Last year, in the middle of the pandemic, I wrote a blog post that celebrated all the work that school librarians were doing to support not only their school communities, but dealing with family stress, too. Now, more than a year later, school librarians are still struggling - some of the same elements remain but …

Makerspaces: My Favorite Part about Being a Librarian
As librarians, we have many components of our jobs. It is our job to develop and maintain the collection, continue relationships and collaborations with staff, connect students with the right books, advocate for what we do to our administrators as well as the rest of the stakeholders, keep up with a makerspace, and the list …
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#oneword2021: Refine
For the last several years, I have gotten on the #oneword bandwagon. The concept has been around for a while - choosing at the new year a word that will hopefully guide you to being a better person that year. My very first #oneword in 2016 - I obviously couldn't narrow it down - were …
Here’s to Librarians.
I haven't written in a while, and while there are lots of reasons (well, really one: I got busy.) I felt a tug at me to write this post for days. So here goes: I saw a post on Facebook recently that was a cheer to teachers in all different kinds of circumstances. With some …

Cultural Proficiency in the School Library
Recently, our school's staff had a professional development session about Cultural Proficiency. I consider myself as a librarian to be very open and welcoming to ideas and cultures that are different from mine. I decided I would listen to the presentation through the lens of the library, hoping to find something new. I left with …

How 1:1 Made Me a Better Librarian
Happy Library Week, friends! Our school recently hosted a site visit for other staff in our county to come observe our students and staff using their laptops and observe how 1:1 has changed education at our school. I walked around with some staff who asked great questions and were eager to hear what we had …

A School Librarian’s Purpose
I never thought I would be a school librarian. Since I was 5, I always wanted to be a teacher. I would play teacher with my stuffed animals, tutor my friends as we grew up, and convinced myself (and others) that was that. Not a principal, not a mom, not an architect, my dream was …

Building Community through Student Ownership
In a conversation with a teacher the other day, she remarked how much she enjoyed seeing "student stuff" around the library. I kind of laughed and wasn't really sure what she was talking about; of course we have the forgotten agenda, an occasional lunchbox, and the renegade pencil case, but she mentioned things I didn't …
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#oneword2018: Community
I'm feeling a bit like a slacker since I ended 2017 with a resounding lack of blog posts (only 12 in 2017, compared to 20+ in 2016 - sorry!). However, 2017 was my greatest year yet in the online blogging world: over 4,200 visits to my blog and 2,600 unique visitors last year! (So thank you!) …

Top 5 Takeaways: My Experience at SLJ Leadership Summit 2017
One of the things I love most about being a school librarian is networking with other librarians - to collaborate, share ideas, and get inspiration for how to improve my practice. Through a generous scholarship from the Virginia Association of School Librarians, I was able to attend the 2017 School Library Journal Leadership Summit in …
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