Back to School! The Prequel.

I love the start of school! I love seeing my educator friends and getting back into a regular routine. I love the organization and planning. I LOVE seeing the kids again!

So just what does back to school look like for a school librarian?
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  • Meetings - lots of meetings. Some on campus, some off. Some are online. Some I don't have to go to, but they are in the library, so I am kind in those too. We meet as a whole school, we meet as librarians, we meet as specialists, we meet as smaller groups of librarians, we meet to talk about curriculum & schedules. We meet as a district. Don't laugh!

    • The district meeting is something I rarely look forward to only because it takes more time away from the library. BUT we always have a fabulous speaker and this year was no different. Ron Clark is incredibly inspiring - he's innovative and practical.


  • Prepping for open house.

  • Putting up some bulletin boards.

  • Equipment & technology - lots of things have to be checked out to staff. Computers, carts, iPads, and calculators.

  • Packing and unpacking materials. We get all kinds of items over the summer or the first week of school.

    • This year, we got 160 new chrome books to be unpacked and distributed.

    • Old laptops were gathered  and packed up so they can be taken off campus.

    • Broken and deprecated technology was gathered and inventoried. 
    • Arrangements made for it to be removed.

    • Curriculum materials from different departments come through the library.

  • Cataloging - some of that stuff we unpacked has to be cataloged BEFORE it can go to its new home at school.

  • Helping teachers find books and get equipment. Batteries? Yes, we have those!

  • Lesson planning and scheduling (and rescheduling) of classes, as well as long-range plans.

  • Planning a few back-to-school surprises for the teachers.

  • Ordering books, equipment, and supplies.

  • Dealing with glitches - We lost internet the day of open house - all day. I missed an online meeting, and there was no cataloging, no emails. There were scheduling /planning issues because of that. We have an amazing tech staff though. They found the problem and got things back up and running before there was a day two of craziness.

  • Last, but by no means least, setting up the library for classes.

*whew* Taking a deep breath for round two of back-to-school. The arrival of Old Town students!

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