When I say I’m a school librarian, most people can make a connection and have an understanding. And as long as their next comment isn’t some Fox News bullshit (which was real fun at my grandmother’s funeral), I can usually leave it at that.

But the actual day-to-day complexities of what I do isn’t going to be understood. Most days I am checking out over 400 books to students, which means my volunteers, me, and my para (assistant) are checking in and reshelving over 400 books each morning. That’s over 800 books scanned each day. Then, I am also teaching six 45-minute classes every day and I see each student in our school (over 700) twice a week in those classes. So I am planning and prepping for those classes, teaching those classes, and running the book checkout. Not to mention managing behaviors and helping some of our new students (especially kindergarten) understand the expectations of the library. I am currently planning our book fair happening in a few weeks, getting ready to start my after school club, facilitating a $500 per grade level order for books and supplies, fielding sales phone calls, balancing my ~$10K budget, and being the team lead which involves monthly meetings to attend, twice a month meetings to run, and many additional emails. So yes, I do read to kids and let them take books home, but that’s nowhere near the end of my to-do list.

I like these badges, and want them for my school. First, we absolutely need better gun laws and need to change the gun culture in the United States. But even the school shooter stuff aside, we have 700 elementary kids at my school. Several are prone to seizures. Several are diabetic. MANY have life threatening allergies. Several have disabilities (or poor parenting/lack of resources at home) that leave them prone to outbursts that at a minimum disrupt the classroom and at most endanger the safety of the other students. We do not have enough walkies to give one to every teacher who has a severe need in their classroom. That leaves the option of calling the front office or going to the wall and pushing the call button for the office to respond. Badges like this can help so many stressful situations, and eliminate the excessive amount of chatter on a walkie.

Our local school district provides swim lessons as part of a PE unit to all second graders by busing them to a local indoor facility. They even have free swimwear available for students who don’t have it. A previous school district I was in had a PE program where 3-5th graders got to learn to ride bikes, they brought in a huge trailer of different sized bikes. There’s a lot of physical activity that some people take for granted without realizing that not everybody has the same opportunities. Programs like this are so important.

Librarian at a PreK-5 school (3-11 years old). I teach 45 minute classes to everyone each week. 700 kids, 32 classes. Less stress than classroom teaching while still following the same schedule.

We have to change our word/phrase/spelling for walk every year or so with our dogs. It’s currently called “going on an adventure”.

I never had the impression that the last prequel book and movie were very popular. Sometimes it’s okay to just let things die.

The Scholastic comment in the article is no longer accurate. https://www.npr.org/2023/10/25/1208419749/scholastic-book-fair-diverse-stories-apology They did have an optional diverse collection for their book fairs but have since added them back into the regular delivery for book fairs.

To the issue at hand, if Ruby Bridges was able to live through it as a child, your child can learn about it.

I browse Lemmy. Sorted by top 12 hours in the voyager app. That gets me through a few hours each day during the week. Then on the weekends when I have a little extra scroll time I go to mastodon when Lemmy is exhausted, and then I visit the few Lemmy communities I subscribe to sorted by new. I also have Feedly for RSS feed articles and Pixelfed occasionally. I have an almost 2 year old. My husband has a couple mobile games (mostly Pokémon related) that he’ll use for a few minutes at a time.

Edit: I’ve also used Libby to read ebooks. If I have to stop suddenly because kids, I’ll just highlight whatever word I stopped on and pick back up later.

I my experience with teaching in the U.S. sick days do get paid out at retirement. Teachers typically get 10 sick days a year and 3 personal days. The sick days stack but personal days turn to sick days after you have 5 banked.

Teachers don’t have vacation days. They get 10 sick days per year. They get 3 personal days. It’s very possible the only leave she had were sick days.

Most places I’ve taught in the US don’t have vacation days. You have sick days (10 a year, they stack), and personal days (3 a year, max of 5 before they turn into sick days).

Fuck Trumpkin.

I agree that nurses are invaluable and irreplaceable and that no AI is going to be able to replicate what a human’s judgement can do. But honestly it’ll be the same as what our hospital’s “nursing line” offers us right now. You call and they ask scripted questions and give you scripted responses which usually ends up with them recommending that you go in. I get that it’s for liability but after 2 calls for our newborn we stopped calling and just started making our own judgement. But for actual inpatient settings? Absolutely no way. There’s no replacement for actual healthcare providers.

I read a book last year (Song for a Whale) about a Deaf girl who would play a game with her grandfather where they would create a story together while using the same hand shape all throughout. So maybe they would make a fist, or ann open palm, or a “y” shape and then the story was created using signs that used that hand shape. If you couldn’t continue the story with the same hand shape you lost. Not exactly a pun but I thought it was interesting.

I looked this up a little while ago because a student had a note in their file that they are to avoid red 40 due to behavioral changes. I think what I gathered is that there is maybe some evidence but nothing has been researched thoroughly to make any real determination. Here’s the conclusion of a study: “ Conclusions: A restriction diet benefits some children with ADHD. Effects of food colors were notable were but susceptible to publication bias or were derived from small, nongeneralizable samples. Renewed investigation of diet and ADHD is warranted.” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22176942/

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I collect magnets of places I’ve visited. I have two collections: one is upstairs on a magnetic chalkboard and it’s only amusement parks (along with my scratch-off map of parks) and the other is downstairs on the fridge and it’s a random mix of cities, states, countries, and attractions.

Do EZ-Pass next. I’m tired of getting charged $35 every time my account dips below the $5 threshold or whatever it is.

It’s a little over $100 a ticket. I also don’t think fast pass is free anymore.

I just had this conversation with my scholastic rep in August. I told her to bring the books. I would much rather have books that represent all my students even if I anger a white mom or two. The books were mostly black and Hispanic characters and a few LGBTQ+ books. I cannot fathom telling a student that they don’t get to read or buy a book that has characters that represent them and their culture because somebody else doesn’t “agree” with it. Fuck man, let the kids read.