Tales from a Loud Librarian

PODCAST found here 7th Graders on Field Trip in the Ninth Ward, February 2020 Every year over the last ten I have worked with the 7th grade English teachers on a project that encompasses literature, research, a written/digital product, a field trip, and service learning. In that time there have been five different teachers who have taught ELA to this grade level. One thing that has remained constant is me, and over the years, I have developed a tool to make the research super easy for the kids. Using  Livebinders  I have been able to curate resources and collate all the tools that the students need from the very beginning of the project when they read historical fiction about Hurricane Katrina's devastation in our area to the very end with the digital scrapbook. This is truly a collaborative project between the English teachers, myself, and our colleagues at Dr. King Charter school where we visit for service learning.  That's me receiving a thank you card at

Found on the sidewalk on one of my daily walks in uptown New Orleans It's that time again when we celebrate teachers, and the hard work that they do in classrooms across the United States. So, I say to all you teachers out there: YOU ARE APPRECIATED!! My school is trying its best to give us little treats each and every day over the course of the week even though we are at home and not at school. The first gift was a sign for our yard, and lucky me, my sign was delivered by one of my very favorite students. I couldn't get a picture with her, but I did get one with me and the sign.  Then on Thursday, a truly wonderful treat arrived in my inbox. A thank you with quotes from different students. I love hearing what is important to them among the many things that I do at school. I think this sums it up nicely.  Click the image above to enlarge it I received something else in my email inbox from a seventh grader who created this meme just for me. Than

I have been gearing myself up to writing a blog post for the last couple of weeks. I think that it is important for me to document now what I have been going through in the library because in a few years this will hopefully be just a faded memory.  Email from the school district (click to enlarge it) On Friday, March 13th at about 1:15PM I opened an email from the district to see that our schools would be closed for a month. This is about the time that our high school students were finishing lunch, and I saw a strange excitement in the students outside the day at 2:40PM, so I had just over an hour to get kids into the library to check out books to take home. I sent an email to all teachers to let them know that I was open for business. Students kept coming in to check out books until the end of the day, and I kept loading them down with books. I have no clue how many I checked out that afternoon. Last week, I got an email from a student asking me how he could return h