A New Library Space

After attending a conference on libraries and technology, I discovered a new way to explain our high school library to our users. We recently moved the shelves back into a wing of the area, opening up space for tables and students. One of my favorite faculty members came into the new configuration and said he felt the loss of the books. (They are there...just not in the middle of the room.) They aren't gone, just moved aside to create a work space for kids who want to use books and computers to create!

The conference speaker, Dr. David Loertscher, who is a great thinker in libraries, reminded us that the client is more important than the organization--the Google model. We can provide students the tools for them to build. He suggested that our library be a learning commons which provides physical and virtual tools for the community: http://www.davidvl.org/Davidvl.org/Home.html

First of all, I like the way he looks at the library website as a conversation for collaboration. The library web page can offer a place for learning projects, virtual book clubs, discussion, assignment conversations, and even a virtual year book for student work. He suggests beginning with personal space on an igoogle page, surrounded by a group space for working collaboratively on a project, and finally outer space which connects to the world. This model changes the dynamic of some assignments as both teacher and student are involved in a dynamic assignment using an RSS feed to update the conversation. He delineated the difference between a school using administrative computing, locked down for attendance, etc., as well as a more open structure for instructional computing. Through this new model of collaborative tools, we will teach responsibility and safety, building access much the same way as the "dimmer switch" on a light bulb, allowing more light (and access) as a student can handle it.

Whether teachers will grab the concept of 2.0 tools for the classroom wholeheartedly or not, we as librarians can set the tone for our library, showing all how the space can be used. By using the library as an experimental learning center, we can schedule and arrange the space to adapt to the needs of the students. We really don't want a library that is a storage place for books or a place where students sit and do nothing. We desire a productive space where books and computers don't get in the way of students thinking and creating.

In the new space students will work individually, in small groups, and in large groups. Specialists can "office" in the library to combine their efforts resulting in more creativity and productivity than a teacher or a librarian could have done without the other. The library can be the experimental learning center that belongs to nobody and everybody at the same time. It can be a safe zone for risk taking. New teachers can be nurtured there and action research can take place.

How does our library measure up to these standards of an open common work space? Does our library reflect

1. a sense of ownership by administrators, teachers, students

2. a place to collaborate, innovate...

3. flexibility

4. active versus passive learning

5. specialists pushing together

6. change

7. excellence

Most important in the ideas that confronted me at the conference was the use of technology. Of course technology has increased efficiencies. (We do remember the typewriter, etc.) But what has technology done to make deep understanding possible in our knowledge in chemistry? in literature? Do we confront major ideas on contemporary issues? Do we create possibilities for creativity? Certainly the computer has given students a chance for unlimited products and distribution as never before, but are we asking them to create something new and make new connections with what they are learning?

As we look at and use our library differently, the stakes are high. We can change the library from a place for checking out books to a learning center which allows teachers and students to be creative. The library is a phoenix which will arise in this new concept.

The Garden

I probably should have taken a picture of the garden yesterday before weeding, although it doesn't look all that different after one day of frantic cutting and pulling. Doing a good job of weeding takes a long time. Even big plants need room to grow and sunlight to thrive. Weeding around them brings them out, defining them to the observer. I find that if I do a little weeding regularly that I can see where I've been and remember the progress. It's pretty overwhelming. This summer I will read again All the Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner if I can find it. Every time I go to the garden I am reminded of that book. The binder weed gets me started thinking, a little vine that wraps itself around other plants grows near bigger weeds throughout the garden. As it matures, pretty pink flowers reveal that it is taking over, almost impossible to remove because of its intertwining. And that gets me thinking about a million things in life, especially how insidious vines can wrap around us until it's hard to remove them. Bad habits are like that, things that find a place to grow underneath and around.

Last night as I was sitting in my car, someone in a vintage red Corvette drove up. I had forgotten how uniquely shaped they are, long in front with a big trunk area, very sleek in a way. I waited to see the driver, certainly someone who appreciates a cool car, the speed, and an image of himself as the driver of such a vehicle. He was about what I expected--jeans, a tshirt with some sort of dragon insignia. But he wasn't a young man. Definitely middle-aged. He unfolded himself from the car to reveal a short, salt and pepper haired man with his jeans hiked up around his stomach held up with a belt. A pair of white Nikes completes the picture. As he came around the car to fill up the gas tank, I wondered if he had always driven that car, or if he is finally an age where he can afford it. Did he admire someone who drove a Corvette, or does he just like the way it makes him feel? Red and fast and sleek.

My mind wandered to a time after our house had burned down in Arizona. My daughter went shopping for a pair of boots. She chose a pair of flowered Doc Martens, certainly not a necessity--we lived in Arizona--very expensive and outlandish in a way. They made a statement of some sort to a teenager, I think, and so little to ask for a girl who had just lost everything in a fire. I expressed my disapproval with a little fussing and frowning before giving in. What was I thinking?

And then I flashed back to my husband's and my first car purchase. He selected a Gremlin, which at the time was very environmentally forward thinking--small and conservative. He wanted red; I insisted on white. Honestly. How many times will he get to pick a car in his life?

I am really hoping that this spring is really warm and that man will have many days in the sunshine driving in his red Corvette. Moreover, I am hoping to hold back my conservative, annoying opinions from those who are having a little fun with the little things. Balance is what I desire and seeking after what is important. After sixty years I'm thinking that it's important to have a little reckless abandon--buy the plastic bags with the pictures on them, wear flowered boots, drive a convertible, go to Europe. Most of all, relax with the people I love, enough to share their foolish fun. Absolutely no frowning.

Now that it's here and flying by, I am happy to have been away from the daily routine and into spending time randomly...watching, thinking, reading, participating, without directing, correcting, and orchestrating. Working in a school creates a very unique way of life of pouring out that demands a refueling or even a tuneup. At my house that has meant cooking for large numbers of people while playing games. We make lists of possibilities for an endless vacation of sharing fun with one another. I love anticipating the togetherness and confusion while fearing the parting and the routine that is waiting in the wings.
The bittersweet of old memories of Christmases past weaves through our talk. Mom's recipes of the annual Christmas treats with familiar dishes appear on scraps of paper in her handwriting and bad spelling while she's been gone for three years. Her last Christmas with us was a special outpouring of her love and thoughtfulness which touches all of my thoughts even now. Her name is "Joy," my favorite Christmas word and actually favorite for-all-time word. I wasn't particularly close to my mom in the way I would have liked--not talking things over and sharing feelings. I think I understood her motivations, though, and the compromises she made to stay with dad and to support us all. So complicated. This creates a curiosity in me about my children's memories of our joy together this Christmas and their understanding now and later of my complicated love for them.
The little daily actions of love have added to our futures in a way that we can't anticipate. I might even be able to begin an exercise program with Pilates as a part, although I pulled some muscles where I didn't know I had any. I might even try some of the new recipes that my daughter is teaching me...all peach salsa/ Trader Joe's healthy. I will definitely be able to decorate in a more exciting way with her gorgeous framed photography. And although my daughters won't inherit their grandmother's cut glass stemmed cranberry dish, they will some day get the lovely Tiffany bowl I received this Christmas. I am reading new poetry, too, that I will be adding to my favorite old ones... What a breath of fresh air my beautiful daughters are! This blog, too, (so high tech!) will begin the book that I have always wanted to start for them or for me...or at the very least it's a kind of diary that adds up to reflection on memories and experiences that currently just bounce around in my head like so many pieces of paper in the wind, no connection at all.
Count it all for joy.