knitting librarian

Nancy from Center for Teaching and Learning has created a list of books her students recommend. I need to use this for collection development so this is just basically a placemarker for it. The page also talks about their reading program and how students average 40 books a year at the middle school level. She attributes it to the availability of a wide range of reading materials that appeal to all students. Interesting reading! It would be a good thing to share with my school’s Literacy Committee.

Jamie Vollmer – Burden on Public Schools

I found my way to Jamie Vollmer’s website by way of Doug Johnson’s Blue Skunk Blog. Our schools truly are expected to do it all for kids. Some of my students don’t have parents who care enough to send them to school clean and fed each day. It’s depressing to see how kids come to school. Some are dropped off here when their parents go to work—if it’s 7am, they’re dropped off before that and then they get to sit outside the building and wait until the cafeteria opens for breakfast or until the first bell rings at 8:10.
Some of my students have wonderful parents who can (and do!) give their children everything. In fact, the class size for some of our “enriched” students was so large that parents complained: to the principal, the department chair, the assistant superintendent, and finally the superintendent. Guess what? The district hired a retiree to come in and teach an additional section so the class size could be smaller. Isn’t that great? But, what about those kids whose parents DON’T advocate for smaller classes for their child? The ones who could really benefit from more attention are not going to get it. The ones who’ll be successful no matter who teaches or how many kids are in the class are going to get it because their parents pushed for it.

It’s sad. Read through Vollmer’s discussion of the changes in public education since 1900. It’s amazing the number of roles that schools and teachers have assumed in the transformation of a student from young child to (hopefully!) responsible adult. I wish that there was more that I could do personally to help my students whose parents aren’t as involved or concerned with their child’s education. But you know what? Teachers can’t do it all—we need the help of parents and a community who sees the value in public education and is willing to fund smaller class sizes, newly adopted textbooks, well stocked libraries, and to invest in these kids future. They’re priceless. We need to raise them to become responsible, productive members of society, but it takes more than teachers to do it—parents and the community at large need to value education.

Vollmer’s also created a word “nostesia” to describe the condition that is summed up by folks comments like “In my day….” He says nostesia is “a mind altering mixture of 50% nostalgia and 50% amnesia.” Many of the people who complain about education are suffering from this disease—at our open house the other night, I heard many parents “remembering” how things were when they were in school and what they did and didn’t do or learn or act like. I think I’ll be keeping my eye on Jamie’s site and sharing it with my colleagues.

There was a suggestion on LM_NET over the weekend to add Quick Picks to the 586 tag in our catalogs so that students can find good books that are short, appealing, fast reads. I love this idea so I went to the YALSA website and printed out lists for 2004-2007 and will work on adding these to the MARC records for my library holdings. Great idea! Now I just have to make posters to tell students what Quick Picks are and why they’d want to read them.

I’m so worried about little Miss Zoe and her illness/reflux/whatever it is that is plaguing her. She has been giving back copious amounts of her formula since Wednesday. I ended up calling her doctor’s answering service last night after I told a friend that she’d only kept down about four ounces yesterday. She thought I should take Zoe to the ER. The doc didn’t think that was necessary, fortunately. I was told to give her formula in the morning if she had wet diapers but electrolytes if she didn’t. She was starving last night at 11pm, so we filled her belly with the pedi@lyte and hoped she’d make it through till morning—which she did.

Today, she gave back probably 4 ounces. She did take 6 ounces of pedi@lyte at 6 this morning, then 2 ounces, then three ounces. I gave her her first dose of meds at 3 this afternoon and then fed her 3 ounces. She slept and I fed her again after we had supper. She was turning away from the bottle and then pulling it back to her. She finished only to give it all back plus some partially digested stuff from her last feeding. John fed her about 8 and that 3 ounces seems to have stayed down. We’ll feed her again in a bit for the last time today (I guess that’ll total 17 ounces of formula and 6 ounces of electrolytes. Not quite the mandated 25 ounces, but probably closer than we’ve been in four days. Of this, though, she probably gave back at least 4 ounces. So is that normal or is she going to be losing weight and have us back to doing weight checks like we had to do with AJ?

I finally got a chance to photograph my Brown and Blue Swaparooni package. When I did, I was looking for the bag of chocolate I got, but it wasn’t on the table and it hadn’t fallen off the table either. I wandered to the kitchen and found the empty! (yes, I said E-M-P-T-Y!) bag in the trash. I got to eat two whole pieces of chocolate from this bag. There had to have been at least a dozen! Only two, really? So, I fussed at John who said “You said you didn’t like them.” Yeah, right, me not like dark chocolate . . . I guess he can live with that, but I don’t buy it. So, he and AJ ate most of my chocolate. AJ wants my candle from the swap. I guess I’ll have to take the lotion, body butter, notebook and notecards and pens to work so that I can use them or I might not have a shot at them either. At any rate, Sheena did an awesome job selecting items for me, even if I didn’t get to enjoy everything. Did I mention that I love dark chocolate and I didn’t get more than two pieces from this bag? Boys!

I think John’s probably ready to kick my butt up around my ears anyhow because it seems like anything he does makes me grouse at him. I was grumpy on Friday at my uncle’s retirement party. I was grumpy yesterday because Zoe’s so sick and I feel like I’m doing most of the feeding and clean up. I was grumpy today for that reason, plus AJ didn’t eat all of his dinner and John gave him snacks even though I told him he needed to finish dinner before he got anything else. Plus, did I remember to mention that they ATE MY CHOCOLATE! I just wanna cry. I probably should go to bed and hope I wake up on the right side tomorrow.

Zoe has had a little bit of reflux for quite some time now. This week, all of a sudden, she was vomitting up most of her bottle after every feeding. I started by slowly reintroducing water then pedia*lyte then smaller than usual portions of formula. She did well on Thursday night but was bad at daycare on Friday, giving back everything and then crying and stressing out the babysitter who called Momma to see what I wanted her to do—I could hear Zoe crying in the background and ended up crying along with her.

I took her to the doctor on Thursday. He did a chest xray to see if her cough was something serious. It was inconclusive—not perfectly clear and not so full of fluid to determine that was the problem. He decided we should treat it as reflux and wanted me to add rice cereal by spoon into her diet to help hold the formula down in her belly. I held off until today thinking it was a virus because she’s got intestinal issues too. This morning she didn’t hold down all of her pedia*lyte but did keep most of it down. At 1pm, I tried giving her some rice cereal by spoon, but she didn’t know how to deal with it, cried, and ended up pulling it out with her fingers. I ended up taking a knife and enlarging the hole on one of her bottle nipples to make it so the rice cereal would come through. That worked with one ounce and one teaspoon of rice cereal. She kept it down. I gave her another three ounces/three teaspoons at 2:30 and it stayed down. At dinner, I tried her with four ounces/four teaspoons and she gave it all back. I’m frustrated and exhausted and worried sick. I talked with another friend whose son has reflux and she said the prev@cid has made all the difference for him—he still gets sick but he doesn’t cry. She really hasn’t been fussy with her spitting so I don’t know what to do—medicate or not?

I think at this point, I’m going to go talk to the pharmacist tomorrow since I trust both of the men that work at our pharmacy. Hopefully they can tell me whether they think it’s worth medicating or not. I hate thinking that Z is suffering if I can prevent it, but I don’t want to medicate her if it’s unnecessary. Anyone with experience or advice feel free to chime in!