The team at 826 has done it again. I know this has been out for awhile but I finally had a chance to peruse the lessons and writing activities available at 826 Digital. This FREE platform has a ton of exciting writing lessons, projects, and “spark” for students in grade 1 to grade 12. Actually, […]
I bet I’m not the only school librarian who was happy about the number of students who stopped by the library on Friday afternoon to check out enough books to get them through the school closure. One teacher even last-minute booked the library in the afternoon to make sure all of her students checked out […]
I am an expert in is feeling stressed out. I would describe my baseline emotion as a constant low-level panic. Sometimes family members ask me, “What are you so stressed out about?” The answer is nothing and everything. I’ve always been a worrier. That’s my personality. Chronic stress can lead to a variety of real […]
This blog has been on hiatus for a few months but I’m feeling inspiration strike again. My new goal is to create 1 – 2 posts each month, in order to keep my life reasonable, my new plan is to keep posts short and sweet. I think the reason for the break was the fact […]
Last Saturday I joined two car loads of librarians and English teachers for a drive down to Santa Monica for Yallwest 2019. Yallwest, an epic festival celebrating young adult and middle grade books, is a joyful event. It’s more than a book festival because it is all about young teen and tween fans in attendance. […]
What I Was Thinking Pretty much anyone who has been teaching a long time has figured out that traditional grading systems don’t work. Last spring, during my nineteenth year teaching 7th and 8th grade English, I decided to do something about it. Without getting too deep into my disillusionment with traditional letter grades, I’ll just […]
Have I mentioned I’m new to this library business? Among the many new skills I’m learning is the art of the booktalk. That’s the one-word-on-purpose booktalk I heard about in library school. There is one major goal for booktalks: Get students to check out books and read them! Easy, right? Well, sometimes it works and […]
