I’ve been seeing red over this whole situation all week; I sat down with my union rep and vented. She recommended I draw up a list of my accomplishments, what I was hoping to achieve this year, and how this schedule disrupts it, to make the case for not having this happen next year. Unlike the other staff that is being shared between my school and the elementary school, I have a full-time position here at the middle school. The other teachers need their time over there to go from .8 to 1.0, and I didn’t know if the principals realized that I don’t. Although I don’t teach 5 classes per day, my position is a full-time one right here in this building.

We went and met with the principal this morning, and it turns out he was already on board for not sharing staff in the next budget cycle. But I still wanted to share the two and a half pages I drew up, to show you all a bit of what I’ve done in the last two years, what I wanted to do, and what a shit show the coming year is going to be.

(No, I shouldn’t think of it so negatively. One of my best friends told me that I’m going through mourning the death of the year I thought I could have. It hurts to write off a whole year in the first days of it.)

Accomplishments over the last two years in the [Middle School] Library:

• Got the library back to being a clean, functional educational space
• Organized the collection
• Re-established circulation procedures, thereby cutting down on materials loss
• Encouraged student reading by:
  • Pairing with team SSR programs
  • Purchasing high-interest fiction and non-fiction
  • Doing book talks and displays
  • Being approachable and enthusiastic about reading
• Established the lunchtime library program, which encourages students to spend time in the library and see it as an accessable space
• Joined the South Eastern Massachusetts Library Association (SEMLS), thereby gaining free access to databases for student research
• Attended regional and national conferences to learn how to improve library services
• Participated in national discussions about library services for teens
• Created of two library websites, which provide easy universal access to:
  • Online research pathfinders
  • Databases
  • The library catalog
• Receipt of over $10,000 in grants over two years

Plans for the future:

• Establishing the library as an after school space with activities
• Getting library curriculum adopted by the School Committee
• Writing collection policy for the [District] Public Schools library department and getting it adopted by the School Committee
• Integrating library curricular goals into wider curriculum. Topics include:
  • OPAC use
  • Research skills
  • Intellectual citizenship
  • Online safety and etiquette
  • Copyright
• Continuing to improve the collection to support reading and research
• Improving student and teacher access to free online educational resources

Disruption in the [Middle School] Library service caused by this year’s schedule:

• The library must be closed when I am not in the building
  • The library space is not a safe one to have unsupervised (hidden corners, high shelves, broken furniture, etc.)
  • There have already this year been books taken by students without checking them out; books will be lost/stolen
  • There is computer equipment that can be destroyed through careless use
  • The door to the library does not currently lock, so although the library is closed when I am out, there are still material/safety/liability concerns
• When the library is closed:
  • Students cannot check out or return books
  • Teachers cannot bring classes for expanded instruction space
  • Teachers cannot have classes in library or research skills
• The computer lab should also be closed when I am not in the building
  • The technology staff for the district expect me to be in charge of and responsible for the safety of the equipment in the library and the computer lab.
  • Our computer equipment is old, slow, fragile, and frustrating.
  • Many teachers do not supervise the computer lab effectively
    • Teachers take the time when students are “self-entertained” in the lab to perform administrative tasks such as grading
    • Students in frustration or due to overconfidence mess with the computers, breaking or disabling them
    • Last year, the computer lab was routinely left in unacceptable condition after being supervised by a teacher
    • Although the layout of the lab is no longer as conducive to this, twice in the last three years there have been sexual assaults in the computer lab
  • The computer lab is connected directly to the library, so when the computer lab is open, there is access to the library, and all of the above concerns about having the library unstaffed apply.
  • If the lock on the library door were to get fixed, the computer lab door requires its own key, and should not be left open to the hallway
  • Without a mainstream curricular mandate for the librarian to teach technology, internet, and research skills, I need all the leverage I can get to fold my curricular goals into the larger instructional framework.
• Because I will be at the [Elementary] 4 days in the afternoon, teachers who want to bring their classes to the library or computer lab for instruction will have to bring them over multiple days to have all students get the lesson
  • Without a mandate from the district curriculum to do research in middle school or to do it with library instruction, any barrier or complication greatly reduces the likelihood that teachers will bother to bring their students to the library.
    • One teacher has had to schedule her library and computer lab orientations over four days across three weeks. I’m grateful for her flexibility, but she shouldn’t have to contort her teaching schedule like this.
  • Teachers and students alike are overconfident in the abilities of students to perform internet research tasks effectively. Although our students are digital natives, they are not proficient at evaluating the validity of online sources, refraining from plagiarism, or even knowing why these things are important. We do them a disservice by allowing them to simply Google research questions and copy/paste their answers from Wikipedia.
• Having to plan for tasks here and at the [Elementary], as well as travel over there, severely limits the time I have to function as library administrator. Things I do that are not instructional, but support the functionality of the library include:
  • Organizational tasks, such as shelving, displays, and cataloging of new materials
  • Evaluation of possible library material purchases
  • Ordering of new materials
  • Seeking out opportunities for free materials
  • Research into free technology to support teaching and learning
  • Networking with library professionals all over the state and the world to keep abreast of developments in my field
  • Writing grant applications to get additional funding for the library
  • Writing curriculum and policy for the library

Except today, Twitter was blocked.

Naturally, because of how scared the head of technology is, the teachers do not have install privileges. Hell, we don’t have privileges any different than what the students have, which is highly unusual. So I can’t get on Twitter, my main connection to the wider library world. So, while I’m not hopeful as to the outcome, I wrote him this email, cc’d to my principal.

Dear [Head of Technology]:
I can see that over the break your team was busy updating the firewall, since I can no longer access Twitter. Although I disagree with the decision to block all social networking for the students, I understand and respect that decision. However, Twitter is my second most important online professional tool after GoogleApps (which I cannot currently use to its full potential with students and faculty). I use Twitter as my primary connection to the larger school and adolescent library world. I’m the only one in this district who has my particular responsibilities; often my most important colleagues are not people who work in this school but rather professional connections I’ve made in the last three years that I keep up with via Twitter. It is my first stop for suggestions when I run across an issue, a prime source for information about new and exciting literature for teens, and how I keep abreast of studies in my field. It is how people who read my posts on the blog for my professional organization contact me. I need it to be unblocked on my primary work computer. Barring that, I would like install privileges so I can install a client to access Twitter from work. While Twitter may seem frivolous when you look at much of the initial media coverage of it, the library profession, particularly librarians serving young adults, use it heavily and seriously as a professional tool (look at the density of Twitter references from our most recent American Library Association conference). I eagerly await your response.
[My Signature]

I also made the Top Ten Tweets for the third day of the con. Librarians tweet a lot, so I’m kinda proud. (For the curious, I ended up getting 140 free books, with only four accidental duplications.)

ingredients:
-one of the massive onions from costco
-a potato from the farm share. wait, it’s rotted. two potatoes from the grocery store.
-those curried carrots leftover from shabbas. what, you don’t have curried carrots laying around? why aren’t you making more mildly curried carrots? they’re delicious!

RTWT here.

I never thought I was going to have such a serious problem with a popular book that I almost didn’t put it on the shelves. I’m a cool, gay, sex-positive, pro-teen agency guy, I thought to myself when I was getting my MLIS, the parents may have problems with my selections, but too bad! I’m here to advocate for the students. And then I read Twilight.

RTWT here.

Attending the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting is what pushed me over the edge. I realized I need a uniform url to link to the various and sundry places I’ve put my thoughts down, and hopefully put them down more and more. So I’m working on a few back-posts, and then it’s onwards and upwards to new, if infrequent, content. Hooray!