The Texas Librarian Association conference 2019 has come and gone and I have to say it was a fabulous time! Getting great ideas to incorporate in my library, meeting authors, hearing about the upcoming releases in books, and connecting with all the fabulous librarians of Texas are everything I love about TLA. I was able to meet “IRL” (in real life) so many Teacher-Librarians from around Texas and was finally able to put faces to Twitter handles. This is one of my favorite parts of the conference. To meet up, chat, bond, share, and learn from each other is just some of what comes out of the time spent at TLA. This Teacher-Librarian tribe I am honored to be a part of and learn from is amazing and I couldn’t do what I do without any of them! I hesitated to even write the following for fear of sounding self-consumed BECAUSE I PROMISE THAT IS IS THE LAST THING I WOULD EVER WANT TO DO. I just feel so strong about the message I’m trying to get across. When I first arrived, rushing to make it to my first session while trying to figure out the new-to-me convention center, I bumped into a wonderful librarian that came up to me to tell me she followed me to Twitter and about all of the great ideas she gets from my tweets. She asked to take a pic with me and at first I was taken a little aback as I thought but I didn’t do anything? Of course, we took a twitter-worthy pic and went on our way. I won’t go into the details but I had several interactions like this throughout the conference and while I am very honored to receive the recognition and praise I feel it is also very important to return this message to each and every one of those librarians that came up to me, and then some, that we ALL ROCK THE CASBAH! (total 80’s song reference there!) I hope that we all know and truly feel that we are all ALL-STAR teacher-librarians. When I remind others of that fact some say, “No, but you’re amazing!” And to that I am quick to respond, “We’re all doing amazing things in our libraries. Some of us are just louder and more vocal and a lot more extrovert about sharing!” I fully and openly admit I am that loud mouth librarian extrovert. Thank you for the extroverted genes, mom and dad! I truly believe amazing things are happening in libraries from elementary to high school across Texas. In my district alone I work with some amazing teacher-librarians who are extremely shy about sharing their work who have admitted to me they "don't feel comfortable sharing for fear of sounding like they’re tooting their own horn”. What they call "tooting their horn" I call "advocating for their libraries and themselves as the great librarians that they are. They may not scream and share all they’re doing far and wide but I know for a fact that they are rocking and rolling in their libraries and with their students every year. There are so many book recommending, reading rockstar librarians out there and I am so thankful to learn from all of you. Shout out to Elma Gloria (Fields ES), Kelly Torres (Knowlton ES), Karen Piedra (Franklin ES), and Stacie Tharp (Northwest Crossing ES) who are all elementary librarians I have had the honor to work with and learn from who read from picture books to YA galore so that they can book talk the next great read on their twitter feeds, youtube videos, and or morning announcements at school. There are so many awesome defenders of the comic book, graphic novel, manga genre librarians out there ready to slay those naysayers when they comment, “those books are not real books” or “not quality literature”. Shout out to my fellow comic book rebel-rouser colleagues, Elsa Trevino-Dominguez (Taft HS), Virginia Bigler (Harlan HS), Laura Lara (Ward ES), and Andria Amodt-Ho (Stevenson MS) for constantly finding ways to promote comic books in their libraries and with our students so much so that our district’s own comic con was born. Now, students of the comic book, graphic novel, and manga world have an event to call their own that is Nerdvana Con. There are so many maker magician librarians out there that I need to learn from and be encouraged that I can to just like them. Shout out to my district’s librarian specialist, Joe Tedesco, and the pack of librarians who are our fearless leaders in the maker-space front! There are so many literacy legends and defenders of the written word. Shout out to my amazing friend and colleague, Carrie Damon at (Rayburn MS), who tenaciously promotes the right and freedom to read and holds banned books week as her high holy week! There are so many librarians out there thinking of creative ways to bring authors and their books to our schools on a shoestring budget because they strongly believe that our kids deserve to be in the presence of great authors in an author panel. Shout out to the amazing Sheryl Stoeck (O’Connor HS) and Lucy Podmore (Clark HS) and Connie Lippenholz (Brandeis HS) and the entire LibraryPalooza committee for putting together the awesome book festival in our district that is LibraryPalooza for our students. I have worked in two different districts, the San Antonio ISD and now Northside ISD. I have worked alongside elementary librarians, middle school librarians, and now high school librarians, too many to name individually, and I have heard and witnessed all the marvelous things they do, create, bring, promote, and teach in their libraries on the daily.
You are all doing some wonderful, creative, important work in our libraries and with our students and teachers. It deserves to be celebrated and recognized! Remember, the only difference is that some of us are just way louder than others. Some of us just tweet it, blog it, facebook group post it, YouTube it, podcast it, and newsletter share it way more than others do but YOU TOO are every bit a rockstar and all-star librarian as well. And I thank you for all of your great ideas I have been inspired by and have shamelessly copied. So, to the amazing teacher-librarian reading this right now, I say, BRAVO and THANK YOU for being that INCREDIBLE, INSPIRING TEACHER-LIBRARIAN we ALL get to learn from every day! |
AuthorFormer Elementary librarian. Former middle school librarian. Now, High School librarian! Archives
June 2019
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