I Am Really Into Reading

Since I last posted I’ve added some more “hats” to my repertoire.  I’m now the Box Tops Coordinator and the Giant A+ Rewards Czar, not to mention the school librarian.  Another teacher and I have put together a mobile library cart that allows us to check out books to scholars using an online library database called Library World.  That was fairly easy to put together.  We used a program called Accelerated Reader from Renaissance Learning to make a very straight-forward leveled library and instruct scholars to pick books from specific bins that are appropriate for their reading level as determined by a STAR Reading assessment that all of them took earlier in the year.  The way we originally envisioned the system was that each scholar would take out one book each week at a designated time for his advisory during lunch or breakfast.  We’ve already come up against the (very happy) problem that some scholars are blasting through books in a day or two and want another one right away.  We will definitely be able to accommodate that number of voracious readers.  My long term assignment is to try to organize the library in an accessible way while keeping in mind that they are existing in a temporary space and may be moved some time in the future.

This year we’re focusing on a big push towards cultivating a culture of reading.  Towards this end, we’ve been instructed to wear these cute little purple buttons that say “I Am Really Into Reading” and give them out to scholars who are exemplifying that message.  I somehow always manage to forget to take my button off after work and wear it out into the real world.  Shantelle, the Head of School, called me out in front of everyone at a staff meeting because I said that it was a dragon on the pin when it is, in fact, a dinosaur.  I just got excited because I like dragons but I guess it doesn’t have wings so I can’t have been right.

Note my sweet Princeton Tigers keychain on my lanyard.

This week has been strange for me because I found out last week that my boss / PP55 mentor (Director of Strategy and Operations) will be transitioning to a new position elsewhere at the end of the month.  My other direct boss, who is now a more formal report, (Families and Community Coordinator) is in Cancun.  So I’ve been feeling a bit adrift this week, but my current big project is to compile proof of residency binders for our upcoming DCPCSB audit which will take me quite a while.

We have a mentor-mentee happy hour tonight in Dupont Circle, I’m looking forward to it a lot.  I wonder when our first seminar will be…