To capitalize on the popularity of the Netflix Series Stranger Things during the Halloween season, I created a Stranger Library Reading Challenge. A fun and festive way to get students involved in reading at the school library. This challenge asks… Read More ›
Data Driven We live in a world that is largely data driven. Teenagers, especially, are surrounded by quantifiable things. How many likes did my Instagram post get? What was your grade on the Social Studies test? Did you add another… Read More ›
Every person has a story to tell. That’s as true for children as it is for established writers. Most high school teachers are familiar with the college essay crunch that starts at the end of junior year, heats up in… Read More ›
The month of April is national stress management awareness month. High stakes standardized testing begins this month, graduation and prom are on the horizon. Not to mention just the everyday stresses of life at any grade level that you serve…. Read More ›
As 2021 came to a close, we all needed some brightness in our lives. Free Comic Book Day, a national initiative that takes place each May, inspired a colleague and I to start one of our own a few years… Read More ›
Over the past few months we have all gotten used to contactless delivery and pickup at stores and restaurants. As we start the school year, planning for contactless delivery of library materials has been much the same. Our spaces are… Read More ›
The AASL National School Library Standards were published a little over one year ago. Many school librarians have been implementing the standards in practice since, and many school librarians are just getting started in their implementation process. However, some librarians… Read More ›
To Start: Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the CS Fundamentals Introduction Workshop sponsored by Code.org. This workshop explored why computer science should be taught to all students. The presenter was Vinos Kassab (@kassabv). She shared how students’ computational… Read More ›
Advocacy is a single word, but it means so much to the library and librarian profession. As Archibald MacLeish said, “What is more important to a library than anything else–than everything else–is the fact that it exists.” Over the past… Read More ›
Supporting Curriculum and Adding FUN Each year seventh-grade students in my school read two class novels that focus on survival skills and wild terrain. Students read Call of the Wild by Jack London and Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen… Read More ›