Gloom and Doom
When animals feel threatened, they become defensive and attack. When school librarians feel threatened, they become__________________. If I had to fill in the blank based on what I’ve been reading on our state’s listserv, I’d be filling in “negative and whine.”
Yeah. That’ll protect our jobs. Let’s just sit back and whine – others will feel sorry for us and not only save our jobs, but pay us double and get us library assistants, and give us unlimited budgets, and, and, and….
Loud and Proud
Instead of feeling defensive, let’s do what some of our colleagues have done and toot that horn, blast that trumpet, raise that roof!
Kelly Knight, librarian at Fork Shoals School in Greenville County, South Carolina, began today what I hope to see as a continuing theme on the SCASL listserv and forums: a thread entitled “Tooting my own horn.”
In the post, Kelly shared the success she has been experiencing while teaching her 4th graders about blogging. Today the students learned netiquette and began posting comments on the library’s blog. Next they will tackle book reviews and are revved up and raring to go!
After wading through several negative “gloom and doom” messages, Kelly’s post was like a breath of fresh air.
We are doing AWESOME things in our school libraries. Let’s share them with not only one another, but also with our school communities. They’re dying for fresh air, too.
Challenge!
Let’s inspire one another. Please share one (or more) awesome thing(s) that you are doing in your library in a reply to this post, or in a post of your own (and then share the link to that post here). And remember to share it with your faculty, administration, parents, and community.
Image “African trumpet‘ by smithadri is used through a Creative Commons license