Month: May 2012

End of an Era

- librariantiff 1 Comment

Today has been quite an emotional day. Yes, it was the last day of school and watching some of my favorite 8th grade students get on the bus for the last time was more than a little sad for me. That alone would honestly be enough for me to have to handle. The end of this year, though, means so much more.

It’s the end of an era for Central Middle School. Next year we will experience lots of changes as we move into a brand new building and gain new leadership. Although these are exciting times for CMS, today is a day for me to be sad and reflect on the past.

Let me rewind a little bit. Our middle school has been around for quite some time. So many people from our community have walked its halls as students and have memories from their time at CMS (or before when the building was CHS). Myself included — I dug up my old yearbooks when I got home this afternoon. I figured since I was already a crying mess, I might as well roll with it. So here’s a little taste of Tiff the middle school student:

My 6th grade yearbook photo:

7th grade ad with my BFF, who I met in middle school and still love dearly many years later:

Photo from 8th grade yearbook:

While I was a student at CMS, I was a student library worker during both 7th and 8th grade. They let me out of PE — what can I say, I never was very athletic. But it’s unbelievable to have memories of my library, of the many hours I spent shelving books there as a student, and then to come into the position of being the librarian there myself. It’s not an experience that many people get to have, and I’m so grateful that I was able to spend a year and a half in that old library.

As you can imagine, quite a few of the teachers and staff members from my time as a student are now my coworkers. One of them is even my boss. During my time as a student, Mr. Cashio was the AP of Discipline. Years later, he became the principal of CMS. He hired me for my first teaching position straight out of college in 2007. Then he hired me back as the librarian when their librarian retired last January. I’m so thankful that I’ve had the chance to work for such a great man. Only under a leader like Mr. Cashio can a faculty be as close as family. Earlier this spring, he announced that he would be retiring at the end of this year. He will be missed, but we wish him many many relaxing and joyful years of retirement.

Mr. Cashio during my time as a CMS student:

These past few weeks have been stressful and hectic. The current library is packed and ready to go. The library at the new school is almost ready. Lots has been accomplished, lots of work lies ahead. We have a beautiful building we are moving into and we have amazing new leadership that will help our school continue to excel and grow. There’s so much to look forward to for next school year and beyond. But today, I’m taking the time to let myself sit with some memories and be thankful for what we’ve all been blessed with these past years at CMS.

 Old CMS Library in all it’s glory (after I got in and decorated!):

Old CMS Library, all packed up:

New CMS Library, ready to move in:

End of Year Library Report (and GRADUATION!)

- librariantiff 3 Comments

There’s a whole lot of CRAZY going on right now in my work life. Typically, I like to keep the library open as long as possible, I always make exceptions for kids who need just one more book (LOTS of exceptions, okay…), and some form of an inventory happens. Not this year, though. I’m now in the process of hunting down books students still have checked out. Next week I will be doing a thorough inventory, cleaning up the records in Destiny, and getting the collection in pristine order. The following week, the cases will be delivered that I will use to pack up the collection for the move. The idea of doing all of this is overwhelming and makes me anxious, but I know it will be wonderful to have a solid inventory and clean records. And it will be a beautiful thing when everything is settled in at the new school.

Oh yeah, and on top of the move, our principal is retiring and we’re currently on the roller coaster ride that is the process of having our new principal selected. I’m not going to get into all of that, let’s just say it isn’t helping my current level of anxiety at all. I do want whoever is selected to be our new leader to really “get” what I’m all about and what our library aims to do. So I made a super extra special End of the Year Library Report that they will get a nice copy of to peruse at their leisure. Check it out:

I put it together in Comic Life, my FAVORITE program to use when designing posters, fliers, handouts, etc. And I messed around in Photoshop for a while and created those nifty graphics for circulation stats and library visits. This was such a great way for me to reflect on this year. There are always times where I think, “Have I really done anything productive this year??” Looking back on this year with this report, the answer is, “UM YEA!” I really feel like a lot was accomplished especially with introducing our gaming and going nontraditional in both fiction and nonfiction shelving! We’re going to go ahead and label this year a success.

AND speaking of SUCCESS — Yesterday I graduated from Northwestern State University of Louisiana with my Master’s degree in Educational Technology Leadership with a 4.0 GPA! Being able to share the day with my friend and CMS ELA teacher made it even sweeter.

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