Today is school librarian appreciation day, so I’m going to toot my own horn about my full time job. I know this is my farm blog, but I have to focus today on being a librarian because it’s the reason why I’m too tired to post anything farm or finish that second book (which by the way, is soooo close to being done I can taste it). I am an elementary and middle school librarian. I love my job according to the title, but I tend to chafe against all the hidden job subtitles that get handed down to me, but I deal with it with 72% grace, but I have been known to send out demanding, all caps emails. If you get an all caps email, you’ve had plenty of warning. You have just chosen not to listen like when I have to tell my husband what time we are leaving for an event 30 times, and he gets the all caps voice at that exact time and he’s still not in the car. Nevertheless, I do my job amazingly. I work so very hard and it goes unnoticed most of the time because many people don’t know all the ins and out of what I do. Shout out here though to all the very appreciative teachers. They are the most thankful people on the planet. If I hand them a ream of paper they are over the top grateful. They are thankful for anything they can get, and I think that’s a trauma response to not getting anything at all. I am going to describe my job duties for you so everyone sees the responsibilities of a school librarian. Every school librarian has a different list of responsibilities, but just as chaotic, so send a shout out to your school librarian today and show them some love. My first duty of the day starts way before the school day begins. I check emails and make updates to the school announcements in my PJs while I have my morning coffee. I make a list of materials that teachers need so I can grab them as soon as I get there so they are ready for their classes. Once I arrive at school, I get to encourage young nervous children to read the announcements over the intercom and console them when they are horrified by saying a name wrong from the birthday list, or mispronounce a word, or drop all their papers and scramble around the office to collect them and accidentally say “Crap!” into the phone. Announcements are a high stakes business. In the midst of this I am refereeing between copy machines and very angry teachers. I generally have to protect the copy machines from a karate kick or two, but they deserve it. The copy machines are really top notch monsters. I am the copy machine whisperer and teacher calmer. The teachers deserve an award for just dealing with the copy machine. Please watch the video below for an accurate account of a copy machine’s attitude: https://www.tiktok.com/@myteacherface/video/7155217738682813742 I also collect all those materials that teachers requested and send my boys on a scurry of errands, all before 8 A.M. Next starts the planning and processing time, which is really supposed to be for me to make orders, repair books, weed materials, lesson plan, etc., but it turns into a time to deal with device issues, checking out spare devices to students who are missing their device due to repairs, and usually telling others, “Sorry, I’m out.” If I’m lucky I can fix a couple along the way. This is a new part of the job not a lot of people outside a school district realize. If you live in a rural district, your librarian might be fielding 90% of the technology issues that happen in a school day, and if you are one-to-one like we are, that’s a lot of technology issues to be dealing with. Basically, for the last two years, I have become the technology person for our building, and my lovely sidekick, Lisa, has become the new librarian. I’m cool with that. That’s how it has to be and we’ve made a great team. She is amazing and she gets it all done, and also lets me vent about all the stuff that’s stressing me out. She’s my cheerleader! But she’s moving. AHHHHHHHH! I don’t know what I’ll do next year, but I know it will be a chaotic mess. If anything has kept me sane for the last couple of years, it is Lisa doing most of the work and keeping me organized on the things coming in faster than we can get them out. I cannot express how grateful I’ve been for her. She’s going to have to reteach me how to be a librarian again. I’m not sure how the rest is going to work out, but I’m not going to worry about it. It’ll get done when it gets done. Once the classes start in a day, it’s a blur. It’s me reading a book to some first graders on the library rug as I also have a middle school student with a Chromebook issue, holding it beside me so I can go through the steps of troubleshooting. The 1st graders look at us like it’s a tennis match, as I have memorized the pages of The Gruffalo and bounce back and forth between the pages and the keyboard. Then it’s on to a 5th grade STEM class learning how to create a video game, while behind me, nine middle school students take a make up test while their class moves on to a new lesson. You might even throw in a few younger kids to come in and take a break or check out a book. The number of steps I get in a day is outrageous and my varicose veins can attest to it. There are no breaks, there are no plan times, there is no lunch. There’s multitasking and hoping that my aide doesn’t get pulled to another classroom when she’s supposed to relieve me just so I can go to the bathroom. There are snacks in the office while I respond to emails. I harp on the kids to never eat near their devices, but my keyboard is usually greasy or sticky from me eating over it (but I haven’t broken it yet). I arrive home after making 1,254,201 decisions during the day as a complete vegetable because most things that arrived at the library just piled up on my desk while I was busy with a class or working on another technology issue. It weighs on me, and I turn to Jello at home. It’ll get done when it gets done, usually on my day off. So, today, on National School Librarian Day, please thank your school librarian as they navigate a busy day of being the problem solvers they have always been in a new era. We have always and will always be the go-to to find the answer. The best gift you can give a librarian today is simple and free. Tell your students to go to the library, check out a book, and talk to the librarian about books, any book, because that’s where our real joy comes from. That would be the greatest gift of all. Happy National School Librarian Day!!!
Marcia
4/4/2024 10:34:43 am
You rock! As a librarian, teacher, daughter, wife, mother, niece, aunt and all the other hats you wear too numerous to list! Hang in there! Summer is right around the corner!😘
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MOM
4/4/2024 02:24:15 pm
I can read to the kids whenever you want me too.. I'll even bring a Lotus or pepsi. You deserve a break today....anyday...
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AuthorThis is my therapeutic release for all the things that annoy me about living on a farm. If I can make it humorous, I can survive it. |