Big Suprise at School Today

In our first PD of the morning my AP starts going on about the guided lending library and how you can check out books to use with your classes.

Huh? What? Where?

"Wait, what about the library? Where is it now?" I asked. "In the closet. Ms. X moved all the boxes and spent a lot of time labeling it." Replied the AP. *Me mildly panicking inside.*

After the meeting I went to go look at the closet and to my surprise it looked beautiful! It's in the closet that I originally wanted it and it looks great. The labels are actually the check out cards that I made. Since they cut them to be labels I'll have to come up with a new sort of check out system but it's OK because I understand why they had to do that to make them fit. I'm very happy. Check it out:
(Just a portion of the library.)

In other news, my principal came up to me this morning before the beginning of her meeting and said with a big smile, "A lot of things may change. We know what you want." Referring to the fact that we now have two coach vacancies so classroom teachers may get put in those positions thus opening a lower grade class for me. Why would she say that?? We still wouldn't have and ESL teacher so I'd have to stay. If she really wanted to give me what I wanted she would have looked for an ESL teacher to replace me over the summer. Just why? Why would she bring that up again when it is not going to happen. And now even if she did offer it to me--hello, I just spent all day organizing and decorating my room. Aargh.

Well, over all it was a decent day. Look at all the supplies I got from our basement.

The Library That Never Was

It was a year ago this week that I presented my idea to create a guided reading lending library for my school to the assistant principal. She loved the idea and we immediately started working on putting it together after the last day of school. Many teachers were paid per-session rate ($40/hr.) to help me collect, organize, and level the books. I also planned a whole PD session on how to do guided reading. In September I bought supplies to hold the books and created a check-out system. I was given an empty classroom to set everything up and I spent many lunch periods and preps putting the finishing touches on everything. Additional books were needed to fill in the gaps so I wrote out a huge book order. The library was ready for teachers to come in and check out books! Here is a picture of what it looks like . . .





Now here's the sad part of the story: Not a single teacher ever got to use the library.

As I worked to finish the preparations at the beginning of the year I tried to set a date with the principal to introduce the library and how to use it as well as to give the PD that I'd planned. She picked some date in October but it didn't work out. Then she suggested I give it at the Election Day PD. "November will be here before you know it." Well, turned out we had district people talking to us about data that whole day so it got pushed back again. And so on and so on until we all practically forgot about it. After the ELA I pushed to introduce it again because "Book Clubs" were the focus in the upper grades and that would be perfect for the teachers to have sets of books to check out. Still didn't happen. Finally it started getting to the point where the year was wrapping up. Is anyone even *teaching* guided reading now (if they ever were)? I just didn't feel motivated to bring it up again.

Now it is the last week of school. Half of my book order arrived last week. Today I integrated them into the library. And still not a single teacher has been able to take advantage of the library and all of the time, effort, and money that has gone into putting it together. I fear for the fate of the library next year. The classroom that the books are housed in will go back to being an actual classroom. The books could fit in a large closet but the proper shelving would have to be installed to make them fit and be accessible. Half of my books can't be ordered until next year's budget "opens up."

I still can't figure out why they dropped the ball on this one. All the work was done. All the effort put in. Plenty of money spent. A simple workshop and set of keys was all I needed.

Guided Reading Lending Library

In the last two days I've spent ten hours working to get my idea for a guided reading lending library off the ground. I am actually amazed at the amount of work that I got done (with the help of some other teachers) in just two days. I wanted to take a picture of the work in progress but I forgot to bring my camera.

Thursday I started by laying out all of the books that I had sets of (5-8 books). There was another teacher who had quite a few sets too so I added those to the piles. I then went around to every teacher's room (there were quite a few working) and asked them for what ever they had and added them to the stacks around my room. By the end of the day every desk and table surface was covered in sets of books.

Today when I came into my room I was overwhelmed at all the work there was left to do. Luckily I had three great teachers there to help me. Leveling the books was the biggest and most important part of the whole project. Two teachers worked on leveling the K-3 books (by using the Fountas and Pinnell book as well as by comparing them to anchor books and descriptions). I used the F&P 3-6 book to look up the other titles. Anything I couldn't find in the book was given to a third teacher who used a binder with level descriptions to figure out each book. By 1:00 we had leveled ALL of the books! I had had serious doubts about completing the job but we did it. Next came the task of organizing the books in groups by level A, B, C, etc. and the recording on a list to see what we had. As it turned out we had a pretty good assortment of books for each level. For levels P-Z, however, we were really lacking in books, just one or two titles per level. We'll have to order those books for next year. Finally we worked on coming up with a system for loaning out the books. Each set will be stored in a magazine file with a library card on the front. When a teacher wants to take books they just take the books and the book info card (with teaching points, vocab, etc.) out of the file, sign the card, and go.

Now we just need to organize them into the room/closet that will be their home (TBD at the moment). We want them to be in a place where all teachers can get to them any time they want without having to ask permission or hunt someone down for the key. If it's not accessible and easy to use, teachers won't use it. We'll probably get another day or two to work on the project next week (for some reason our school has lots of extra money to spend before we loose it). This is great news because I'd love to have the room ready to go by the start of the school year and September is just such a busy time for something like this.

When everything gets set up I will definitely share pictures.

Last Day of School Wednesday (Sort Of)

So the last day of school is Wednesday and I couldn't be more excited. Soon I'll be off to Guatemala for a month and just before that a good friend of mine from high school is coming to visit for a week. But even though the kids' last day is Wednesday, I'll be at school on Thursday and Friday too.

Ages ago I had this idea to start a "guided reading lending library" (I just made up that name) at my school. I saw it at a school that I went to visit and thought it was fabulous because I never have enough books on every level to use for guided reading and my AP doesn't like it when I use the paper books printed online from readinga-z (because "we have PLENTY of books at this school"). Basically the "lending library" is a book room that has guided reading sets of about eight books each, and several titles for each Fountas and Pinnell level A-Z. When teachers want to plan guided reading all they have to do is go and grab their class sets for the levels that are needed. Everything is organized and waiting to be checked out.

After seeing this storage room at the school I visited I thought We have to have this at my school! I tried to get around to telling the AP of my idea but you know how they are always running around and it's hard to get them to stop and listen for a minute. Well, I finally told her about this idea on Friday and she LOVED it. And it makes sense that she would because we'll be making good use of the books already in our school and it solves my problem of needing to use the paper books (which are a pain to get copies of at school). I just didn't expect her to love it so much as to say "I want to start this right now! Can you work Thursday and Friday?" I did a quick mental calculation in my mind and came to the realization that that was the start of my summer break. She added that there would be per session pay and I agreed. Not only for the money (though I would NOT spend my first two vacation days working for free) but I am really excited about this project. Teachers can't do guided reading without sets of books and it is impossible to run around trying to round up the books you need each week. And contrary to what some at my school think, you can't do guided reading from a basal reader. I hope that I can get a lot accomplished in the two days. I also hope that teachers are appreciative of everything once it is done. If they're not, they probably aren't doing guided reading like they should be.