Saturday, January 30, 2010

Snowy Day Treat

What a busy week! Sometimes the piles just get overwhelming...I am proud this week that I cleared two carts of books out of my office to be processed. Add to that, helping our Friends group make Valentine packages of romance novels, a chocolate bar, romantic bookmark all wrapped up in a pretty ribbon for their fundraiser AND going through about ten boxes of donations, I guess I did accomplish quite a bit! I was rewarded with a snow day and spent Kansas Day at home all cozy wrapped in a blanket reading Gilead. It is a wonderful book that I probably would have never read if I hadn't been participating in the library's TALK program. I'm looking forward to an interesting discussion on Sunday.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

811 Emergency

Our middle school English teacher asked me to come over today and help introduce her poetry unit to the sixth grade class. Even before I started, just the mention of poetry brought a groan - hence the 811 emergency! Very few teachers of literature in our district have embraced poetry so I love introducing this unit. After the students explore what different types of poetry there are, Mrs. Rausch has the students write poetry and compile a book. I think we may have to have a poetry cafe -- with an open mike and let them read their poetry the beatnik way.

After a quick introduction about why poetry is important then we dived in to an Internet scavenger hunt to find definitions and examples of different types of poetry. It's fun to reintroduce Mother Goose rhymes and point out the lyrics to songs are poetry. I'm going back tomorrow to finish the lesson and read some poetry aloud. Be enthusiastic and the enthusiasm spreads. I can hardly wait until to hear what these budding poets create!

Monday, January 18, 2010

Monday, January 18

Good morning,

My name is Christie. I am library director in a small town in Kansas and I'm just learning to blog -- yes, hard to believe but this is my first blog! Maybe you're wondering about the name, KSbarbarian. When I was an elementary librarian, a young student had damaged a book and was sent over to tell me about what had happened. He summoned all his courage, went to the front desk and told the clerk he was "supposed to talk to that lady barbarian" and the label stuck. Now days I'm the Head Barbarian!