Congratulations! Holy Crap: Tips to Survive your First Professional Job

When I was 22, I was desperately seeking literally any job that I could use my bachelor's degree for a job in education or writing. Though I was open to all over the country, I only applied for jobs where I knew people, so I could use their addresses when applying, which turns out to be a terrible idea. But, you know, YOLO.

I ended getting a call the Tuesday before Labor Day. By Thursday I was in the office of a principal in rural FL, being interviewed for the position of Reading First reading coach, a position that technically needed, according to the grant they ended up hiring me with, an actual Master's in Reading, which, at the time, I happened not to have (I did know a lot about reading, however; it was the credential that I was supposed to need). I was appointed as the TAP mentor for special areas and special education, which I also had no business doing.

The principal told me they needed a reading coach to attend their district meeting in 2 hours, and could I attend?

Show Me the Awesome: Iron Fist 3: Adult Management

This week I'm glad to join the many awesome people posting for Show Me the Awesome: 30 Days of Self-Promotion, started and curated by Liz Burns, Sophie Brookover, and Kelly Jensen. Here's a post at Stacked explaining the project, and All the Awesome is collected here.

Artwork by John LeMasney, lemasney.com

I'm writing this post jointly with my new coworker, Brooke, who writes about her adventures in librarianship at Reading with Red.

As a former educator and classroom management survivor, I've written a few times about managing our Children's Department, complete with a to-scale boat and a life-size giraffe (here and here, respectively). It's been a trip, and we're finally getting to a place where our space is used by children mostly as it is intended.

I realized, though, that now we've gotten a handle on the kids, we're experiencing something that I haven't written about before:

Mythbusters for Kids: Sneaky STEM #2

In April, I decided to do a bunch of science programs and call them "Mythbusters." The premise was based on the fact that this website exists, but when I got deep into what I could plan for cheap/free and what wouldn't need parental waivers or worry about balloon allergies and stuff, I turned to other science books and websites. And just when I  thought I was done for, I turned to the mother of all STEM websites, Gizmos, Gadgets, and Goo. I link to that so early with the implied promise you'll come back here. I talk about it later + an extra treat for you!

Everyone knows the best part of "Mythbusters" is proving whatever family member/high school acquaintance who shares those memes on Facebook wrong (or right). It's the vindication, the ability to say, "I saw that happen, man." This is why, when we Confirmed, Busted, or "Plausible"d a myth, it was based on whether or not we could do it. If our conclusion conflicted with science, I'd say something like, "look at this! Some scientists have actually said this myth is CONFIRMED, but we said it was BUSTED! We're making new science right here in this room!"

Time Crunch Librarian

Click here to see our slides

A few weeks ago I was able to present with Anna (Future Librarian Superhero) and Anne (So Tomorrow) at the Michigan Library Association's Spring Institute in Lansing, MI. Though Anna, Anne and I talk through various social media outlets, I just met Anna in person last May at the WAPL conference, and neither of us had met Anne until the day of the presentation. If you're wondering how we managed to stay relatively on message for this hour long break-out session, I'll have you know it was due to the wonder of technology. We mostly brainstormed on Twitter and Google chat, and created a shared PowerPoint on Google Drive. While adding to the presentation, you could see where someone else was adding to their part or doing some revising. It was simultaneously a magical and creepy experience.

Maker-Spaces for Kids, Attempt #1

During our school's spring break, it was the perfect time to try out this trendy new "Maker Space" thing I've heard so much about. Back when we had to have programming list completed for Spring, I wasn't sure what I'd do; but whatever it was, it would have to be a Maker Space. Afterward, searching for things to do, I encountered many arguments supporting the idea that "Maker Space" is just a fancy-wrapping name for things Youth Services librarians have been doing for years, in a way that's appealing to adults. I wholeheartedly agree with them.

It's kind of funny how everything gets repackaged every so often. Most recently, I read a tweeted-out article about Flipped Classrooms that claims, "Self-Directed Learning is the New Learning." Yes, it's so new that it's been around since the dawn of Man. I would go way farther into how this the article actually kept me up one night so that I had to write extensively about it at 2 AM, but here we're talking about Maker-Spaces.

So anyway. Spring Break "Maker Spaces":

Awesome Easy Elementary Outreach

I'm sometimes asked how I have time to blog about my programming. The way I see it, though, is different:
I have to blog about my programming.

1. I'm a blogger by my very nature. From ages 11 to 23, I wrote in a physical journal every single day. They travel with me as I move because as much as I wouldn't want anyone to feel anything about stuff that happened in the past (I even hate reading them), I just can't bear to throw them out. As soon as I (unceremoniously) stopped, I started writing at a Live Journal address. Looking back, I actually talked about work on it a lot. (But don't you look, reader, because I'm sure it's embarrassing or something. I just posted the link so you believed me).

2. I'm self-reflective about my programming anyway, and it just makes sense to write it down. Without writing it down, my reflection just goes in circles in my head until it spirals. "What could I do better next time?" quickly becomes "Why was I so dumb to think that would work?"; "I need to find something more cognitively appropriate for those kids." quickly becomes "I just can't work with that age group!" I mean, it gets negative and self-defeating, even if I talk about it. There's something in the flow from brain to keyboard that lets me not worry anymore. Maybe it's the act of knowing my thoughts are saved for later. It actually might be that forgoing blogging as a time saver in the past few months added to my stress level. That would make sense.

3. Blogging, in fact, saves time. I've talked before about my belief in writing scripts and how it's worked for me . Take yesterday, for example: I found myself heading out to do outreach at an elementary school, and all I did was print out pictures!

...Okay, not exactly. But it was WAY easier than it might have been otherwise.

Wild Record Wednesdays: sneaky STEM

On Wednesdays in February, I held a series of programs based on Guinness Book of World Records and... well, any record I could find, really, that seemed pretty cool. I started off with some basic ones the first week (and also overtly STEM rather than sneaky STEM), which I probably wouldn't do again because I lost half my audience before I got to the good stuff!

Format: 
Each week I found about several world records, preferably with accompanying Youtube clips. I would introduce each record, talk about the record holder, and then show the clip. We would turn this into a discussion about sizes or speed to put numbers into context (math) This took about 20 minutes. During this time, we would also add a pin to a 11x17 map to show where our records were. The remaining 25 minutes were spent with the kids engaged in activities based on the records, and looking through our books from our 030 section for other records to share.

What we did each week:

Library Signage: Not Just for Bathrooms Anymore

Okay so here's one picture of food.

I was recently able, by the grace of my place of employment, a generous Emerging Leaders sponsorship by ASCLA, and my credit card, to attend ALA Midwinter in Seattle, WA. It was an awesome experience and as a good librarian I should probably write about it and should've Instagrammed all my meals and spent a longer time on the exhibit floor.

But I just want to share a couple pictures, mostly because I want my boss to see them and talk about them and this is probably the best format for the time being. The Seattle Public Library is an awesome space for a lot of things. What I focused on to bring back to my department was signage, because when focusing on space this might be cheapest-versus-most-beneficial thing to do. Also, I've been inspired by Storytime Katie's rules signage; small, well-communicated info gets everyone where we need to go.
So anyway:

The Mission: A Guest Post by Miss Julia in OH

Have you ever seen something cool to do in a library and thought, "well, okay, but I can't do that with MY resources?" Welcome to Librarians Don't Play: what I hope to be a series of guest posts about implementing programs/field trip adventures/story action pods I post on my blog in varying libraries across the country, each librarian putting their own spin on it, or simply being inspired by something that they see here and turning it into something all their own.  

Or, you know, anything, really. I'm not the do-all-end-all of kid's programming, and I'm acutely aware that this is the case. If you want to share an awesome program you've done and you want to try blogging about it, you can contact me, too. 

If you want to give it a try, please e-mail me at brycedontplay at gmail dot com. 

This post is by Miss Julia, a Youth Services Librarian in Ohio, based on my write-up for a Spyology program. Please feel free to email her here and check out her new library-related blog, Laughter and Literacy. All links inside the post are hers.

Ninjago Library Party

Source (seriously, you have to get these books)

At long last, we ran our no-school Ninjago party. To be honest, the total prep time for this program was 3 hours, but it was extremely high-yield at 95 attendees. That is seriously more than I've seen in my time at this library for a program at our library that didn't have a guest or hired performer.
Thanks to the extra prep time, I was prepared. And I'm going to write it out for you all, and link to some resources I found helpful, so that your prep time (and my future prep time; I will be doing this again) will be considerably less than that for the same quality program.

The Think-Aloud Librarian

Source

Over the weekend, I helped an 8 year old girl find a "Jack and Annie book." I led her to the Magic Treehouse books, talking the whole time: "Oh yeah! The Magic Treehouse books. I know exactly where those are. They are in our Chapter Book section, under O. The author's last name is Osbourne. So here's books by authors who start with N.... Okay, O! Here we go, Osbourne. Right here."

Sound familiar?
You're a Think-Aloud Librarian.

Why Do We Do This? 
It sounds like we're talking to ourselves, right?
In the education world, we call it the "think-aloud": a little tidbit that helps students follow your train of thought or reasoning; or, in a student-directed lesson, help you understand the student's train of thought or reasoning. In either instance, it's a chance an opportunity for learning.