Too Many Balls in the Air

I had forgotten how much attention everything at school can take. While the bubble festival went quite well, I still had classes to plan and teach, a SMART board to learn how to use, a back-to-school night for parents to prepare for, and also a new special project to plan, organize, and shop for. I am, quite simply, exhausted. And we've only finished two weeks of school. Sigh.

On top of all that, I had wanted to keep up my so-called professional development, with writing here and at my book review site, Book Frontiers. I managed to get two reviews posted this weekend, but it is hard to have time to read and write if you are lurching from special project to special project. I need to get organized again. And, not surprisingly, I haven't written any poetry lately, since contemplation seems to have evaporated from my life.

But even given all that, I wouldn't trade working in education for anything else. It is what I am meant to do.

It's Back to School!

Today is our first day back to school, and the butterflies are fluttering mightily! But I came into my office with some flowers on my desk (I suspect the principal), the children seem both nervous and excited, and the day is bright and sunny.

I don't see classes today, but I am in charge of the Bubble festival on Friday. Yikes! I will post pictures when I have succeeded (or at least survived).

Happy first days of school everyone!

SMART boards and the Library Lady

My school got its first SMART board, and yesterday was my first day in training. At first I wasn't sure if installing it in our media center was the best choice, in part because our upper school science teacher wanted to use it a great deal.

But now that I have had enough training to become dangerous :-D , I think our principal made the right choice. While I like the potential that I see in the board, and think that I would love to play with it, I also think it is good that it is in the Lab instead of in a particular classroom. Not only will a greater variety of teachers get to play with using it, but it also prevents a teacher from using it when a different sort of lesson would be better. As Richard Byrne says in his blog, Free Technology for Teachers, if a teacher simply uses technology to present the same notes in a different way, it really isn't integration.

Plus, the librarian in me wants to make sure that we don't become so hooked on bells and whistles that we forget the fundamentals of teaching. We need to draw on as many different ways and platforms to present material as we possibly can, so that we can reach as many students as we possibly can.

At least that is my opinion for today. We'll see what my attitude is after I have played more with it. Maybe it's just that I am reluctant to share....

Thing 26 -- More Things on a Stick

I joined the 23 Things on a Stick Ning last year in Round 1. I tried posting a question, but didn’t get any contributions or commentary. This time around, I took down the old question and reframed it as a new question as a discussion. I also created a “School Librarian – Media Center” group, so that I could find local teacher-librarians. I did join a group in the initial round called “Teacher Librarian Ning” that had some useful information and discussions. I thought I would try to do the same thing within our own little group.

I also left a comment for a metro area school librarian because I went to her school’s media website and liked how it was organized.

I would love to be able to use this forum for getting and sharing ideas from other people who work in a school. However, given that no one commented on my discussion for a year, I’m not sure how practical that might be.

Inauguration Day at School

Well, if yesterday was inspiring, today was incredible. I have to admit that it is heart-warming and encouraging to see even the difficult students being swept up into enthusiasm and cheers while watching an inauguration and a speech.

Just a desire to riff on the word--inauguration. An augury is a forecasting, a looking toward what the future may bring. (We'll skip the bird entrails part.) So what President Obama is doing, by being "inaugurated," is bringing us forward, predicting and prognosticating, what our future may hold.

So, on this occasion, a quick poem.

TEARS

Glances
Through the crowd
Emotion sweeps through and over.

Barriers crash like a sonic boom
Words ring out,
Ring true.

The fabric of what has been
Full of countless, painful tears
Now rent completely.

In its place,
In the hopeful eyes of multitudes,
Tears of joy.

At School for MLK Day

The school I work at has consciously chosen to be in session on MLK day, so as to teach about and around the topics relevant to human and civil rights.

I am often amazed at our students and their willingness to jump into such activities with enthusiasm and gusto. Today I did some of the normal things with students--lunch, recess, and dismissal duties--but I also helped 6 fourth grade boys put together two lasagnas (of the 14 the group was making) for a women's shelter, watched children talk about human rights and what they are, and listened to them sing songs about freedom and peace in English and in Hebrew.

Some days, the world seems to brim with possibilities. Today was such a day.

Thoughts on the First Day of School

“We cannot change the world altogether in one go, but we can have an effect, one act at a time, one day at a time, one person at a time. That is what it is, intimates Maimonides, to be awake: to know that our acts make a difference, sometimes all the difference in the world.”

(from To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility, by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, p.233)

The faces are engaged, enthusiastic, excited--whether on the children, parents, or teachers. Being a teacher, an educator, a parent, requires of us the belief that Sacks so eloquently states--that not only can each of us have an impact on another, but we cannot help but to have an effect. To that end, may we keep the hopes, dreams, and enthusiasms of this first day in our hearts to feed our needs as the year progresses.

And may we never forget that "our acts make a difference, sometimes all the difference in the world."