Ah, fellow librarians. We love us some details. I gave a few when I first mentioned the new job, but here they are again more in depth for those that care:
I currently work in Gwinnnett County, GA at an elementary school with about 1500 elementary students. It's about a half hour drive for me.
The new elementary school is also in Gwinnett and it's current enrollment is around 800. But they've just built a new school in the area and it's taking away a big chunk of the students and staff so next year's enrollment is projected to be less than 500. Yes, less than 500. Oh, and it's only about a fifteen minute drive for me.
The schedule is mixed. It has added "Library" to the Specials in the past year rotation but that's just two classes a day with the rest open for sign-up. Right now it's on a six day rotation of specials with three ten-week rotations of grade levels. I don't know if it'll still be six days next year, but I think the ten-week thing will stay. I know that right now they have the 4th and 5th grades in the last ten week rotation but want to change them to the middle ten to get them ready for spring testing season.
I'm imagining that even tough the enrollment is going down, the class sizes might go up. Right now I have 24 student computer stations but I'll have to keep in mind that some of the upper grades might have more students than that.
All Gwinnett County schools have at least one librarian and two tech people. I'll have a clerk, but next year she'll sadly be only half-time library and half-time office help.
Having two tech peolple is not to say I won't be engaging in technology, of course. I'll be running the morning broadcast with our funky little studio as well as using the computers for lessons, updating the library web site, and various projectors, interactive white boards and what not.
There won't be much money for new books and I can see that I'll be doing a lot of weeding and replacing of older titles my first year.
But the school is nice, the people are friendly and for some reason they're letting me run their library which is kinda like letting your kids run your candy store.
I think I'll be having me some fun.
Trust me, there will be plenty of more details later.
(image cc flickr)
