[LM_NET] advice

[jennimklady <jennimklady@YAHOO.COM>]

Hello, everyone. I am a brand new librarian about to begin my second semester in an 
elementary school library. First, I want to say that I love being a librarian but I 
don't think the place where I work is a good fit for me. The first semester was 
quite rough. I am planning on looking for a job at a middle school or high school 
for next year, but I would appreciate any advice to make the second semester 
bearable. Let me set up some background so that you know where i am coming from. I 
work in a public school that has multi-aged classrooms (3, 4, 5 year olds together, 
1st-3rd grades together, and 4th-6th grades together). The way the library schedule 
is set up is that it is part of the specials rotation along with PE, Art, 
and Music.  Each PK/K class visits the library every 4th day. Each first through 
sixth grade class, however, visits every other day. there are 8 1st-3rd grade 
classes and I see 4 each day and they switch each day. I have each class
 for 30 minutes (if they are on time) and then I either take them to PE or their 
teacher comes to pick them up at the end of their conference period. What this 
means for me is that I am lucky to have them 25 minutes. Each class has between 
18-24 students, which means I cannot let them all up at the same time to go choose 
books or it is utter chaos. But I have found that even though i have set forth (and 
posted) clear expectations and rules for behavior in the library and try to control 
traffic by allowing a couple of table at a time to choose books, something is still 
not working. The students still feel as though it is acceptable to get up and 
wander, crawl under the desks, hit each other with books  etc. (i've tried 
rearranging the asssigned seating),Then i have the students in line who are 
waiting to check out books and students who need me to help them find books. (I 
can't have a student worker run the computer because it is very temperamental and
 often gives error messages that i can deal with quickly and I would be running 
over to the computer every few seconds to deal with them so it is easier for me to 
run the circulation.)  So I am frustrated that I have no time to teach the kids how 
to use the library or work on information literacy because I barely have time for 
crowd control and circulation. The principal is adamant about the children getting 
books every time and I am not allowed to withold checkout from them for behavior 
issues. I don't have anything else to hold over them. I am tired of being a 
babysitter and I desperately want to do the job I was hired for. Can someone PLEASE 
give some advice on things to try???  Much appreciated!


Jennifer Murphy
Librarian
Alta Vista Elementary
Waco, TX
jennimklady@yahoo.com


      

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