Is This Normal?
The chaos that is the KerbersArchive for teachers
Girl time
Tonight I got to have some serious girl time. My friend Amy, who used to teach with at NCHS with us but has since moved with her family to Fargo, ND, came back to Normal for a visit. A bunch of women from work got together at another friend’s house, and as always we had a very fun time.
Since I don’t get girl time very often anymore, I think I cherish it even more than ever. It was so nice to have Amy in town, and I know that some of her older friends were so estatic to see her. As much as I enjoyed the time together, though, it really made me miss my old girlfriends even more. While I have definitely made some great friends here, I still don’t have that close-knit group of friends like I used to. Don’t get me wrong, I really do love my life here. I just long for some of the girl time I used to get.
Scariest conference ever
This afternoon my co-worker Caroline and I attended a professional workshop about Internet safety. Truly, this could have been one of the most worrisome workshops I’ve ever attended. The woman who presented to us was from the state’s attorney’s office in Springfield. Her job is to work on Internet safety prevention in school and with young people. The information she had for us, and even more so the statistics she had to share, were staggering. Cyberbullying is growing at such an astonishing rate that it’s now reported that 1 in 4 teens have been harassed, embarrassed, teased, and/or bullied in some digital format, and only 20% of these teens report the abuse. Cyberbullying has grown so much because it can all be anonymously, and the bully never has to see the actual reaction of the victim, which is often the only thing that makes bullies stop.
It’s so hard to be a teenager these days. One of the points our speaker made really hit home with me. When we were teenagers, there was a built-in filter for many forms of communication that just don’t exist today. For example, we had to get to know our friends’ parents, because when we called their house, the parents answered. Also, we wouldn’t ever take pictures of anything really incriminating, because we knew that those pictures had to be developed in a store, and strangers would see them. Currently, kids have complete peer-to-peer contact at all times. The natural filters are just gone.
Hearing the information presented in this workshop was important, but kind of depressing for me. I hope that we can pass the information along to our staff in a way that will convey the true danger of all of this instant communication. It’s really an important issue in education today.
So…many…meetings…
I feel like I have hardly been at school much at all lately. At the end of October I attended the ISLMA conference for two days. Then I had an all day literacy team meeting the Monday right after that. Wednesday of that week we had our local department leader meeting, and then today I had another half day meeting for our school core team in the afternoon and a faculty meeting after school. It’s so weird this year…I really do feel like I’m spending a lot more time in meetings than I ever have before. I know it means that I’m becoming more involved with our school and our district, but mixed emotions come with all that. I do understand the importance of meetings and committees like these, but man, it’s hard to miss school, too. I can’t even begin to imagine how a classroom teacher does it. I sure hope that I can find a balance between my actual job and these extra commitments I’ve taken on.
The “last” class
Tuesday nights are y ISU class nights. Typically at this point of the semester, I am ready to be done with my class. You know how it is…no matter how great the semester has gone, there’s always that point when you’re just ready to be done with it all. Right now, I think a big part of that feeling is because I got way behind in my grading, so I had to spend a lot of time last weekend catching up on that. Not fun. I was looking forward to this class for one reason and one reason only; technically, this is my last class of the semester. We really have three more weeks, but two of them will be filled with student presentations, and the third will be the take-home final exam.
Tonight, though, really turned out to be an exceptional class. The newly hired ISU Library Program Supervisor sat in on class, and it seemed like she really enjoyed it. She was making all kinds of positive comments to me, and she added a lot to the class discussion. Afterwards she told me that she loved my teaching style and said that she could tell that I had a lot of expertise in the field. What a great thing to hear from someone in that position! I know that at this point in my career I should know that I’m a good teacher, but it’s always so wonderful to have that reinforced by someone completely unbiased.
It always surprises me to see how much I get out of teaching this class. I hope that the opportunity to teach more of them does come, because I really do love it.
We have a contract!
This afternoon our teacher’s union finally ratified a contract. Yes, we’ve been in school for something like 11 weeks now, but we’ve been working without a contract this whole time. Finally, our negotiating team and the school board resolved many of their issues, and a tentative agreement was reached. With this afternoon’s vote, the TA was approved, and I will finally get a raise!
The new contract isn’t offering much of a raise, but it is only a two-year agreement, which is huge. Hopefully the economy will be better in two years, so we’ll be able to ask for more than a 2% increase at that time. The other really beneficial thing for me in the new contract is that a curriculum chair will be created for the IMCs. There will be one representative from the high school level, and there is a good chance that representative will be me. The only person with more seniority than me is retiring in a year and a half, so her salary was locked in three years before her retirement date. I’m excited for this new challenge. We’ve been asking for district level representation for years, so this is a really great advancement.
It’s amazing how rejuvenated I am at work this year. The change in IMC personnel has made a huge difference in my excitement and enjoyment with my job. That makes me very happy…I sure hope it lasts! 
Off to ISLMA
As I type this, the car is packed and I’m ready to head to Springfield for the annual Illinois School Library Media Association (ISLMA) conference. While I’ve attended the conference several years in the past, this year is different. For the first time, I’m presenting at ISLMA. Friday and Saturday are filled with what we call concurrent sessions. That means there are like 7 or 8 different sessions going on at once, and conference attendees can choose whichever one he or she feels will be the most interesting and beneficial. My colleague Ellen (who is one of the media specialists at West, the other high school in our district) and I are presenting together, and it’s the very first session of the conference. We’re anxious and very excited to see how many people we get for ours.
As always, there is some guilt attached to leaving the kids and Dave for a couple of days. But this time it seems like I’m handling it a little better than usual. Maybe that’s because I’m actually going to be working while I’m gone instead of just playing with my friends. I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends there, but it’s so much m ore about networking and getting some fresh ideas for the IMC.
Wish me luck with this new professional endeavor. Maybe this will become something I do every fall…like teaching the ISU class did.
Parent/teacher conferences
Today was parent/teacher conference day at school. The kids got to sleep in while many of the teachers worked harder than they normally do.
While this is easily one of the most dreaded days of the year for most teachers, we librarians absolutely love it! Conference day is one that we get to work absolutely uninterrupted, and it’s so nice to actually get some projects done. We did have to go to a morning meeting, but it wasn’t too long and it was a small group of other librarians, so it was not bad at all.
Believe me; I remember having conferences all day very well. It wasn’t all that long ago that I sat at one of those tables trying to convince parents that their students were either doing really well, or needed to do a lot more to be successful. Neither scenario is really all that great. So these days, I try hard not to rub it in that we get the day to work on our own without dealing with parents much at all. Some teachers appreciate our situation, and others just whine about it to us. I always say the same thing, “Hey, they’re offering classes at ISU to become a librarian…you’re free to take them and then get hired somewhere so you can have this one beneficial day!” That usually shuts them right up.
IMC book club
I did make it to school today, thankfully, and although I wasn’t feeling great all day, one thing helped make the day better. We had our first meetng of our new IMC book club today after school, and it was really great.
My co-worker Caroline and I decided to have our book club meet once per month. We both wanted to be a part of the fun, so we plan to close the IMC the third Monday of each month, and dedicate that time to book club. The students who were interested came to the first meeting, and they had the idea for us to choose a category each month, and have everyone read a different book from that category. Today’s category was Halloween, or scary books. We had a great variety of selections, and it was a really fun meeting. Even though the numbers were quite small this first month, I’m sure that interest will grow as word of mouth takes off.
As a side note, I read a Stephen King book called The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon for this month’s meeting. That book scared the crap out of me!! I even had nightmares one night when I read before going to sleep. I used to love all King books when I was in high school and college, but I am definitely more of a chicken these days. I don’t think I’ll be revisiting him anytime soon.
Next month we’re reading books from the 2010 nominees for the Abraham Lincoln Award. I’m looking forward to another great book discussion with some really awesome young adults.
Winning door
Each year at Homecoming, the Orange Crush organization (NCHS’s answer to Pep Club) sponsors a door decorating contest. I’ve never really been able to get any of our student helpers interested in participating, but finally we had a monitor (the technical name for our student helpers) who was into it. So the IMC’s doors got decorated.
We started late, and frantically threw stuff together, but by the time the judges saw the doors it looked pretty darn good. In the end all of the hard work paid off. The judging was last night, and our door was given the Iron Pride Award. Iron Pride is our parent-teacher organization, so I’m not really sure if that means they picked their favorite door or it means that our door showed the most school spirit. whatever the criteria for that award…we’ll take it! The kids were so proud of their work, and we loved being a part of the Homecoming celebration in a way we’ve never been before.
Homecoming ‘09
It’s Homecoming week at NCHS this week, which means a lot of fun for the students and a lot of headaches for the teachers. This year’s theme is “It’s A Jungle in Here” and this morning when we gt to school the atrium was decorated really cute. The student council had worked hard on their day off of school to get the building looking festive for the week.
They even taped green film over the lights to give the entire atrium an eery greenish glow. For a minute, when I walked in and saw all this, it made me smile and think, “This will be fun.” But it took me about five more minutes inside the building to retract that thought. Even though it’s only a four day week this year, the kids will just be totally nuts, and all of us adults in the building feel like we’re just babysitting. Every night has an activity happening, and the kids will get crazier each day closer to the weekend. To top it all off, the weather is supposed to be crappy all week, so there is very little chance of us going to either the parade or the game on Friday, which stinks. I swear, Homecoming seems to get less and less fun every year! Does this mean I’m getting old???
