Remember that Life's One Big Balancing Act

All I need to know about life, I learned from Dr.Seuss.

Oh, the Places You'll Go seems an apt book to center my professional ponderings.  The school year has been in session for less than a month, and yet - and yet - oh, all the places (the meetings! the deadlines! the committees!) you'll go, indeed.  So, this post is going to be about balance - so that "you'll start happening too".

Balance on a professional level and balance on a personal scale.  As teacher librarians - and more broadly - as educators, there is a tendency to fully throw ourselves into our profession, is there not? 

We are the working professionals who take work home with us, not occasionally, but daily.  We go into our schools on weekends, stay late on weekdays, and cultivate our professional learning networks on Twitter, Pinterest, nings, what have you, at all hours of the day.

But, is this really sustainable?  

I'd like to posit a new way of teaching and working and living: Sustainable Teaching. Sustainable teaching's motto is inspired by Dr.Seuss: life is one big balancing act.  When the school year starts, how many of us get on the see-saw and immediately sink to the ground?  Or fly up to the sky? How better would it be to teeter between our work and our personal lives, in a harmonious back and forth that ebbs and flows in a natural, organic way.

How many of us get back a little of our mojo during the summer months, only to abandon ship come mid-September?  Those after school runs?  Too many meetings.  That after-school yoga class?  Well, can't I do savasana on my couch instead?  That resolve to eat healthy snacks?  When I'm under stress, just give me chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate.

I'm going to try my best this school year to find that balance.  My new motto is: What the world doesn't need is one more stressed out teacher librarian.  For some reason, just saying that aloud makes me laugh.  And laughter, as Dr.Seuss knows, is the best medicine of all.

Global Teacher Fellowship

I have just wrapped up an extraordinary experience traveling to France and Italy for 15 days as a Global Teacher Fellow.  My colleague, Pam Dow, and I applied for and received monies to travel to the lands of fairy tales, to soak up the rich medieval and Renaissance cultures that produced such classic stories such as Charles Perrault's Sleeping Beauty and Puss in Boots, plus Italian treasures such as Carlos Collodi's Pinocchio. 

We documented our travels on our blog, Global Teacher Fellowship.   We will continue to use this space as we explore and bring to life the wonderful adventures we've had as we share them with our students.  We came back from Europe with pages of ideas to integrate what we discovered from our travels.  

Traveling to new and exciting places stretches us as human beings.  Being able to navigate new ways of transportation, new languages, new tastes and new ways of doing things always makes me more confident.  Traveling is like a big puzzle: most of the time, the pieces all fall into place and the reward is an experience that elevate our spirits and opens us to new worlds.  And when a piece doesn't fit in the puzzle where it is supposed to go, we learned that there is always a plan B.  And sometimes, that plan B leds to a richer experience.  Flexibility mixed with purpose, plus a dose of patience, lots of laughter, and a gift from home for the people we meet along the way (for us, a little glass bottle of maple syrup was our gift for our new friends) is the right attitude.  The best part of this is that we had the opportunity to model this for our own daughters, Josie (my soon to be 10th grader) and Emily (Pam's soon to be 9th grader).  We squeezed them into our suitcases for this adventure of a lifetime.

I will be forever grateful for the Rural School and Community Trust for selecting Pam and I as 2013 Global Teacher Fellows from a national pool of applicants.  This experience will forever change me and ensures that my students will know that: the world is their oyster;  being a global citizen is their birthright; sometimes you just have to toss your hat into the ring and see what happens; and to never stop dreaming.

Dynamic Landscapes or Bust!

Day one at Dynamic Landscapes has been a thrill.  Without the pressure to present, I've been able to enjoy connecting with my peers and all-valuable Professional Learning Network, take lots of notes, do copious amounts of tweeting (you rock #vted), and enjoy lingering in conversation and camaraderie.

Tomorrow, with a closing keynote to deliver, is another can of worms all-together.  My colleagues across Vermont are doing amazing, innovative, and outrageously creative learning with their students.  As a whole, they sure have set the bar high.  I console myself by thinking, okay Meg, you are not being asked to jump over the bar, but simply to tell your truth, your story.  

My truth and my story in inexplicably intertwined with that of my students. I am delighted to share the stage with eight of my students, who have proven to me by signing on for this that indeed, you can't have brave without scared (thank you Linda Urban for that quote, via Kate Messner). These kids are my heroes.  They didn't need a twitter intervention, a la The Daring Librarian (like yours truly did) or convincing.  They know themselves in a confident way that I find refreshing and enlightening.

My take-aways from today at Dynamic Landscapes (thank you Shannon Walter's for always posing that question) are the feeling of support from a network of dedicated teacher-librarians, educators, technology specialists, and more.  I especially loved Judy Kaplan's presentation of embedded librarianship, a model that I find empowering and full of promise. This kind of school librarianship is highly customizable, attuned to local needs, fueled by passion and curiosity.  Her message to not just be the change, but be the pearl, is unique and filled with Judy's signature style of humor and spot-on metaphor.  Whereas she considers teacher librarians as the crown jewels in a school, rather than be the diamonds, emeralds, or the showy rubies, that we are the pearls, created by grit and irritation  added onto layer by layer, adding value and worth every step of the way.  

Just might have to wear my pearls tomorrow for good luck.

Caught in the Act: Shelf Challenge 2013

Every now and then, us school librarians decide to get wild and crazy.  Well, in actuality, it happens more than you might think, but never more so than in the heady spring days of April.  When April rolls around, it is a jammed pack month, library wise.  It's poetry month, Red Clover and Dorothy Canfield Fisher voting (at least in Vermont), and (drum roll, please) School Library Month.  And the birthdays!  Hans Christian Anderson, Shakespeare, Beverly Cleary... there is never a dull day in the library, you see.

So, as if I don't already have a million and one things on the back (and front) burners, I threw caution to the wind and accepted The Busy Librarian's Shelf Challenge.  My mission, which I choose to accept, is to read the "C" section of library's picture books.  Phew.  Not so tough after all.  I have about four cubicles of "C" books, just enough to give me a challenge, but not so much to overwhelm me.

This assignment has me doing something I haven't done for years.  Reading.  Yes, actually reading a book, to myself, not aloud, and not on the sly. Really reading, from cover to cover.  On the clock. There's a myth that us librarians get to read all the time.  And we do.  Many of us in fact read lots and lots and lots of books.  But, never on the job.  Always after hours, on our own couches, in our tubs, and while swinging on our hammocks during summer vacation.  Never, ever, ever while getting paid to do so.

I think I actually nearly gave someone a heart attack - they were so shocked to see me sitting on a chair near the bookshelves, just reading.  When they didn't see me at my usual perch at the computer, they thought I wasn't in the library.  I feel like such a rebel.  To read.  To be a reader.  To be caught in the act of reading.  At work.  In a library.  Oh, the irony!

I've read about a quarter of my assigned books so far and weeded out three. (I'm keeping track on a Google Doc.) But the gems!  Here are four that go beautifully together, tied together for a farm-related theme perfect for preschool through third grade. All four are absolute keepers on their own but woven together, their symbiosis becomes sublime.  A discovery I never would have made hadn't I been caught ... reading.

Beyond Dewey: Behind the Scenes in a School Library

Out of all the classes I teach at Moretown School, the time spent with my fifth and sixth graders is truly a model of 21st century teaching and learning. While there are elements of a “traditional” library class firmly in place that you might recognize from your own schooling, such as fostering a literate community through rich book discussions, nurturing a love of reading with book groups, and a mention here or there of Melvin Dewey, there is much that we do that is collaborative, that ignites creativity, and develops the critical thinking skills essential for today’s information packed world.  The integration of technology into learning is a passion of mine, brought to the forefront through our vibrant 1:1 netbook program.  

Students come to the library with their Dell Latitude 2120 netbooks in hand, every week, for lessons and units structured to take advantage of these incredible tools.  A recent in-depth research unit had students evaluate sources from print encyclopedias, Wikipedia and WorldBook online.  Sounds like a boring unit, that is, until students watched Michael Jackson’s The Man in the Mirror video, a montage of powerful clips and footage of historic events from the 20th century.  Suddenly hooked, students choose a person or event from this video to research, evaluate information from all three sources, synthesize the facts to answer a higher-level  question and share what they discovered to their classmates.  Teachable opportunities abound in a unit such as this and ones that are essential as students navigate the Internet.  My aim is to present learning opportunities that allow for investigation, questioning, communicating, and creating.  We know that technology isn’t the panacea for our students’ successes, present and future, but it is essential that they know how to use tools that empower them and their learning.  It is essential that they own their own learning.

To further deepen their engagement in learning with technology, in collaboration with their classroom teachers, I have introduced the Google Apps in Education suite of educational tools.  These include a school domain email address (which can be used to send emails to other Moretown students and teachers) and access to Google Drive (document, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing).  I continue to be amazed by how responsive our students are to these new tools, which  allow for even greater independence and collaboration than ever before.  

Hand in hand with greater access to technology comes a greater need for responsible, safe, and respectful behavior online.  In this aim, our school counselor Jason Stevenson and I are  co-teaching a cyberbullying unit, with the end product being a series of cyberbullying public service announcements animoto videos aimed to inform parents, teachers, and administrators.  Be on the lookout for these very soon.  

Powerful Moments...

As a child, I was entranced with the Cape of Good Hope, the point where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans collide. I would pore over maps, enticed by cartographic images of wind-blowing heads, sea monsters, and sailing ships. When this dream came true, I had turned 21 a day before, and was living and studying abroad in South Africa.  What a powerful feeling it was to outstretch my arms and feel the Atlantic and Indian Ocean winds.  And I too, at once wholly alive and present, felt bisected by both my past and my unfolding future.

Photo by Yotofuji Tanaki. Creative Commons