A Giant Pile of Books

Friday afternoon, a teacher came into the library and genially asked, "Do kids even check out books anymore, or do you mainly just deal with computers?"

She was surprised when I told her that kids checked out books all the time.

I had a classroom library when I was teaching.  I sponsored the creative writing club at my school; since this tiny rural high school didn't have any sort of extracurricular arts activities (no drama club, only a marginal class-time-only chorus), my club became the official hang-out every Thursday afternoon for my "nerd-herd," as I (affectionately) called them.  Every kid who wasn't into sports but wanted to be involved in school, who needed a place to belong -- we had that in my classroom.  Really, looking back on it, it was pretty magical.  Kids who love to write?  It goes without saying they also love to read.

And read they did.

Voraciously.

Were they reading D.H. Lawrence or James Joyce?  Of course not.  But, in a youth culture of "I'd rather just see the movie," it was so refreshing to see a group of kids who would geek out at the release of a book, who would go through the YA trade paperbacks in my classroom like they were candy, who would examine the latest movie adaptation under the harshest light because the book had been so beloved. 

I have loved to read YA books for years.  Recently, it has become more or less okay for adults to enjoy YA books too (thanks for that, J.K. Rowling) because they tend to have a combination that "grown-up" books often lack: they're easy to read, and also often pretty darn good.  The characters are engaging, the dialogue doesn't insult your intelligence, the themes can be sneakily complex, and the plot never slows to the point of boredom.  One of the best things about reading YA books as a teacher was getting to recommend them to kids. 

The library didn't always have the books I wanted to recommend, though, and so I would spend many weekends (and at least as many dollars) perusing bargain bins and used bookstores for sturdy, cheap copies of The Maze Runner or The  Hunger Games or The Lovely Bones or Eragon. 

The first year, I kept a list of the titles I had acquired.  Then, books started moving on and off the shelves, and I didn't really keep track of who had returned what or who had left what on their nightstand for two months.  The list got so long I didn't bother anymore.  I had accumulated a rather prodigious collection, and considering that most of the books had cost me less than three dollars, I didn't really care how long it took them to return them, if ever.  The kids were reading.  That was enough.

Did it ever occur to me to donate these books to the school library?

Well, to put it simply, no.  No, it didn't.

Nobody put up a fuss about it, and the kids certainly weren't complaining.  What's more, I somewhat jealously guarded my classroom's status as unofficial mini-library (albeit an incredibly disorganized one).  I loved that my classroom was where they poked their heads in the door to ask, "Got anything new?"  It was such a pleasure to smile and walk over to the bookshelf and say, "I've got something I think you'll love."  Now that I think about it,  those exchanges might be the reason I decided to become a school librarian in the first place. 

I would like to think that teacher-me and librarian-me would get along.  I can definitely see why some librarians would find classroom libraries problematic: if the library is supposed to be the hub of the school, and readers don't really need it to get the books they want because some cheeky teacher has a giant pile of popular books on the back shelf of her classroom, that could create problems.  There's also the problem of what books belong to whom -- my classroom library were not the school's property, but mine.  I never bothered to ask for reimbursement, and instead branded each book's inside cover in Sharpie with my name and classroom number.  And none of this mentions the fact that if one of my books had been deemed questionable by a parent, the school would have been unable to defend me, because the books were my property, not the school's. 

At the same time, though, I really hate the idea of begrudging anyone a book.  In a perfect world, I would be a bit like Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street: Macy's may not have it, but Gimbels does, and it's on sale, too!  Of course, this would probably create all sorts of problems for the teacher with the classroom library, as impatient readers with no concept of "don't interrupt sacred class time" would be knocking on the door whether it was planning period or not.

In the mean time, we have the aforementioned (in the previous post) book request form, available online (advertised with QR codes, which have become something with which I am obsessed...more on that later) and on a clipboard attached to the fiction shelf.  And as for the classroom libraries, as long as kids are still coming to the library, what I don't know can't hurt me.

(at least) 23 Minutes of Doubt

I experienced a new conundrum in the library this week.

On one of the bookshelves, we have a book request form.  It's a clipboard with a pen attached to it on a string, and the grid asks for the student's name, the book title, the author, and the student's e-mail address (so we can let them know if/when the book becomes available).

Probably, I'm setting myself up for something dramatic here, but for the most part, the book requests are relatively innocent: whatever adaptation is hitting the big screen soon, the occasional Nicholas Sparks sap-fest, the latest book or two in a manga series.  We did have one joker facetiously request Fifty Shades of Grey, but I kind of expected that.

The book that troubles me is none of the above: it's a book called 23 Minutes in Hell, which is supposedly a true account of a man's twenty-three minute foray into the land of fire and brimstone.  The book's back cover claims to be able to answer various details about hell, such as whether or not "good" people go to hell ("good" is in quotes in the descriptor-blurb), if there are children in hell, the details on demons and "levels" of hell, et cetera.  The end of the descriptor-blurb says, "Even if you don't believe my story, I hope you will believe the Scriptures and avoid hell just the same."

When I started working here, I came fully expecting to do battle with conservative community members over The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian or The Glass Castle or The Color Purple.  We happily participated in Banned Book Week activities, and the student media assistants put together a wonderful display of banned books complete with caution tape loaned from our student resource officer.  I love the idea of celebrating the freedom to read.

I do not, however, love the idea of endorsing religious propaganda.

So here I am, stuck (pardon the cliche) between a rock and a hard place.  Here is a short list of problems irking me about this book request right now:

• I don't want add a book of dubious credibility to my library, but I don't want to tell anyone what they can't read, either.
• I take greater issue with this book's content than our community's general population would.  I can't even claim that I don't want to bring in anything preachy, because I wouldn't hesitate to bring in, say, Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion.  This whole conundrum makes me feel like a bit of a biased hypocrite.
• What if, on the off-chance, there is a small contingent (emphasis here on small -- "minuscule" or "microscopic" might be better words) of people who adamantly oppose any and all religious texts in schools, and would go utterly bananas if I ordered it?
• Related to the above, if I were a parent, I would admittedly be one of those who protested this book.  Anything religious in schools is something I am particularly sensitive about (I am not particularly religious, and am extremely wary of any kind of proselytizing or evangelism, especially in schools).  Do I object to this book as a librarian, or do I object to it personally?   
• Perhaps most superficially...how big of a jerk do I look like if I order everything else on the request list, and ignore this one book?

I would like to think that there is some easy solution to this problem, and my naivete as a brand-new school librarian is all that is to blame for my anxiety over this.  My media assistant, ever patient with my quirks and worries, suggested digging the book out of a used book store and lending it to him, but not adding it to the collection (so that I could assuage my guilt at the idea of keeping a book out of someone's hands).

Who knows?  The title of this entry is a bit misleading...obviously, the book in question has caused me more than a mere 23 minutes of doubt.

Testing 1,2,3

I have been designated as a "back-up" testing coordinator for my school.  Since the passage of legislation prohibiting guidance counselors from coordinating any testing, the job has fallen to anyone else who could possibly do it: librarians, technology facilitators, and assistant principals are the main candidates (targets?) at my school.  At least once a week since the beginning of October, I have had an entire day utterly shot by testing -- ensuring that displaced classes have somewhere to go, rearranging lunches to accommodate tests that run over three hours, administering/proctoring/relieving administrators/proctors to go to the restroom...it started with the PSAT, and then the PLAN (a required practice ACT for sophomores), and today it was the "College and Career Readiness Test" (a county-required test for all juniors).   

As an educator, I long ago became comfortable with the idea of accepting "whatever comes with the job."  Right now, the job of a media coordinator/teacher-librarian is in a state of flux; we are no longer solely the keeper of the books, the custodian of computers, the grouchy lady at the circulation desk who yells at unruly students who dare enjoy themselves in the library.  The idea of transitioning to a teacher librarian encompasses so much more.  We are here for students AND for teachers.  We are here to make learning easier, to bridge the empty space between information and someone's brain, to develop curriculum.  And since the job is already in such a transitional period, the idea of becoming a full-time testing coordinator utterly terrifies me, as I'm sure it did guidance counselors when the illustrious (or, more accurately, illustriously miserable) job was bestowed upon them.  Their first thought must have been something similar to mine: "...as if we didn't already have enough to do."  

The amount of state, district, or county-mandated testing in North Carolina is unprecedented.  We now have, in addition to end-of-course or end-of-grade tests, standardized tests for almost every subject at the end of the semester.  Throughout the semester, we have the ACT, the PSAT, and the PLAN (to name a few).  We need professional, full-time testing coordinators now more than ever, and have fewer funds and resources than ever before.

Like my last post, I don't have a solution to this conundrum (other than pressing for the addition of a full-time testing coordinator).  I just wanted to reflect for a moment on my frustration at having so much of my valuable teaching and library time be overshadowed by doing testing-related duties.  I am co-teaching a Holocaust unit with another teacher right now; I'm personally vetting websites for informative QR codes in the non-fiction section; I could have used the hours I spent walking around in circles and staring menacingly at students writing discussion questions or updating the library website.  I have never coordinated tests before, and while it may seem like an easy job, just being the "back-up" is the rotten triple threat of time-consuming, stressful, and tedious.