First Day, Full Week

1. Do you think participating in spirit week help you be more approachable to students?
           I do think participating in spirit week makes me more approachable to students. They come in and they see that I took the time to participate and it helps them see that I am someone they can talk to, someone they can trust. This is very important with this age group. They need to see that the adults around them care about their well being and that they want to help them. If dressing up in a silly costume helps my students see me as someone they can trust then I am going to dress up.

2. Do you think that book displays and bulletin boards make a difference in the books that are checked out?
            I do think they make a difference. They are both one of the first things the students see and I have noticed that books that are featured on them are checked out more than those they have to go find in the stacks. With that being said I try to keep both the book display and the bulletin board up to date at all times so that students can see the books we have available in the library.

3. Has the hour long lunch made a difference in how students use the library?
            The hour long lunch has definitely changed how students use the library. Those students who never come in the library now come in and hang out during that time. They use it for many things; a place to study, to hang out, to play games, talk with their friends, read a book, use a computer. During this hour alone we sometimes have 150 students come through the library.

Reflection:
            Spirit Week...what an interesting time to be at a high school. Students are excited because they get to dress up. They are excited about homecoming and at my high school they are excited about the homecoming parade which gets your out of school early on Friday. Its an interesting week to visit and I'm glad it was my full week. I took advantage of the week and dressed up with the librarian and the assistant. The students loved coming into the library to see if we were dressed up and how we were dressed. This made a difference in how the students saw us and how they approached us. The hour long lunch was new for me, when I was a student there we had three separate lunches, so it was interesting to see how students used it. I took one day and I walked the school for a few minutes during lunch just to get a feel for what it was like outside of the library. Personally it felt like controlled chaos to me, but I believe the students like it. The clubs use it to their advantage to have meetings during this time. So while the hour long lunch doesn't make complete sense to me it works for the school.