knitting librarian

I found this meme at 3x Thursday. I’m doing this instead of posting about my day because I’m still too irritated to type it out.

1. What did you want to be when you were a kid?
A lawyer or a school librarian. If it wasn’t for my worries about judging student writing based on personalities or expectations, I would have considered being an English teacher, but I had too many bad experiences with teachers who graded based on who you were, not what you wrote.
2. What did you grow up to be? Are you happy with that choice?
I’m a school librarian, but I got here the long way around. I went to school to be an elementary teacher because when I was still considering being a school librarian I had most recently experienced an uninspiring librarian. I interviewed a local college reference librarian in hopes of feeling more inspired but she spoke in a monotone about her job and it completely turned me off to that idea. I just couldn’t imagine being like either of them.

I love my job. I love the variety, the challenges, the changes that have occurred in my career so far. I would recommend it highly—and there are currently shortages of school librarians or anticipated vacancies due to retirements, so if you’re interested, find out more!
3. If you could choose any job for the next 30 years, what would it be? Why?
My mom and stepdad both retired from teaching after about 30 years. It wasn’t long after they retired that Vince cheerfully reported that he’d finally figured out what he wanted to be when he grew up: retired! I think that they had great careers, but they were happy to be able to retire while they could still enjoy themselves and travel and do whatever they want.
I really hope I’m not working for another 30 years, but I am quite content to continue in my school librarian role until it’s time to retire. I attribute this to the fact that I haven’t stayed in one school for my entire career. I’ve worked at five different schools in four different school districts. I suspect I’ll be working for at least 15 more years and it may be closer to 20. All of that will depend on working conditions and our finances. From what I understand about our state teachers retirement system, once you hit 29 years of teaching you’re actually losing money if you keep working. (This is apparently related to taxes and other deductions.It’s too far away for me to worry about understanding it now!)

Early this morning I got a phone call from the Math and Science Curriculum supervisor. He said he was calling about two things. First, he wanted to check about availability of the library for students to complete a survey related to a grant the district won. Once we got that out of the way, he said that he’d gotten an email from one of the science teachers saying how helpful I’ve been and what a change there’s been in the library since I came. The support of technology that I give and the information I’m sharing with teachers and students is wonderful. Ed had told me the same thing directly about two weeks ago, but it sure was nice that he said the same to the district supervisor AND that it got passed back to me from the top.

One of the biggest difficulties of working in a big school (there are about 150 teachers in my building) is the sense of isolation I’ve felt. If it weren’t for lunch duty, I don’t know that I’d see any administrators on a given day. I have cafeteria duty with the assistant principal who also supervises me and even so, I haven’t heard one word (from the bosses) about the newsletters I send out to everyone or the faculty brochure I put in everyone’s mailbox. I do feel very supported and appreciated, but I guess to me, those simple communications are visible and something easy to compliment.

I started checking statistics for the year and in the first nine weeks there were more than 7000 students in and out of the library both independently and with classes. Based on the circulation statistics, it looks like we’re on track to stay the same, but according to Patty and Diane, the majority of circulation occurs in the second semester when students are working on the graduation project and they feel that more books are going out than is usual for this point in the year. It will be interesting to see where we end up at the end of the year relative to previous years.

Kids have been flagging in the cafeteria. Apparently we’re cr!p-central. I’ve heard that flagging frequently precedes trouble (by days or weeks). I sure hope if it erupts in the cafeteria, it’s not a day that I’m there alone. :/

Tonight on one of my knitting groups, Kerry mentioned that she hasn’t been satisfied with beaded stitch markers because they get tangled in her knitwork and the plain loops just don’t have the same wow! factor as something beaded. She mentioned Needle Huggers stitch markers and I’m smitten.

Hide and Sheep sells on their site and at Etsy. They’ve also got some neat row counter bracelets.  Hubby probably needs color suggestions, but he’d do well to do some inquiry and shopping at this site. (If he ever bothers to read my blog, he might figure it out.)

What gifts are on your holiday lists? What should I add to mine?

Tonight I went to a library benefit, silent auction and wine tasting with my friend Theresa. We had a good time, mostly because there were a few other people there we knew. Aside from the servers, we were probably the youngest people in the room by 15 years.

The benefit was held at Shade Mountain Vineyards, a local winery. They’ve got a pretty good variety of wines although they weren’t offering that many to taste that I would have chosen, as most were dry. Even so, I came home with four bottles of wine and a bracelet and earrings set.

After, we did some Christmas preview shopping where I didn’t really buy much, just looked around at what I might buy for people. We also looked at paint samples to get some ideas for the house, although I don’t know whether we’ll actually decide to paint a whole lot or if we’ll stick to the basic white initially.