News on One of my favorite Authors..

Coleen Salley.

You might remember my post from May when I had the pleasure of hosting her for an author visit at my school and then joining her for a dinner filled with good food (good wine) and some great stories - most told by Ms. Salley.

Another author and friend of hers, Deborah Wiles (and soon to be guest author at my school this year) had a wonderful blog post about Coleen and her failing health.  She gives an address where you can send Coleen a greeting, I know that I will be sending her a little something to cheer her up!

1st Day of School

Well 1 day down, 179 to go!

Was a much better 1st day this year than last when I was the new kid on the block.

I finished my new intro and pledge of allegiance videos to show on the morning news show at about 10pm last night (nothing like waiting until the last minute!) but they worked and other than the office buzzing into the studio during the LIVE broadcast, it all went well.

My new thing this year is that I am on the special rotation for Kindergarten.  I was a little worried about how that would go, but it went fine, no one fell asleep and other than having all 16 of them wanting to tell me about their older sister, younger sister, cat, dog etc.. it was fun.  I am reading my favorite library orientation book to them this week - The Library Dragon by Carmen Deedy and then we are talking a little bit about

 what a library is and how we treat library books.  I did NOT let them check out this week, and I may not until AFTER labor day - we'll see how things go.

As promised, here are some pictures of my prizes for the summer reading challenge I held 

a cup

>

filled with some goodies:

You can't see it here, but the pencil says Rock Springs Rockin' Reader - you gotta love Oriental Trading Company - $14 for 72 custom lettered pencils!

And finally, my own kids started school today also. I have a 7th grader, a 5th grader and a 2nd grader. It is fun to see them grow, but it scares the stuffing out of me to think that in only 5 years we will be celebrating my oldest son's LAST 1st day of school.

Here is our traditional 1st day of school picture - note that the oldest is not happy, having just gotten out of the shower.

Well I am getting back into the swing of things - open house is today - (where the students come in and meet their teachers) so not only do I have to work at my school today, I have to sprint all over town to go to my daughter's open house (she goes to our neighborhood elementary school) and my son's (he is in middle school).  I have to somehow get my youngest son to our school so he can meet his teacher (and then leave) and of course in the middle of all this there are two football practices to attend - I'm tired already!

I have been somewhat productive this week, I have painted my TV studio (now I just have to re-arrange it!), I have written a rough draft of a new media center handbook, sent countless e-mails to teachers, I am sending out my Media Odds & Ends newsletter today and the media center seems somewhat put back together.  I still feel a little un-organized, both at school and in my personal life, so I need to take this weekend to try and organize a little bit, or at least *think* I have organized things a little bit.

I will post a picture of my summer reading "prize" that I came up with and the bulletin board that I created to celebrate the kids that participated later today (IF I can remember my camera!)

This is it..

the end of the summer for me.  Tomorrow I go back to the grind - getting up at 5:45, getting to school by 7:30 (well, next week with out kids will be a LITTLE easier) and gearing up for 190 days of FUN!

it is SO hard to type that summer is over when it is 90 degrees outside! Although after sitting at sweltering hot football practices for my two boys this week I can't WAIT until the first crisp air of fall arrives (here in Atlanta, some time in late October - ugh!)

So, what did I do this summer?

I watched a LOT of my son's baseball games.

I read (although not as much as I wanted to)

I went to the neighborhood pool

I painted my daughters bedroom

I went to the beach in Massachusetts

I hung out with my family in Massachusetts

I took some technology classes

I finished my short movie field trip about the USS constitution

I walked SOME

and I ate some good food (some of which I cooked, some of which I let other people cook for me!)

What I DIDN'T do :

work on lesson plans

work on a virtual field trip to Lexington and Concord

paint my son's room

blog a lot

exercise a lot (although I did exercise some, just not everyday as I wanted it to be)

So now I have to think of some goals for the school year. Now if I had done some lesson plans during the summer I might have a better road map for this year, but hey, I work well under pressure!

Today I am going to go to the pool with my kids and some friends and then I'll think about my goals for the upcoming year tomorrow!

I'm not the only one...

Walter at The Monkey Speaks is also making a case for those things that are dying in our society - he is talking about the cassette tape!

I do love his quote:  "Libraries accept and give up technology reluctantly" - that is certainly the case in school libraries.  In my current situation, the school is only ten years old, so I didn't have too many obsolete items to go through (but we do have a HUGE number of cassette players), but in my last library, we had things I couldn't believe we had - film strip players, RECORD players - actually quite a few record players - and even an 8-track player!

I will say this, many times in the school library setting (and I am sure this goes for public libraries too) it is our Patrons (in my case, the teachers) who are more reluctant to give up the old "technology" and so we keep it to keep them happy.  You should hear my teachers when I tell them I am only purchasing DVD's instead of videos!

More Newspapers

So the other day I went into school to go through my mail and do a few things and I get a package from the local newspaper (The Atlanta Journal Constitution - the AJC) about their news for kids program.  I have a few teachers that use this program with their classes, they (used to) get a class set of newspapers delivered on Monday and the teachers would use them in different ways. One 2nd grade teacher has a cocoa and news time once a week where she makes hot cocoa and the class reads the paper together and then they talk about it - cool idea.

WELL, she will have to change her plans this year because the AJC is no longer sending paper editions to schools for their news for kids program - this year it is all electronic!

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

As I said before, although I LOVE technology and the web, I LOVE me some newspaper - the kind that you sit with on a Sunday morning with your coffee on the back deck. The kind that gets your fingers black.  The kind you can cut things out of for future use (I still have the clippings of my letter to the editor of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, circa 1985, it was criticizing a review of the Ratt/Bon Jovi concert -  tangible evidence that I have loved Jon Bon Jovi since 1985 - scary, I know!)

I know that the paper newspaper is going the way of cassette tape players and vcr's - they are still around, but on their last hurrah - this makes me sad. The other challenge is, most schools do not have a classroom set of computers in their classroom. So, doing a "newspaper" lesson will require time in the computer lab OR having the teacher project the electronic version using a projector (which in my school we will be getting in each classroom by the end December).

As far as I know, we will still be getting a daily copy of the newspaper for the media center, but there isn't much you can do with a whole class and one copy of the paper.

If newspapers are an endangered species, what is next, magazines?  Books?

In related news in the demise of the printed word, Monica at Educating Alice has a link to a debate on whether the Internet is helping literacy or hurting it - a very interesting debate!

Irlen Syndrome- and an ode to Newspapers

This was an interesting article in the Cape Cod Times this week on a rare reading disorder called Irlen syndrome.

Seems like this syndrome causes problems with the nervous systems ability to understand and process visual information, such as printing. Like with many rare disorders, it seems like many teachers/doctors/parents know little about this disorder and it goes undiagnosed. I had never heard of it until I read this article.

I plan to share the article with my teachers this year, one of those things that you never know who it might help.

On a seperate note, I love reading the newspaper - but in Atlanta there is one game in town - The AJC, but in Massachusetts, there is the Boston Globe, the "rag" the Herald (which is my personal favorite) and then area papers, such as The Cape Cod Times. When I am on the Cape I buy 3 newspapers a day - the Globe, the CCTimes and the Herald (the latter is a tabloid, the best to read on the beach!) and I am going home on Sunday with a bag full of articles I have clipped from all 3 papers over the past 3 weeks. I think that I need to start doing something in school so that kids can appreciate the newspaper, you never know what kind of information you might find in there! And while being able to access my hometown papers online is great, there is NOTHING like the feeling of a newspaper in your hands and newsprint on your fingers.