The Adventures of an International School Librarian

As my first year comes almost to an end its been a very interesting ride. I have learnt a hell of a lot. And I am so so so ready for next year to start. I can't wait to put what I've learnt into practice and refine it. And the fantastic part is I am still learning. That is the beauty of this job, it never gets dull. No two days are ever the same. My goals for next year are to implement blogs into the library. I established one, but I just have not had a second to spare to do it. I promise I will be updating that and this more regularly. Im so bad at that. I need to be more regimented because I see all the examples out there of people who do the most amazing work and its just so inspiring. In terms of my school library we got 10 iPads which are glorious. I adore them and have been using them so much with my MYP students. Again I cannot wait for next year to use them with the PYPs. The only app I've used with the PYP is ' Don't let the Pigeon Run this App '.

Today I discovered ReadWriteThink  and it has changed my life! There are so many fantastic lesson plans in there for a library. I started with my MYP 2 ATL class their lesson plan on creating a Book Trailer. The MYP 2's are a low level English speaking class. They constantly speak Chinese in the class which drives myself and the other teachers crazy. You spend 3/4 of the class repeating the same phrase over and over again"Please speak English!". So I thought I'd do something fun with them for the next 6 or so weeks making book trailers. We discussed what a good movie trailer looks like, what we expect when we go to the movie theatre and what the advertisement sells us in terms of entertainment. They panicked when I said they'd have to read a book in a week, so we compromised and they only had to read a Children's picture book for next week to discuss and present as there book trailer book. I'm going to do the same activity with MYP 1 who are fantastic

I completed my second IB workshop, this time it was entered towards the library which interested me so much more. The online workshop, Making the PYP Library the Hub of Learning  was absolutely fantastic and I learnt so much from it. It made me aware of skills that I have been lacking and am now more focused and determined than ever to change that. Primarily it revolves around IT. I want to upskill myself and learn to use Apps. I can't do it at the moment as I have no tablet to play around on which it makes it so much more difficult to do. I believe that technology is vital to any library, more so in a school library. As a teacher librarian we have a role to play in the school, yes physical books are amazing and irreplaceable but in order to do certain things like keeping children, who are digital natives, we must keep ourselves up to date and knowledgable about all the technology resources out there. I'm doing my best to start brightening up the library with displays and pos

With a little bit of disruption before the Christmas break, where the Head of the School was fired, which put a bit of a damper mood on the school, this semester has been going really well. I feel like I'm settling more and more into the role. There is so much work to be done. Things that have been established so far have been a budget for the library, a new guided reading section and I'm cataloguing the English books now. I needed to take a bit more control in my role as the Head Librarian. Its still completely new to me. I'm still learning and adapting to the role. Only 6 months ago I was still a lowly library assistant. Used to taking orders and managing my own job, not managing jobs for two other people. I love the job. I love the excitement the kids have when they enter the library and find new titles. Last week with MYP 1 & 3 I did speed book dating and it was a huge success. Most of the students went home with a book from another person that had been recommen