New School Year

School has been back since July 7. It must have been a rough July 4 weekend as I was startled by the number of students in braces and casts! Or maybe I just didn't see them last time I was there, but there seemed to be a bunch.



The library assistant, Liz, is tracked out this week. She works the schedule her children attend school so she's off for three weeks. This is the week of library orientation so Diane and Sandra greeted me with instructions. My jobs today were to (wo)man the circulation desk and work the laminator.



We had 6th and 7th grade students today. Orientation consisted of a Camtasia PowerPoint created for each grade level. Sixth graders needed to learn how to log into the computer and receive their user names and passwords for Blackboard. The school does not allow personal email, so students use the Digital Dropbox function in Blackboard to make assignments available at home or to turn in assignments to their instructors. The seventh grade orientation was focused on plagiarism--note taking and using citations. Afterwards, students were allowed to check out books and magazines.

Lots of happy students plowing through the books. Diane was right, the shelves had plenty of room again for reshelving. And the new computer system kept a couple of 6th grade students from checking materials out as they had overdues from their elementary schools.

Some observations: I teach handweaving and have for years. One of my discussions with beginners is that there is a body English to working at the loom. Your head gets it before your fingers do, but once your fingers get it, it gets a whole lot easier. Apparently laminators and barcode readers operate the same way. Except I haven't had enough time with them to master either one. Fortunately, the students were patient while I wrestled with the barcode reader. And a teacher, to whom I apologied for my "creative laminating" just grinned and said that forgiveness was a requirement for working here. The good news is that Destiny is a whole lot easier to use (and much easier on the eyes) than our Sirsi Dynix system at work and I don't think I made too many mistakes there.

But the big discovery of the day was a book on Diane's desk, The First Days of School: How to be an effective teacher. I didn't have to read too far to realize what an outstanding resource it was. My personal copy, via Amazon, is on the way . . .