Essential Worker

As the school year started back, in-person, at the end of July, this was me a lot of the evenings when I got home:

The stress was seemingly unreal and mostly from me expecting too much of myself with too little time to do it.  Since school had closed mid-March, I was not able to finish genre labeling the remaining books in the fiction section (F SNI - F ZZZ), which meant trying to do it all during preplanning.  It also meant moving 4,000 books into their new sections by myself.  I insanely, and very briefly, considered doing a full inventory of our books, since I was supposed to have done it at the end of the previous school year, but thankfully gave myself permission not to do it. 😄

Deep breaths.

To accommodate some changes to the way our library would function this year, I made and shared a Bitmoji Virtual Help room with lots of different links for both virtual and face-to-face learners.  I also made a Google sign-up calendar so teachers could bring their entire class for library checkout.  Circulation numbers have been down, but keeping kids safe is priority number one.

At a professional development session that I taught during pre-planning, I was still trying to wrap my head around how to do virtual checkout.  Some of the attendees suggested simply emailing families and messaging them through our county's learning management system, ItsLearning.  That turned out to be a workable solution to figuring out the coordination of pickup and drop-off of books while I was in specials teaching all day.  Other solutions started falling into place, like figuring out that I had to use Internet Explorer, not Google Chrome, to get Destiny Media Catalog to reset on its own for hands-free checkout.  Then my principal limited parent pick-up/drop-offs to Wednesdays-only.  This helped to streamline the chaos of fulfilling virtual orders and contacting families.

The built-in 5 minutes between each fixed-schedule library class really helped me have enough time to clean the tables and chairs and to actually have time to prep for the next class.  About 1/3 of our student body opted for virtual learning.  Less kids created a schedule in which I saw the same 5 - 6 classes, five days in a row.  While this limited student and staff exposure to each other, it also provided the bonus of time together!  When we didn't finish an activity, we just worked on it the next day!   

Students have already had all the county digital citizenship lessons.  I created age-appropriate activities to accompany Georgia Picturebook Nominees for 2020-2021.  Five classes celebrated International Dot Day, and what they created was just as amazing as every year! The first five weeks of school flew by!

When the TeacherGeek Makercarts came, thanks to a STEM grant (that I didn't have to write!), I was somewhat excited but also back to feeling overwhelmed. Our science lab paraprofessional instructor and our instructional technology specialist both helped me unpack the boxes.  Our science lab instructor came back and helped A LOT.   Her "can-do" and "How can I help?" attitudes really helped me when I was struggling. 💖  

(Look at this cute, tiny hammer!)  

 

The instructional technology specialist had some time, so she asked if she could help me.  She started cutting wooden dowels and building bases for students in first grade.  I dove in after her and built all the Gears, and then made almost 80 sets of Wiggle Bot components so that students would have their own individual set to tinker with and/or to build.  I then made 26 sets of Sail Car components.  I had a maker activity for 1st - 5th grade students!  It wasn't the Makerspace and creative freedom of last year, but it was more complex builds and better than nothing.  

It is now December and we have built Wiggle Bots, advanced Wiggle Bots, Grabber Tools, Gears, Sail Cars, Rubber Band Racers, and Projectile Launchers.  (Even kindergarten got in on the action!)  We have begun to get back into Biblionasium to recommend books to peers and write book reviews.  We have created zines, Zentangle art, and paper forts.  We have designed Wixie book covers, made mixed media art, and written book summaries.  We have danced and made music!  We have played with our creations.  We have read many great books together!  We have laughed through our masks and longed for books that are in quarantine. We have shopped virtual book fairs and asked to check out more than 3 books at a time (and I let them because - Books! The joy of reading!).

2020 schooling sure looked different this fall, but it also shaped my teaching practices in unexpected and wonderful ways!  Starting tapping my husband's creative know-how (October) and some student snowflake-making power (December) to get some bulletin boards made.  

                   

Did a better job of not immediately saying "no thanks" when offered help.  And, really learned to set better work boundaries, going home at a decent time and leaving unfinished work unfinished.  

See you in 2021! Looking forward to all the wonderful blessings it will bring!