The Next Reason I Should Become a Librarian

Has it really been ten days since my last post? Sheesh. What kind of a sad excuse for a blogger am I?

As is the case with most huge gaps between posts, real life was giving me the short end of the stick when it came to having too much to do and not enough time to do it with. These last two weeks in addition to having to prep for my usual four classes, I had to carve out three hours everyday for teacher observation and find time to print and correct forty copies of my Book Arts project. Well, actually, forty copies of one side of my book arts project -- I have to go in next week and print the OTHER side of the sheet now. So that's where all my time's been going. No time for writing, no time for reviewing, and a smidge of time for reading before I went to bed at night. But them's the breaks, right? And I'll graduate in four years, which is fine and dandy because I don't want any more debt.

Teaching observation these past two weeks has been interesting, to say the least. For three hours every day I get to hang out and observe some seventh and eighth graders at a local junior high. I had conditioned myself to fear these two weeks, thinking those crazy preteens and their raging hormones and their ridiculous mood swings would get the most of me.

Truth be told, I'm having a lot of fun.

Seventh graders are fun because sometimes they still remember how to be kids. Give them an art project and they're happy. Ask them to read and eventually everyone will read. They love to tell you things about thier lives they don't think you already know (I got a lecture on how Facebook works after I had already said I have a Facebook) and they enjoy laughing. Some of them have learned already to hate school, but some of them -- some of them! -- are still out to learn. Last week we worked on poetic language, in the form of metaphors and similies, and I was pleased as punch to hear a few students describe school not as prison (although it was mentioned about four times) but as a party, a jungle, and a picnic. (Alliteration was one of the lessons I wasn't there for.)

On Friday I had planned to expose the reluctant reader I've picked out for a case study I have to conduct to ten books I thought she might enjoy. The week before I'd given her a reading interest survey and asked her about what she already enjoys reading (Twilight) her favorite movies (Twilight, John Tucker Must Die) and her hobbies (none)

Using this smidgen of information (and what I'd already observed about her) I found ten books I thought she might enjoy -- Books with strong, spunky female leads, books about vampires (all vetted by me to be better than Twilight, which, by the way, only has a forth grade reading level and a ninth to twelfth grade interest -- yikes!) and books with a healthy dose of comedy in them.  At the end of class on Friday I tried to speak to her about why these books are awesome, using the 'book talk' format. It's a bit like pitching a new product to a consumer base, a commercial for the book, if you will. Well, my reader didn't listen to me, but five other people in the class did, so you know what? I call that a success. Some of them wrote titles down, some of them agreed that the books I had brought were good. I had gone home on Monday feeling like a failure. On Friday I felt like a hero. The Great Momapedia, savior of reading everywhere.

The mental conversation I had afterwards is one I've had with myself a few times this year -- I might not be good at this teaching stuff, but I am really good at being a librarian. I give a version of book talks every friday night when someone comes in without a movie and I find five or six to pitch to them. I love that part of my job.

And let's face it, I love to talk about books.