Re: What do you do all day??

[Johanna Halbeisen <johanna@MASSED.NET>]

Le Ann - I wrote this up for two different schools.  Here is the most
readable one (for a K-8 school where I was by myself in a library for 1,100
kids):

Just what do school librarians do all day?
Don't they have an easy job, just reading to kids and checking out
books?

I am so glad you asked!  Here is a representative sample of what I did
one day last week:

*Find books with info on Babe Ruth for a teacher.
*Go through the fiction section and find all the books that are on a 2nd
and 3rd grade reading level.
*Talk to the reading specialist about how to determine just what
constitutes a 2nd and 3rd grade reading level.
*Show 7th grade helpers how to mark the 2nd and 3rd grade level
fiction.
*Pull Thanksgiving and Native American books and make displays so
teachers can find them easily.  Search for a picture book, I Am
Thankful, to add to the display.
*Check on 7th grade helpers to be sure they are doing the job right, go
over several steps they didn't understand.
*Train a volunteer how to put the nonfiction back on the shelf.
*Find books on camouflage for a teacher.
*Show volunteer how to stamp the audiovisual kits.
*Start to plan how the students' check out cards will be filed and
retrieved.
*Realize my directions on stamping the kits weren't clear, go over how
to stamp kits again, more carefully.
*Locate a video of folk tales for a primary teacher.  Make a note that
several have requested videos based on children's literature and that
we have none.
*Suddenly remember that two volunteers who usually come on
Thursday told me they are coming today.  Scramble to find jobs that
each will enjoy doing.
*Cover two dictionaries with plastic covers.  Call down to Central Office
and beg for them to send me five more plastic covers so I can cover
the rest of the reference books.
*Pull a rhyming picture book (usually found in the picture book
section) from the music section of nonfiction where it has been very
erroneously catalogued.  Put it in a growing stack of books that need
new call numbers.
*Pull a cookbook from a section on crafts and put in growing stack of
books that need new call numbers, to be reclassed to the cookbook
section.
*Make four phone calls, one to a publisher tracking an order we
should have by now, two about the operation of the copier, one to
request a supply catalog that a teacher asked about.
*Help two 6th graders look up Veteran's Day in the encyclopedia, give
a mini-lesson on encyclopedia indexes.  Discover that this encyclopedia
has next to nothing on Veteran's Day.  Help kids search for another
book that does have info.

And this is before I get to read to kids and check out books!


---------------------
Johanna Halbeisen, Teacher Librarian
Woodland Elementary School (preK-4)
80 Powder Mill Rd.
Southwick, MA 01077
johanna@massed.net

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