart. . . though some teens… Read More ›
With the Black Lives Matter movement front and center in the news this summer, it is heartbreakingly evident we still have a great deal of work to do to heal racial issues in our society. Our students are absorbing… Read More ›
I was about to be another lost librarian in the Chicago Public Schools system when I got my dismissal letter a month ago. But my students surprised me with a “read in” protest at DuSable (three small high schools in… Read More ›