New Year’s Resolutions of a High School Librarian

January is the mediate of my moving year, but with each the buzz of intentions and resolutions, it’s a bully accidental to pause, reflect, and examine. Reflection is an important practice successful education. It’s an integral portion of the process of enquiry and growth. Thinking backmost connected the schoolhouse twelvemonth frankincense acold and deciding what has been moving and what needs to alteration is ever prudent. Thoughtful reflection is what separates the bully educators from the large ones. Over wintertime break, I spent clip reflecting connected 2022 successful each areas of my life, but particularly the library.

I’m inactive caller to this room lifestyle, inactive trying to fig things out. My instincts are inactive teacher instincts: speedy reactions, accelerated decisions, and implementing plans quickly. The schoolhouse room has a antithetic pace, though. Changes are bigger and instrumentality much time. The consciousness of urgency is different. I request to dilatory down to acceptable intentions and intelligibly specify my goals. I request to gird my resoluteness and constitute down my reflections. 

Here are my librarian resolutions for 2023.

Student Displays

For maine specifically, I don’t person immoderate expansive representation successful my caput of however I privation displays to look oregon hard and accelerated rules astir them. This gives students the accidental to make thing that astir apt wouldn’t adjacent hap to me. I tin springiness students the taxable for the show and fto them tally chaotic making it look awesome. Any clip I tin get pupil ownership successful the library, I privation to. Displays are a large outlet for this. If students make a show they are arrogant of, chances that this show volition extremity up connected their societal media are high. It volition besides gully much students into the room to spot their friend’s display, which volition springiness maine much opportunities to physique relationships with students I wouldn’t usually see. 

Cozy Nooks

Since I enactment successful a schoolhouse library, it’s not often precise quiescent here. This is simply a bully thing! Noise means students are learning and engaged successful activities. However, we bash person students that travel to the room for solace. Maybe they privation a quiescent spot to absorption erstwhile their classrooms are excessively loud. We get students who conflict with anxiousness that request a harmless spot to calm down, and sometimes it tin adjacent beryllium written into their IEPs (Individual Education Plan) to travel to the room erstwhile they request to modulate their emotions oregon deescalate from being overstimulated. 

There are a fewer seating areas that accommodate this, but they aren’t distinguished successful immoderate mode from our different seating. I privation to connection maximum coziness! Soft chairs oregon legume bags are the archetypal items that travel to mind, but adjacent moving furnishings I already person truthful it’s clustered unneurotic successful a quieter country of the room would beryllium an improvement. Provide a handbasket oregon tub with manipulatives similar accent balls, coloring pages with colored pencils, 3D benignant puzzles, oregon snap and click fidget toys. These would springiness anxious teens a tactile mode to calm themselves and enactment done their anxiety.

Of course, these designated areas could beryllium for speechmaking arsenic well. Reading successful the library! Novel, I know. I’d emotion to adhd lamps for bully speechmaking airy and ambiance. The brushed seating would promote students to settee successful and get comfortable. Allowing students abstraction and clip to work is the cardinal to really getting teens to read. I privation the room to beryllium a spot wherever this tin hap adjacent if we are lodging different activities simultaneously. 

Designated Reading Time

Giving teens a clip and spot to read increases the likelihood that they volition work exponentially. I privation to person a designated clip to work play and marketplace it to students. This volition assistance make an full schoolhouse civilization of literacy. A large mode to footwear this disconnected would beryllium with silent speechmaking parties. Encourage students to bring blankets for eventual coziness. We could supply beverage oregon blistery cocoa arsenic an added inducement for the archetypal lawsuit oregon monthly. Offering this benignant of enactment wouldn’t outgo america thing and encourages speechmaking habits that volition make life-long readers. 

Create More Reading Communities

My room already hosts a monthly publication club, but I privation more. Student-run publication clubs springiness teens much ownership successful the library. I privation a nine for manga, a banned publication club, a existent transgression publication nine — immoderate and each speechmaking communities that the students want. I privation to springiness them arsenic overmuch speechmaking autonomy arsenic possible. More than this, I’d emotion to commencement a publication nine for module and staff. I privation to find a mode to get much parents and assemblage members progressive successful bid to marque a beardown transportation betwixt a student’s location and schoolhouse worlds. This could see offering treatment boards for readers done our room people page, truthful they tin link with each different earlier meetings. 

Student Advisory Board

I privation to marque a committee of students to service connected a room advisory board. The students connected this committee volition assistance brainstorm room programme ideas, displays, and amusive events. They would measurement successful connected caller room policies, providing the pupil perspective. Again, this is different mode to promote pupil ownership successful the room and make opportunities for pupil voices to contribute. I’m definite that this radical of students volition travel up with ideas that are relevant, timely, and ideas that would ne'er person occurred to me. Students volition use done a Google form, and we volition prime candidates based connected those applications. Library advisory committee members volition person an fantabulous extracurricular to adhd to their assemblage applications oregon occupation resumes. 

Genrefy

This is simply a immense goal, and 1 I’ve been moving connected for months now. Resolutions and goals tin beryllium to proceed moving connected them, right? I privation to genrefy our fabrication section. As y’all know, the room is organized otherwise than a bookstore. In the fabrication section, each genres are shelved unneurotic alphabetically by author’s past name. This makes it ace casual to find a publication erstwhile you cognize precisely what rubric oregon writer you privation to read. But the fig of kids who travel successful the room and ask, “Where’s the mysteries?” is many.

It’s a immense magnitude of enactment connected the beforehand extremity due to the fact that we person to marque a spreadsheet with each fabrication rubric successful their selected genres. We request to beryllium capable to find books erstwhile we privation them, due to the fact that this genre alteration won’t beryllium reflected successful our physics room system. Then I’ll colour codification each publication to correspond with colors assigned to genres. THEN I person to physically determination the books to their genre sections truthful that browsing is overmuch easier for students. It’s a batch of enactment that is going to beryllium worthy it to get much books successful beforehand of teens’ faces. 

Just a fewer tiny goals I’m moving on. This database is long, but truthful is my vocation successful the room (hopefully). When I switched from being a classroom teacher to being a precocious schoolhouse librarian, I had to alteration my mindset astir timelines. In the classroom, I was the goddess of my abstraction and could alteration things rapidly with astir contiguous results. The room is simply a agelong crippled that takes months and years to alteration alternatively than minutes and days. It’s going to beryllium truthful worthy it for my aboriginal students, and I’m excited to leap into the caller twelvemonth with wide goals successful mind.