New Year, Same Me

No word for this year. No “new year, new me” sayings over here. I know once January hits how the goals are quickly forgotten. However, there are a few things I plan to focus on this upcoming year and potentially change. 

I have used a timer settings for social media apps for the past few months, but I still plan to give these up for longer periods of time. How does facebook serve me? I would much rather read a book, listen to an audiobook, or snuggle with the pups. 

As far as my areas of focus for the year, I start my leadership certification in January. Going back to school after finishing grad school 12 years ago feels like a daunting task. Do I remember how to “be in school” and “teach school” at the same time? We shall see. 

I also have started talks about potentially working with Librarians Building Libraries alongside the schools I visited in Egypt. This is a long-term goal of mine, and again stay tuned! We shall see what we all can accomplish together! 

Happy 2026! I hope this year brings all the books, smiles, and glitter you need in your life!

Back to School and Goodbye Pool

In my district, we just wrapped up our third full week back with students. I do love being back into the routine of school–while the 4AM wakeups aren’t as wonderful as sleeping in during the summer. I also miss my poolside days with my book or kindle. Thankfully I was able to conquer my TBR pile this summer, and I found some new favorites!

For educators, if you don’t have a libro.fm account for audiobooks—sign up now! I listened to so many great audiobooks this summer (for free!)

My top ten books from the summer (audiobooks included) in no particular order:

  1. Avalon Tower (all three books in the trilogy)
  2. On Wings of Blood (and book 2 The Bond that Burns)
  3. Big Dumb Eyes
  4. Trouble Maker
  5. Til Summer Do Us Part
  6. The Mountains Sing
  7. The Boxcar Librarian
  8. One Perfect Couple
  9. On a Quiet Street
  10. Home is the Where the Bodies Are

Any books or audiobook recommendations I need to add to my TBR pile?

Egypt: My Unknown Bucket List

After coming home from my recent trip to Egypt with Bookbag Tours, I realized that I checked off items on my bucket list that I didn’t even know were on it to begin with! 

My trip to Egypt has been years in the making. I traveled to Finland in 2019 with Bookbag Tours (BBT), and I loved it! The idea of visiting other countries and exploring their schools and talking to teachers and students was the best mix of a trip and PD to keep my teacher heart full. Once COVID hit in 2020, I booked a trip with BBT for 2021 (here I was thinking we would be out of the pandemic in no time and this gave me something to look forward to). Finally after a few scheduling changes, my trip to Egypt was going to happen in summer of 2025. 

I had no idea the impact this trip, the wonderful group of people I’d travel with, and the country of Egypt would have on me. The amount of history I learned from this trip was unbelievable. The schools we visited on this trip also put into perspective that book deserts truly do exist. One school we visited had no library, and the other school’s library was the smallest room with outdated books that I wouldn’t want to read. It hurts my librarian heart that students don’t have access to libraries full of high interest, relevant texts. (Don’t worry–brainstorming in progress to work on this for these students!)

While we did visit schools and talk to teachers, students, and administrators, we also visited countless temples, cruised on the Nile, and walked MANY steps. I never realized a sunrise hot air balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings or a Camel ride at the pyramids of Giza were on my bucket list–but they now are, and they are checked off! 

I can’t wait for my next adventure with BBT and to check off more bucket list items! What is your top travel bucket list item?! 

End of Year Thoughts

I tell people I have a love/hate relationship with this time of school year. Teachers are excited for summer just like the students are, but we also have lots to get done before our summer can start. We have so few days left, and so much to get done! For school librarians, we are trying to locate all the items–books, technology, equipment–that we haven’t seen since August. I joke with my para that things just have a way of making their way back to us this time of year. 

Last year we decided to move and re-dewey our nonfiction section at this time, but this year we’ve decided to move our genrified chapter books around along with our graphic novels. Now we feel the “do we have enough time?!” feeling! We are also having new artwork going up in our space this summer as well as hosting summer school, so lots of moving pieces to ensure they fit together. 

Teachers and school librarians: how do you stay organized and sane this time of year?! Best tips, tricks, and strategies?! 

The Year of the Re-read!

For the past few years, I have tried to conquer my never ending to be read (TBR) pile throughout the year or focus on reading a specific genre–never forget the year I finally revitalized my love of nonfiction. This year, through no goal, focus, or even second thought, has become the year of the re-read (or re-listen) for me. I have already re-visited The Wizard of Oz, the Fourth Wing series (thank you Onyx Storm for inspiring that!), ACOTAR, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I have to say that there is something comforting in going back to old favorites. You know the characters, and you are mentally prepared when the characters you love don’t make it. I find I appreciate storylines so much better the second or even third time around! I’m on hold for the Harry Potter audiobooks, and I can’t wait! 

What are some books you want to re-visit?!  

Library Experiences: We’ve made it to November!

I feel like this school year is already flying so quickly! How can my last post be about summer reading?! In our library learning commons, we hit the ground running this year with orientations starting earlier than normal, book tastings to follow right after, makerspace orientations, and Beanstack introductions. Following the first nine weeks of crazy, we’ve done SORA introductions, high frequency word hunts, sensory story times, Halloween stories, Thanksgiving stories, and math breakouts.

I’ve focused on planning per nine weeks with the lessons in the LC. I think this has helped both teachers and I plan for what our students need. We have some exciting events coming up in December too– grinch day measuring activity for second grade and holidays around the world with first grade.

I have worked to change activities we’ve traditionally done in the LC that needed to be re-worked. Bringing holidays around to first grade is very exciting, but it does replace our normal Polar Express day. However, most students have already seen, read, or done a Polar Express experience. I’m ready to try something new!

Thinking ahead to the spring, what are some activities you’ve done in your library learning commons to bring the joy back into instruction? Have you made changes in your teaching this year?

Just think we are almost to the second half of the year! What will your students remember from their library experience?

Summer Reading

One of the best parts of summer break for me is the time I have to read and listen to all the books that have been on my TBR list. I love lounging in the pool with my books and kindle. There is no rush to quickly finish a book before the weekend is over because I will be too exhausted to read it during the week. If you can’t wait to finish a book, you can stay up past bedtime reading because you can sleep in the next day! Summer reading is a wonderful thing for teachers! 

This past summer I finished 37 books, and I didn’t even make it through my entire TBR pile. Some of my top reads from the past summer include The Crescent City trilogy, The Housemaid is Watching (third in the Housemaid series), The Paradise Problem, Futureland, and Nic Blake and the Remarkables. I would love to hear your top reads from the summer! 

Ditching Dewey: Making Nonfiction Make Sense

Nothing sounded better during the end of year crazy of testing, field days, inventory, end of year celebrations, award ceremonies, and inventory than re-organizing our nonfiction section in our library. This project started at the beginning of the year when we thought we would change to whole number Dewey to make things easier for our primary grade students to find. However, once we started digging into the location of some of the books–why were cats and dogs not with other animals, but instead in 636 for farm animals?– we realized many books weren’t located somewhere that made sense or that were checked out. 

My para and started looking into the sections that were checked out the most. For example, sports, cats, dogs, dinosaurs, and sharks. We took each of these and demolished Dewey. For sports, each sport went under 796 and the sport name– 796 BAS for baseball, 796 for FOO, etc.– and right away we noticed how easy it was for the kiddos to find the books. This got us excited to start working through each section and determining how to best group and label each section. Some of our numbers completely broke the Dewey system such as habitats (oceans, wetlands, etc) now belong in 574 HAB. 

When we went through each section, we asked each other , “if we were looking for this book, what would be the first word we would use.” That’s the word or abbreviation we went with for that section. Where would you look for a book on bugs? 585 BUG! Also, because we now have larger sections, our plan is to print a cheat sheet of where to find everything. 

In going through this process, we were able to weed and shift our entire nonfiction section, and we cleared all our top shelves. These shelves are too high for most K-2 students, so books that lived there were rarely checked out by younger students. (Thanks to Mrs. McCoy for this idea at AASL last year!) With it being the end of the year, we left up “something fabulous is coming” signs on all these empty shelves. However, we have displays and signage planned for these shelves next year, and we are excited to compare our nonfiction statistics from the previous year to see the difference these changes make. 

Have a great summer teacher librarian friends!! I know it is hard to unplug, so if you are thinking of big projects for the upcoming school year in your space please let me know!

Listening is Reading

As a reader, teacher, school library media specialist, and advocate of all things literacy, audiobooks weren’t an immediate sell for me. I wanted to read the words on the page, and I felt like I was cheating if I listened to a book. I started listening to books on CD from the public library when I had a longer commute to and from work, and I quickly realized how much reading time I could gain in my day if I listened to books in the car. Now I’ve graduated from books on CD to audiobooks from Libby, Spotify, and Sora, and I’ve realized that I can plow through some nonfiction audiobooks like no one’s business! I have found I definitely prefer nonfiction audiobooks to fiction, and I love when authors read their own books. 

Recently, Amy Hermon with School Librarians United shared an opportunity to share on her podcast the hill you would die on. I shared my thoughts on audiobooks (as well as graphic novels, magazines, cereal boxes, etc) and how reading is reading is reading! No matter how or what kids (or adults!) read it counts as reading. Audiobooks are books. We use the same skills to process and understand the information we are putting into our brains. 

So tell me–what audiobooks have I missed out on?! What do I need to listen to right away?! 

2023 Reads

Looking back on my reading goals for 2023: trying to get my Kindle TBR pile read, trying to get my physical TBR book pile finished, and re-reading some classics, all of these DID NOT happen! I read A LOT this past year, but I still have three shelves on unread physical books, over 20 unread Kindle books, and I don’t think I read or re-read one classic.

However, I did read 193 books in 2023! I think I gave up on more books this year than ever before also (I think I will keep up with the books I give up on this year because I’ve never tried this.) I wonder if there’s something to be said for reading more when you’re able to give up on those books that don’t interest you?

Within those 193 books: 24 were audiobooks, 83 were books on my kindle, and 12 were graphic novels. Looking back through the books I read this year, these were my favorites–in no specific order!

  • Lessons in Chemistry
  • Someone Else’s Shoes
  • The Unhoneymooners
  • Furiously Happy (Audbiobook)
  • The Senator’s Wife
  • Before We Were Yours
  • Their Vicious Games
  • The Four Winds
  • Fourth Wing
  • Hey Hun (Audiobook)

So reading goals for 2024: just read what you want! I would love clear my TBR piles, but let’s be honest the piles will probably just grow!