An End

I handed in my notice for the yucky job today. I am very excited and very pleased. My boss was a little sad, but very understanding. So now I have to be careful about finances and not allow myself any slacking when it comes to getting my time in at the different libraries and talking with different staff. Looking forward to the plans God has for me.

Another School

Visited another library this afternoon. I reshelved some non-fiction and then spent the rest of the afternoon pulling Christmas books so that they could be displayed together. I had a nice chat with the librarian there and got an idea that may or may not help in getting my masters - needs a lot more thought and fleshing out and research and all that good academic stuff. I gave her one of my new business cards that I made and she said she'd add it to the business cards posted in the staff room. I have a few more libraries to visit, but my goal is to do that by the end of January. I'm thinking that I will quit the yucky job before Christmas so that I can have Christmas holidays and then I'll make sure that I'm in the schools four days a week, even if a good chunk of them are volunteer days - eventually I'll be people's first sub choice (the librarians anyway).

And great news - I finished my quilt top!! I may need to add a border to get the sizing right, but that's easy compared to everything else I did. I'm very pleased with how it looks.

Where have the days gone?

I feel like far too much time has passed for the little I've accomplished. I've been working on my quilt, but I find I get tired rather easily. I haven't had any additional sub days which makes me quite sad. The teacher-librarian program is sounding more tempting, but I think I'd like a few more library days before deciding to make such a huge investment. My plan is to volunteer at some of the other elementary schools and try to shadow my former teacher for a day or two. I need to be educated and make a good decision.

I decided that I wanted to keep my car a while longer, but it's already proving difficult. I had it parked for three hours without plugging in and it very nearly didn't start. Took a lot of tries to get it going. I told work that I'm only doing Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays now - that takes some relief off, but now I have an e-mail saying that they want to talk to me about covering some holidays in December. I'm thinking that my time to decide when to quit there is growing short. I'm not sure she'll accept that I'm only doing those 3 days. Without getting more sub calls I don't feel comfortable quitting, but if I commit to additional days at the job then I won't be available in case I do get called. ~sigh~ It's all so very difficult for me.

First Day Back

I had a really great day. I love being back in the school and hearing the kids. I certainly love books and the library lets me see that there's soooo many I have yet to read - and a lot of them look good. Yes there is checking books in and out and reshelving books, but that's not all a librarian does. Today I missed getting to read stores to the Kindergartens and Grade Ones because they forgot about it, but I worked with some Grade Twos who are in a book club and get to do some projects related to that.

I also worked with a class of Grade Fours and I loved being back in the classroom. I got to help them brainstorm all sorts of questions that they could answer when they start doing their research projects on animals. Choosing between classroom teacher and teacher-librarian may be a really hard choice, but I think it's easier to get full-time work as a librarian. Still not 100% sure that's what I want - I only got a small snapshot. The day was great and I am definitely glad to be a teacher again and can't wait to see what other experiences I'll have.

The Night Before

Well I'm not scared nervous like I used to be, but I'm definitely excited nervous. I want to do this well and I've never done this before. This will be my first time subbing for a librarian. I'm not even sure what they all do. I hope to learn a lot and gain some insight as to whether or not this a good career path for me. I certainly like the idea of being a teacher-librarian, but I have no experience to know if I'll like the reality. Feels good to be going back.