...and another one will hopefully begin.
I got my acceptance letter for East Carolina University's Master of Library Science program in December 2008, and started a month later. Two weeks from today is my graduation ceremony. I have taken a full load this semester, which I will use as my excuse for not blogging in almost four months. Now I am waiting on a grade in one course and I have one more reflection to write and I am done. I have gotten a preliminary pass on my program portfolio, I am waiting for the final pass after I write that reflection.
My internship reminded me of how much I enjoyed working with kids and being in a school setting on a day-to-day basis. I was worried about being able to jump back in after an absence of almost six years, but that part was not only easy, it felt wonderful.
School librarianship, like everything else in education, has changed quite a bit since I was in school. At that time we did a lot of dictionary skills, encyclopedia skills (from print encyclopedias and dictionaries), learning how to make outlines and note cards. Now we teach the Big 6 and Super 3 research skills in which students take a topic and choose what they would like to learn about the topic, go through the research process, and then conclude as to whether they learned what they set out to research. Old-style research topics such as "Write a report on Abraham Lincoln" went out with the Internet, which is better, because the newer research methods require more creative thought and should be more interesting to students when they have input on what they are researching and how they present their results. (Typed report, PowerPoint presentation, video, etc.) In my co-requisite course I learned how to use a few Web 2.0 tools for presentations, such as VoiceThread and Webspiration. I also toyed around with Glogster although I did not end up using it. A recent School Library Journal article for school librarian interns suggested several more Internet tools, which I'll have to research over the summer, as Google Docs was the only one that was familiar.
My elective was a storytelling class, which was interesting in that the curriculum was as much about honing writing skills and determining what comprises a story as it was about telling a story in front of people. And I got to do a dramatic interpretation of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and pretend to be Peter Rabbit in front of a class of 4- and 5-year-olds. My response to being asked to do that sort of thing in my early 20s would have been "oh heck NO" but I'm either less self-conscious or enjoy making a fool out of myself for laughs a little more now, with the big 4-0 approaching at .5 past lightspeed.
I started this blog to record experiences in library school and thoughts on library-related subjects, and called it "caffeinated librarian" in the hopes that eventually I will be more than just a "caffeinated librarian wannabe." Library school has been an exciting, exhausting, and fun journey, in which I have gone from "I want to work with kids, I like books, this seems like a good option" to loving and appreciating nearly everything about libraries.
Now to resume-writing and job searching and hoping that I'll have my own library in August.
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