Ms. Yingling comments: "I'd find it interesting to see what the daily operations of your library are, but that's just me!"
I got here today at 7am. I don't know why, since I didn't sleep particularly well. The thing about today, is it's unusual because it's a Book Fair day. But then are there ever any "normal" days in a school library?
Already this morning I've talked to a 3rd grade teacher about a laminating matter. I had to bust her chops last year because she really goes crazy on the laminating. I've hardly seen her this year and this morning she admitted she'd bought her own small laminator. "It's expensive," she complained. Welcome to my world. She had a game with game pieces she's been reluctant to do on her own and is also reluctant to ask the media clerk because, in the teacher's opinion, the clerk rushes and will overlap many of the little game pieces.
Those little game pieces teachers give us are a pain in the butt. It's much better, as the person running the machine, to have it laminated first, then have them cut out the pieces. But then, of course, the laminating doesn't hold together well.
I got the book keeper to move the laminating film cost to the "Instructional Supplies" line in the school budget this year instead of "Media Supplies," so that's a relief.
Then I had a 1st grade teacher in here with a video she wants me to play at 2:00 on the closed circuit system for all of 1st grade to watch at the same time. I set an alarm on my phone and told her to make sure to tell the other teachers to have their stuff up and ready and on Channel 4 at 2:00. Last time I did this a kid came in 15 minutes after the thing had been playing wanting me to start it over because their teacher had it on the wrong channel.
8:00 - Clerk just got here. We were discussing book fair sales from last night's PTA event and she's getting ready to change into the Clifford the Big Red Dog costume to greet students as they come in this morning for the official kick off of the book fair.
A teacher just brought in ANOTHER damaged CD/cassette player. It's been like a boom box holocaust around here lately. It's the 26th unit this year! I hope all these tech writers are right about us all having tablets or whatever soon so teachers can just have mp3s to play instead of physical tapes and such.
8:20 - Bell just rang to let students in. The assistant PE coach just came in to ask about borrowing a projector cart and portable screen for next week. She's going to set up her Wii and four remotes and the whole class is going to do Just Dance and take turns holding the remotes! That will be something to see.
She and a K teacher are now helping the clerk zip up into the Clifford costume...
Yeah, so what if Clifford is causing a traffic jam in the lobby? The little ones are so happy. And the older ones think it's funny that Clifford is waving a copy of the newest Captain Underpants book around and pointing to the book fair.
Well it's 10 now and it's nutty. We've had two or three K classes that we've helped fill out Wish Lists for. Those K kids are funny because they can't do anything on their own. Heh heh.
One teacher sent some kids down to return all the books from her class, I guess forgetting that we have a book fair. We sent them back. They came back down and said they were to beg us to let them come in and check out at their normal time. It's book fair! Some other class has signed up for their time already! The clerk went down to see her and now they are coming at their normal time if the teacher can keep her thumb on them while we deal with another class in the book fair and she checks them out herself. Yeah, this is going to go smoothly. Last half hour of the day too. Stay tuned for that bit of fun.
I'll go ahead and post this now because I just got handed a silly job to do and it'll take some time. I'll update at lunch (if I get a lunch today). Right now it's a brief quiet moment between K preview classes...
