Hi there, NHSLMA!

It’s so nice to be here for your state conference today! (Trust me, if you had slept in a four-poster bed made of birchbark, you’d be excited, too!)

Slides for today’s keyonte on the future essential school librarian can be downloaded here.

Slides for today’s concurrent sessions will be posted immediately prior to those sessions.

Image source

This year’s themes revolve around the key ideas being discussed surrounding the Common Core State Standards, though they have relevance in non-Common Core states as well.

This year’s columns will look a bit different, but we want to make sure you have a chance to be heard.

Our first topic will be informational texts. Here are some questions we’re thinking about:

- How are you teaching about informational texts?

- How is your collection changing? (Or IS it changing?)

- How are classroom collections changing (and who’s paying and picking out the materials)?

- What kinds of PD are you doing that leverage your expertise with collection development and informational text?

- What is the role of the Web in ramping up the use of informational text?

- What is the role of textbooks when it comes to informational text?

- How are you re-envisioning the use of databases when it comes to informational text?

- How are you talking with parents about informational text?

- What resources are you drawing upon?

Thanks for giving this some thought!

Untitled via kwout

We’re also fortunate that 30 minutes away from Ann Arbor, the amazing The Henry Ford (a huge museum and village of Americana) is hosting one of only three formal MakerFaires in the United States on July 28 and 29. Our tickets are bought … we can’t wait!

So if you’re in Michigan or Northern Ohio, maybe we’ll see you there! And if you’re not, you might enjoy browsing Make’s Makerspace.com, which chronicles their work building makerspaces in schools.

On Monday, I got to spend the day with the librarians of Portage Public Schools. We talked about the Common Core State Standards and identified concrete connections between their current work and the CCSS’ expectations, as well as professional development opportunities they might provide for their colleagues (and how to find time when many of them work in a single building).

It was a pleasure to be around librarians who are so hard-working, committed, and up to a new challenge.

You can find the slides here, though we didn’t necessarily go in this order!

Source: Yellow in the Sunshine by Steve-h on Flickr

Some days, it’s kind of hard to hide my past as a costume shop stitcher and wardrobe assistant.

I can’t help it. I’m a sucker for old typewriters. I’ve been meaning to make some swell typewriter key jewelry, something I had forgotten about until I opened a rarely-used desk drawer today and found a batch of key caps I had been saving up.

I love the vintage typography that labels each key and the quirky vocabulary of time gone by: shift, shift key, shift lock, floating shift, back space, back spacer, margin release, ribbon key, single tab, tabular key, tab set, single tab key, tab. An up arrow. A down arrow.

And, as I should be tidying up my grades, but instead am wiling away the hours on Etsy, it got me thinking. What if people in our profession wore typewriter keys? Surely, there are a few back space folks, those who wish the clock could be turned back to the days of print. And there are the ribbon keys, who make decor their top priority. And the shift lock folks who are just sitting it out until they retire, who are not to be confused by the shift folks, who are happy to change their practice. Oh, those floating shift folks, wafting by in their chiffon and reciting poetry on demand — where did they go? The single tab key librarians, who hold onto print periodicals because some day, some day soon, a kid is gonna need Newsweek circa 1985.

What does the up key do? And down? Probably they’re literally the super- and sub-script functions, but surely you can cook up something more clever than that.

What key are you? And why?

Let us know below …

Image: Underwood No. 5 keys by avhell, on Flickr
Used thanks to a CC BY-SA 2.0 license

The Boxcar Children Beginning: The Aldens of Fair Meadow Farm : Albert Whitman & Company via kwout

Have you ever wondered how the four Boxcar Children ended up suddenly without parents, staring in the baker’s window at the start of Gertrude Chandler Warner’s classic The Boxcar Children?

You aren’t the only one. In honor of the 70th anniversary of the series, author Patricia MacLachan (author of, among other titles, the Newbery Medal-winning Sarah, Plain and Tall and the fantastic poetry collection Once I Ate a Pie) has created a prequel. From the Whitman site:

Before they were the Boxcar Children, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny Alden lived with their parents at Fair Meadow Farm.

Although times are hard, the Aldens are happy–”the best family of all,” Mama likes to say. One day, a blizzard hits the countryside, and a car is stranded on the road near their farm. The family in the car needs shelter, and when the Aldens take them in, the strangers soon become friends. But things never stay the same at Fair Meadow Farm, and the spring and summer bring events that will forever change the lives of the Alden Children.

Newbery Award-winning author Patricia MacLaclan pays loving tribute to the classic novel by Gertrude Chandler Warner in this story of the Alden children’s origins and the challenges they faced before their boxcar adventures.

Check out the two sample chapters or the contest for kids!