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Sticky Wickets, or things they don't teach you in library school

I"m going into my 29th year as an educator this year---9 in the classroom, and headed into my 20th year as a school librarian. I've worked in elementary, middle, and now high school as a librarian. You might say I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly throughout the years. Through it all--the good times and the bad--I've always firmly believed I have the best gig in the universe.  I love what I do, and I have a true passion for it. I had a brilliant professor in library school named Betty Carter.  She used to talk about how meeting difficult characters or situations in a book before you met them in real life was so helpful to young people because it gave them the chance to think through it and figure out best ways to handle it ahead of time.  I hope that you will read this list in much the same vein.  Especially for all my new-to-the-library friends, this is not a list of mere complaints, but a list of possible scenarios for you to brainstorm about so that ...
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Goals, Reflections, & Social Media

I took November off from blogging so that I could participate in NaNoWriMo ( National Novel Writing Month ) and I'm proud to say that after 8 years of participating, I am *finally* an official winner!  So, while I have gained wonderful things from each and every time I've participated, hitting that special 50,000-word mark has remained elusive until now. I know exactly what made the difference, too.  I reviewed my 50 Before 50 list in my bullet journal and saw that this was a goal made over two years ago that hadn't yet been achieved. This year was my last opportunity to hit that 50 before 50 goal.  I felt an urgency this go-round because crossing this off my list truly meant something. Since I even finished with NaNoWriMo a bit early, over Thanksgiving break I took the opportunity to participate in Dr. Laura Sheneman's Think Like a Social Media Superstar challenge. She runs a blog and a podcast called Librarian Influencers , so be sure to check her out if you ...
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Teaching: Why I Choose to STAY

Doug Robertson (@TheWeirdTeacher) posted recently on Twitter about his frustration with the quitting martyr teacher posts that always seem to go viral on Facebook about this time of year.  Shared by educators and non-educators alike.  I've seen them, of course. We've all seen them.  I've read them, and I hear their words.  They decide to burn it down when they leave, I suppose, filled with frustration and anger and sadness, too, perhaps. But Doug's Twitter thread really resonated with me, y'all.  And then this morning someone in the thread (@MoniseLSeward) suggested we use the hashtag #WhyIChooseToStay to share our stories. Yeah, I son't know that it was necessarily meant as an actual call to share, but I loved the idea, so here's mine. I just completed year 28 as an educator. I've been a kindergarten teacher, an elementary teacher of grades 2,3,4,5, an elementary school teacher-librarian, an intermediate school teacher-librarian, a middle scho...
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