Today I interviewed on Zoom.
Immediately after I hung up, I shed tears of relief for it finally being over. Twenty minutes later I was offered my dream job: the librarian position in the neighborhood school where I have taught the last three years, where I served my grad school practicum, the place where (if all goes well) I can work until I retire from public school education. I already have a ton of things on my To Do list. I know what you might be thinking. "What a time to become a librarian! What could she possibly be thinking?" When I was four, I was in a car accident with my mom. Being the late 1970s, I not only wasn't sitting in the back seat, but I didn't have a child seat or even a seat belt on. I slid under the dashboard and scared my mother to death when she saw that the ketchup from my cheeseburger had smeared across the front of my shirt. I obsessed over the sequence of events that had placed us there: the dentist appointment, the delay in the drive-thru to fix my burger just as I wanted (with ketchup), the fact we were in my dad's car instead of my mom's, that we were in the right lane and not the left. I know that because of this, my brain rewired. I became a person who was always looking for the cause-and-effect relationships. If looking back, my big dig was always to find out why. If looking ahead, I was a logistics expert, planning for all kinds of contingencies. It can be exhausting. I was not prepared for COVID-19. I was not prepared for it to escalate this quickly. I regret not having a second refrigerator or a Costco membership. I regret not sending everything home with my students at Spring Break. I spent weeks lamenting the 5th grade's Promotion to Middle School Ceremony my son would miss and the Musical Theater performance of "The Lion King" my daughter would never get to perform. I saw before me a parade of missed milestones, like graduations, birthdays, and just human touch and gathering. Maybe we haven't gotten to hugs yet, but one by one, we adapted to Zoom birthday parties. We found that 5th Grade Promotion Ceremonies were shorter and Drive-by Parades were actually more fun, with kids popping out of sunroofs like a Jacks-in-the-box, sporting family members' old mortar boards and tassels. Graduations and dance recitals alike will have individually-recorded parts that will be edited together and streamed from the comfort of one's couch--so there ARE perks to this whole thing. A few. Not quite that many. So far, we've been fortunate. We've had four extended family members recover from COVID-19. My uncle passed away during all this from other causes, but his memorial has been postponed indefinitely. We've been careful, cautious, and so very lucky. I hope for otherwise, but I know not all of our students will be able to say the same. Still, last week I helped the outgoing librarian collect books, while wearing masks and gloves. The books sat untouched on the library carts the recommended number of days before being officially checked in and shelved. There are so many unknowns for the fall, from scheduling to rules for sharing materials to digital expectations. The most impactful decisions will be made by people with pay grades higher than mine, and I will find a way to work within those parameters. Yet I will still be a Librarian with a capital L. I AM a Librarian with a capital L. My To Do list has grown in the time it has taken me to write this post. Today I interviewed on Zoom, and tonight I will go to sleep Happy. Not just happy...Happy...with a capital H!
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When I was eight years old, my only saving grace from getting two allergy shots every Saturday morning was knowing that on the way home, my parents would take me to the local public library. There I’d have free reign over every bookshelf, where the pages of each tome held the possibility of escape, adventure, new knowledge...or possibly all three. Usually, it was all three. In my earliest of explorations of the public library, 398.2 was my home base, although I didn’t gravitate towards the banal versions of typical fairy tale lore. Instead, my favorite book was a 1980 reproduction of an Art Nouveau-era book titled simply, Russian Folk Tales, compiled by Alexsandr Afanasev, but more importantly (to me) illustrated by Ivan Iakovlevich Bilibin. Years later, I tracked down a copy, and the illustrations I beheld were the same that had been seared into my memory, just as glorious as the copy I had checked out repeatedly from that little library in South Texas, tucked behind a past-its-prime shopping center. In an era in which I was supposed to fear the Soviets and their looming threat of nuclear war, this book made me curious. A culture full of such rich imagination and beauty couldn’t be as horrible and far-removed as what I was hearing on the news and in what was not yet called popular media. This would not be the last time a book from the library would reroute my thinking, challenge me, or lead me to question and wonder. I gleaned from a very young age that books could open up the entire world to me. Today, the students I teach are at the developmental stage in which most are transitioning from “learning to read” to “reading to learn,” and literacy is key to their future academic success. For the past twenty-two years, I have strived to convey and instill my lifelong love of books and reading with my students, as well as setting an example for the four University of Texas teaching interns I’ve hosted, initially through animated read alouds (in the tradition of my parents’ bedtime reading theatrics); curating and organizing a thriving classroom library of high-interest books; and investing in the time to pair just the right book for every child. However, the position of a school librarian has evolved way beyond a guardian of the books on the shelves, and to me, it’s an exciting time to enter the field. As an educator in the 21st century, what constitutes as media literacy through innovations in technology and communication is at the forefront of how children locate, gather, process, analyze and scrutinize the wealth of information that is available at their fingertips. This is key in children’s development into independent, critical thinkers and leaders, as they look ahead to a future in which many careers and opportunities will be determined by technology that has not yet been invented, or knowledge that has yet to be discovered. My goal as a graduate student was to learn how I can best help facilitate this process in a school learning community. One of the things I most love about being a classroom teacher is building relationships, and the most fulfilling moments are when former students visit and relate something they learned in my class to their learning or personal interests. Being a school librarian will afford me the opportunity to establish long-term learning relationships with: students, as they transition year to year; partner with their parents through literacy programs and events; and collaborate with teaching staff. My ultimate goal is to help children navigate the vast ocean of information that's now available at their fingertips, helping them learn how to seek, locate, curate, and connect with anything their curiosity takes them...Beyond 398.2. All Images from: Bilibin, Ivan I. (1980). Russian Folk Tales. New York: Shambhala/Random House. |
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