Serendipity! And proms ...

Here is a wonderful case of serendipity; next Thursday is Celebrate Teen Literature Day. A day during National Library Week (April 16, 2015), that is aimed at raising awareness among the general public that young adult literature is a vibrant, growing genre with much to offer today's teens.  Where's the funny coincidence?  I chose that day last fall to have my annual Battle of the Books in my school library with my teenagers (you know, readers of YA literature?!)  I'm not sure if the stars were aligning or I was psychically in tune with ALA or YALSA but there you have it, a great event for teen readers on Teen Literature Day!!   It even goes a little farther with the teen part, I have a committee made up of, you guessed it, teens, who actually make the book selections thus continuing to demonstrate that the YA genres have a strong interest in my small part of the world.  The students who have been reading the 9 books that were chosen for this year have seemed very excited about the choices, so this promises to be an awesome day for YA lit.


More YA lit fun; Speed Dating in the library.  If you work in any way with high school students, then you know that prom season is upon us.  This makes for a great opportunity to talk dating and books.  You can talk about how you want to help them find the perfect date, make all sorts of sly comments, and get everyone excited about this fun time.  I was "matching" my students in the library this week, really for an English assignment, but where's the fun it that, and I had one student tell me he was actually going to take his book to the prom, we'll see, I will be
chaperoning and that will be definitely be a picture worthy coupe if it really happens.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

I have been thinking about this phrase, which we all learning in elementary school - reduce, reuse, and recycle and how it should apply to school libraries today.

Reduce- the attitude, you know, the "but I've always done it this way" or "its my library".  We need to Remind ourselves that ours is not a regular classroom, we really do belong to our community of teachers and learners and must open our doors widely and cheerful (even if it is for testing!)






Reuse - there are lots of things we have stockpiled in our libraries that we can get rid of.  Why not use it to create a Makerspace activity? Take a look here for ideas: https://www.pinterest.com/cari_young/library-makerspaces/

Recycle - or check it out!  Just about anything in our spaces can be checked out if there is a need.  My advocacy thought is that if an item is checked out, someone needs to bring it back and that can begin a conversation that could lead to more use of the media center.

What can you do with 3 R's to improve your library media center/learning commons?  Try something new!