Book Fair!

I survived my first book fair as well as the Donuts with Dads event we held this morning. It was way busy for awhile, but it was good. And now I want to sleep for a week.

I can't believe it's November already!

At the beginning of the month, I put together a quick little Thanksgiving-themed display. All of the books have to do with food (cook books or novels with food in the title or on the cover). I did not make the Turkey - my co-librarian made that in a previous year and saved it.


It's also Book Fair next week, so here is a sneak peek at some of the decorations. Our theme is "If I Only Had a Book," hence the Wizard of Oz decorations. I made the faces from a stencil template I downloaded and enlarged. I think they came out cute. And the ruby slipper is actually very sparkly although you can't see that in the picture very well.

My first author visit

Friday was my first author visit as a librarian. We had author Kathryn Erskine visit, and she presented to all three grade levels about how to be SASSY in their writing.

Snag your reader
Act your character
Show your story
Shake things up
You - put some of yourself in

She also ate lunch with our book club which was really nice of her. She answered questions as the kids ate.

A slow day

Today the library was closed all day to students because the library was being used for training, so we got a chance to work on getting ready for Teen Read Week next week. We have a lot going on, and it should be fun.


The theme of Teen Read Week this year is "Picture It @ your library," with a focus on how stories can be made visual, so today we put together a display of graphic novels, made everything we need for our book vs. movie voting contest (signs, posters, voting box, ballots), and put together the announcements to advertise the book vs. movie contest as well as the manga lunch with a librarian we're having on Wednesday next week (the Ashburn teen librarian is coming to talk to kids about manga during lunch). Then, next Friday is our big author visit with Kathryn Erskine! I'm excited about that and hope everything goes smoothly!

T.A. Barron

This past Wednesday, one of our local high schools was hosting the young adult fantasy author T.A. Barron. We had promoted the event to our students, so my co-librarian and I thought it would be good if one of us went in case any of our students showed up. I didn't see any there, but I did get a poster signed to display in our library:


Because I wasn't sure what sort of limit there was on number of items signed, Dad joined me there, and he got one of my personal books signed for me (the pages aren't that yellow in real life, that's just the lighting of the picture):

Authors, authors everywhere

This week we've been talking about planning an author visit for the school. We've got feelers out to a local-ish Virginia author and are waiting to hear back about her availability.

In the mean time, we've also put the wheels in motion for a special "virtual author visit" using Skype for our book club in April. It's pretty much set, we just need to order books and figure out how to make the technology work.

Busy, busy!

Work has been very busy, but I have been really enjoying it.

This week I made a Glogster to embed in our library main page instead of what we had before. It's a little busy, but still cute I think.

This week we will also finish up orientations, and then next week start teaching lessons!

Exciting first few weeks

The past few weeks have been a blur of orientations, workshops, training, meetings, and meeting new people.

I did put up my first bulletin board of the school year. Nothing too exciting, but it came out kind of cute, and I have nothing else to share pictures of.

Goodbye AOL

Today was my last day working at AOL. I'm sure that I'll be back to visit, but it won't be the same.

I have a license!!

A couple weeks ago, I got my "Letter of Eligibility" from the Florida Department of Education saying that if I pass Florida fingerprints/background check, I am eligible for a Florida teaching certificate in Educational Media PK-12. If I want, I can pay $54 and send away for a fingerprinting packet and complete the process of getting my Florida teaching certificate, but I only applied as a back-up plan for getting my Virginia teaching license.

Looks like I don't need to worry about the back-up plan because my Virginia teaching license application went through!! I don't physically have my license yet, but if you search for my name now on the Virginia Department of Education license query page, I come back in the results, and it says I have a license!!

Now I can relax and enjoy my last few weeks at AOL and get excited for beginning my career as a librarian!

What's this?

Most people who read this blog are probably already aware, but I'll be starting my first librarian position in August at the middle school I interned at, Farmwell Station. So this is a picture of my real diploma (showed up in the mail on Saturday) and my official contract with LCPS.

I told my boss at work today that August 5th will be my last day, and it was sad, but I think my team is really happy for me.

Now I'm just waiting for my teaching license to come in the mail, and I'll be all set!

it's on its way....

I got e-mail this morning saying that something very special was mailed today....

(this is just a digital recreation of what it looks like. The e-mail included a link where I could see what my diploma will look like and this is just the picture from the website link)

Teaching License and Diploma

I finally got the last thing I needed to complete my teaching license application in the mail yesterday, so my teaching license application is on its way!

I also got e-mail from FSU yesterday saying that diplomas are going to be ordered the week of June 17. That means that somewhere near the beginning to middle of July, I should have my official diploma!!

It's Official!

This was posted in my online unofficial transcript this morning:

Confirmation of Graduation

Not much new to report, but I did get e-mail today from the School of Library and Information Studies Graduate Coordinator that my name was submitted for final graduation clearance. So I guess that means I am one step closer to officially graduated.

This means that a week from tomorrow I should be able to see my degree reflected on my unofficial online transcript and be able to order final official transcripts that reflect my degree as well.

The next steps

As of today, my "unofficial" online transcript shows that I passed my internship, so it's one step closer to being finalized. It still doesn't say that I've graduated, but I expected that. FSU sent e-mail last week to everyone who was graduating that said transcripts would reflect degrees earned sometime after May 25, so I will need to wait until then before I can order all the transcripts I'll need for job applications and teaching applications.

In terms of next steps after graduation, so far I have:

1. Applied to LCPS - I still need to send them an finalized transcript once available and a copy of my teaching license once I get it
2. Started the application process for a Florida teaching certificate (just in case I need to go that route to get my Virginia teaching license) - I filled out the online application, paid my application fee, and requested my Hood transcripts sent.
3. Got my Hood transcript sent to me for my Virginia teaching license and started filling out the Virginia teaching license application. I can't send it in until I have everything though - I'm waiting on a form filled out from FSU confirming I completed a state-approved teaching program and a final transcript from FSU. Unlike the Florida application, the Virginia application is all paper and must all be submitted together.
   

Grad school is officially over

Today was the last day of my internship, and tomorrow is FSU's graduation, so I am officially done!

My transcript won't be finalized for probably another month, and I probably won't get my diploma for at least two months, but no more homework and no more going to two jobs!

It will be sad not being in the library every day, but I got these really sweet notes from students:



And the student who wrote me the lavender and white note above also gave me this really pretty watch bracelet.


I didn't realize these students cared that much, so it was really nice to know that they liked having me there.

Now I'm going to enjoy having no homework!

So close!

I just turned in my final big project!! I have one more smaller assignment to complete and my final evaluation, but then I'm done!

Internship observation

In a surprise twist, rather than the week after next like I thought it was going to be, my internship observation will be Monday and Tuesday of this coming week.

Apparently I got rescheduled, but no one ever told me. So. At least it will be out of the way, and I can relax over the last couple weeks of my internship, but the lesson I have coming up is for the week I thought my observation was going to be, not this coming week.

Bullying Display

My project for this week is creating a display and lesson that go together, so I created a bullying display (Thanks for the info, Laura B.!) and a cyberbullying lesson plan. Hopefully I'll teach the lesson next week to a small group of students, but for now, here are some picture of the display:

Fairy Tale Display

I took a couple pictures of my fairy tale display with my cell phone today.

Here is the bulletin board. It's basically lists of books grouped by fairy tale. The white parts are sparkly, and that doesn't really show up in the picture.



Here is a close-up of my version of Beauty and the Beast based on various public domain generic princess and generic beast/animal cliparts. I sort of envisioned a simplified scherenschnitte look, but it didn't come out quite as cool as I pictured in my head.

Read an E-Book Week!

This year, Read an E-Book Week is March 6-March 11. I certainly plan to read some e-books this week to celebrate :)

Halfway done!

It occurred to me that I'm past the halfway point of my internship. That's crazy!

So far this week I created my second display (fairy tale theme to go along with the fairy tale movies that are coming out this month). Hopefully I'll have pictures of that soon, and I'll post them here when I do. It didn't come out the way I pictured it in my head, but it still came out OK.

I also updated the library's copyright page as my assignment for the week. It's nothing special, but you can look at it here if you want to.

My First Display

UPDATED: Added better pictures

There's a display case in the front of the circulation desk, and it has been empty since I started my internship except for some fall leaf fabric draped over it. I asked if I could put stuff in there and was basically told to go for it.

As I was weeding one section of the collection, I noticed that there were a lot of nonfiction pirate books that have never been checked out. So I decided to make a little pirate-themed display to see if it might draw some interest to those books.

Here are some pictures:







I also made these little "X" signs and taped them to shelves close to where there are pirate books. There are also three different signs, one with pirate nonfiction books, one with pirate fiction books, and one with pirate graphic novels and put those signs in the appropriate sections. The nonfiction section also had room to display pirate books on the top of one of the shelves.

Teaching in the Library

Last week I taught two different kinds of lessons: a lesson on different kind of reference sources and a lesson on plagiarism. Now that I've been at my internship for over a month now and gotten some practice in, I feel a bit more comfortable doing the teaching part.

For the first time this week, a student came up to me and said, "Ms. Haft! Can you tell me what the difference between this big Spanish-English dictionary and the pocket Spanish-English dictionary is?" I was so excited that a) he remembered my name, and b) chose to ask me the question instead of any of the other adults that were right there.

Reference Lesson

Plagiarism Lesson

VCLA - passed!

I just got an e-mail with my unofficial VCLA scores. The "unofficial" result is that I passed!

No more tests!!!!

No more tests!

I'm getting ready to start the fourth week of my internship...almost a month done! So far I've observed some lessons, visited an elementary school and a high school library, learned how to check books in and out, put books on hold for students, and I've taught a couple lessons on print reference resources (dictionaries, thesauruses, atlases, encyclopedias, almanacs, etc.).

This coming week I'll teach more print reference lessons, teach a lesson on plagiarism, go to my first lunch time book club meeting, and have a conference call with the internship coordinator at FSU. There's also a teacher workday this week, so I'll get to see what goes on during a teacher workday too.

I took the Virginia Communication and Literacy Assessment (VCLA) yesterday, and hopefully that's the last test I need to take in order to get a teaching license. The test took a lot longer than I thought it would, and I won't know if I passed it or not until approximately 2/18. Like with all of my Florida tests, when I finished they gave me an unofficial score report printout. Unfortunately, it was pretty much pointless, because the unofficial score report just said a percent of correct answers for the multiple choice sections. To pass, it's not based on having a certain percentage correct, you just need a combined score of 470 or greater. How the percentages correlate to points, I have no clue.

Internship - Week 1

I made it through the first week of my internship in one piece, and so far, it's going well. My schedule looks something like this:

Work: 6:30 or 6:45 am - 7:45 am
Internship: 8 am - 12 pm
Work: 12:15 pm - 7ish pm

This week I basically just started getting my feet wet, observing what's going on and helping out where I can. I also went to Potowmack Elementary on Friday to see what an elementary school library is like. Next Friday I'm scheduled to visit Potomac Falls High School to see what a high school library is like.