Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot

Wow, what a heck of a way to end the year. No blog post until January Eighth. I'm losing my touch. And I had so much to blog about over the holidays, too.

It really must say something about my priorities when the last three or four blogs have started with some sentiment akin to "Gee, I should really update more often!" but there you have it -- Since starting this blog, my priorities have changed. And after updating my stories, talking with some old friends who haven't gotten a lot of face time lately, and clearing up some other lingering bits of business, I've been doing a lot of thinking about priorities, believe it or not.

This week I started my first round of student teaching -- two months in the middle school with a group of the funniest, sweetest, sixth graders a teacher could hope for. I was scared on Monday and Tuesday; I really didn't think I could make it through the rest of the semester. I didn't know any names, the kids all looked at me funny when I introduced myself, and my desk kept getting shoved aside. It wasn't a great way to start the week, especially when your roommate (who is also student teaching) comes home rhapsodizing about how well she and her teacher get along, how much the kids love her, how much she's loving student teaching and how much she's looking forward to the rest of the semester.

To put it bluntly, I was not getting the same warm fuzzies.

 I'm still not getting the same warm fuzzies today, but they're better, more confident fuzzies. We had a great conversation in the car on Thursday (after staying after for speech practice, because not only is my roomie incredibly confident that this is what she wants to do with her life, but she's also incredibly generous with her time at school and her participation in the school community. She wants to do everything.) about priorities, and Jackie said something really insightful to me, something I've wanted to hear someone say for a long time -- "Merc, I'm not saying this to be mean; you'd make a great teacher, but I think you'd make an even better librarian. That's where your head's at."

And it's true. Jackie was getting all excited this week because she got the kids who don't usually speak in class to speak, and I was getting excited about library day on Thursday and Friday. I got excited when I recommended a book to one of my kids (one of my books, from my personal library, that I loaned him) and he came back the next day after only reading in class and said "Can I take this home and borrow it? It's REALLY GOOD."  Now I get updates every day from him on how much he's enjoying The Hunger Games . (What really makes me happy is I think the fact that I was happy about this made Jackie want to start reading Hunger Games, and SHE ended up not being able to put it down either. SCORE.)

The library is where my head's at. I'm not thinking about how to make my language arts class better -- I'm thinking about how to make library time better. (Is there a list of authors who write about similar subjects? Can I put together a list of great new books? How would I put together a book display? What could I do to make this space more inviting? When can I get around to sending Rick Riordan a fan letter for writing the books that at least fifteen percent of my kids are reading?)

Of course I have to invest time in my teaching, and I will, but I think the course ahead is pretty clear -- One weekend, I'm going to have to sit down with some Grad School applications and find some more scholarship money floating around someplace.