No Shhing Here

When we think about classic children's literature, names like Louisa May Alcott, S.E. Hinton, and George Orwell instantly come to mind. While these literary giants have left an indelible mark on the reading landscape, it's crucial to expand our horizons and also introduce teenagers to contemporary YA literature. These traditional pieces in the canon have their place, but I think they're the most impactful when bookended by today's YA lit. Point #1: Windows, Mirrors & Doors Contemporary YA literature offers a fresh perspective on the world teenagers inhabit today. It delves into the challenges, triumphs, and experiences that resonate deeply with young readers. By exposing teens to diverse characters, backgrounds, and contemporary issues, we empower them to develop empathy, understanding, and critical thinking skills. These stories become mirrors, windows, and doors for teenagers to explore their own identities, question societal norms, and imagine new possibilities. ...

In a reading slump? Looking for a little extra motivation? Not sure what to read next? Join us in the Teacher's Printz Reader Challenge! Calling all teachers and school staff! Join my building and some of my favorite teachers in the Printz Reader Challenge! It's a perfect option for ELA teachers, librarians, or anyone that enjoys reading YA - bonus if you also work with the target audience for YA - teenagers! The challenge is super simple:  Print off a copy of the challenge badge. If you have a button maker, turn it into a button. Here's a PDF of printable badges , and a link to the original Canva template . Read the 5 young adult books that won the Printz Award or were designated Printz Honor books: All my Rage by Sabba Tahir, Icebreaker by A. L. Graziadei, Queer Ducks by Eliot Schrefer and Jules Zuckerberg, When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb, and Scout's Honor by Lily Anderson. Your goal? Finish before your school year ends. Every time you finish...

  As librarians, we cover so many different standards. Information literacy? Check. English Language Arts? Check. Reading? Check. STEM? Check. Computer science? Check. Over the last year or two, I've added social-emotional learning to the list of skills and competencies I teach through library instruction.  Some strategies are super obvious - like direct instruction as part of my teaching, but other methods like book displays and bulletin boards are more subtle. One primary focus of my library program is supporting students' mental health, which is directly tied to the SEL strand of emotional regulation.  Emotional regulation refers to the ability to manage and express emotions in a healthy and appropriate way. Emotional regulation is essential for secondary students, who are navigating the challenges and complexities of adolescence. During this time, my junior high kids feel a huge range of intense emotions, from excitement and joy to frustration and anger and everything...

One of our diversity, equity, and inclusion goals is to increase students' exposure to diverse voices. Although we strive to do this all year long, history and heritage months are good opportunities for a special focus.  Black History Month, celebrated in February each year, recognizes and honors the contributions and accomplishments of African Americans throughout history. It also serves as a reminder of the ongoing struggle for civil rights and racial equality, and it provides an opportunity for education and reflection on the ways in which black history has shaped and continues to shape the United States. Additionally, it helps to combat the lack of representation of black history and achievements in mainstream education and media. My go-to method for history and heritage months is to create a slide deck celebrating noteworthy individuals. I share the slides with my teachers, who then can utilize them at the start of every class period. Black History month's slides are avai...

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! This is a time where we come together to celebrate all that we are grateful for. For many of us, that includes our families and friends, good food, and plenty of warm memories. But what about our favorite book characters? What do they have to be grateful for? To celebrate Thanksgiving and the month of November, I've put together a special book display featuring YA characters who are grateful for everything they have in their lives. Like most of us, these YA characters are grateful for friends, family and their health, but UNLIKE us, they're also grateful for things like newfound magical powers and recent escapes from serial killers. Interactivity is a key feature of this display. Not only does it include gratitude reflections for each YA character, but it also invites students to use provided post-it notes and add what they're grateful for. This interactive aspect is a great way to get students engaged with the material and thinking about what ...

As a school librarian, I often create resources for teachers, but I don't always know if they have the desired impact, as they might be utilized when I'm not in the classroom. Case in point:  the daily agenda slides I created for Hispanic Heritage month .  This resource took a ton of time to create and was one of my big summer projects before the school year ramped up. I thought they were an accessible way to introduce diverse voices into our curriculum, and I liked the tie-in to national heritage months, but I wasn't sure if my teachers felt the same. Then, last week, I started getting emails asking if I had daily agenda slides to share for the upcoming Native American Heritage Month -  teachers were reporting it had become part of their classroom routine, and that students would remind them if they had forgotten to introduce the "person of the day." Happily, I had a slide deck ready to go, and now our social studies teachers have a month's worth of daily age...

My building overhauled the schedule this year, and with the new changes, my opportunities to hold a student book club during the school day were significantly impacted. I was extra disappointed because I'd worked really hard to develop and establish our new Reader Challenge , which required a monthly book club-style meeting for kids to earn their challenge badge. I was lamenting to some ELA colleagues how book clubs were my only opportunity to address these NYS library standards: Grade 8: Participates in literary discussions, special literary programs, and book clubs Grade 9:  Shares reading experiences and responses to literature in multiple ways (e.g., face-to-face conversations, technology presentations, posters, creative products) Unlike classroom teachers with rostered students, I don't have DEDICATED time to work with kids, so a schedule change meant that I wasn't able to cover these standards during the school day. Eighth-grade ELA teachers to the rescue! While we we...

I love booktalking, but I always find it frustrating; I prep 3-5 booktalks, go into classrooms for the day, and pitch the book. It's great for a couple periods, but after a while, I run out of copies of the books I'm promoting. It feels silly to booktalk books that aren't available to be checked out, and creating booktalks is a TON of work, so it's not practical to just switch to different booktalks in the afternoon.  The "Sell Your Book!" activity is my answer to this problem. It's a fresh, new alternative to speed-dating or book-tasting selection activities.  This book selection activity asks students to "sell" a book by working collaboratively to create a booktalk they present to the class . The lesson takes 40-45 minutes, requires both independent and collaborative work, and harnesses the power of student voice and student choice.  Because STUDENTS are creating NEW booktalks every period, it solves my booktalk problem; we never run out of boo...

I found this fantastic idea from @MonteSyrie, shared by @teacher2teacher on Twitter. It provides students with scaffolded support to help complete missing assignments, but also requires students to take ownership of the process.  The idea's all his -- I just tweaked the wording and threw it into Canva so I could print four to a page. If you're looking for the Canva template link -- click here .   

Looking for the posters and stickers we used for our reading challenge?  Here's a link to the Canva template for the poster.  And here's a link to the Canva template with all the individual sticker graphics. Please note: I've got some fair criticism about featuring "Black Characters" vs "Hispanic Authors" and "A.A.P.I. Authors," so going forward, I will be changing my version to: "Black Voices," "Hispanic Voices," "A.A.P.I Voices," etc. You may wish to do the same with these templates before printing. Want to have stickers printed? I had good luck with this company , ordering through the Amazon website. My ordering specs were: 1) Shape = Contour Cut, 2) Size = 2", 3) Quantity = 100, 4) Lamination = no. Each pack of 100 stickers came to $35.91. I am happy with the quality and size -- we'll see if they hold up well once kids stick them on laptops, etc.  

I co-chair the diversity, equity, and inclusion committee for my building (but don't confuse me for an expert—I still have so much to learn). As a school librarian, this work feels like a natural fit, as so many tenets of our profession parallel traditional D.E.I. goals.  In my building, one of our current goals is to increase the diversity and range of viewpoints and voices in classrooms and curriculum, especially those that are historically marginalized. We've done some big work in this area—for example, we overhauled the novels and some short stories students read in 9th grade ELA.  Sometimes, though, we move towards our D.E.I. goals with baby steps—small changes that send us in the right direction, but on a smaller scale. An example? We're using daily agenda slides to highlight Hispanic voices during National Hispanic Heritage Month, celebrated from September 15th—October 15th.  Almost every teacher in my junior high starts class with an agenda slide. Agenda slides ar...

As a school librarian, it's super important for me to mark the American Library Association's Banned Books Week (this year, it's Sept 18 - 24). As long as I've been a school librarian, I've included a Banned Books display in my library. In the past, the stakes felt low, and I didn't worry that it would cause any kind of controversy. And things have changed. Now that book banning is MUCH more prevalent, and considered by many to be both a controversial issue and a highly politicized issue, I'm VERY careful to ensure my display is informational and allows lots of room for students to draw their OWN conclusions about the topic. (This aligns with my district's school board policy on teaching controversial issues.) To do this, I use the display to incorporate three reasons why people support book banning AND three reasons why people oppose book banning. I provide students with paper and pens, and encourage them to reflect on their opinions about the topic. Th...

Is it your first year in a new school library? Are there new staff members in  your building this year? How are you going to introduce yourself and ensure they understand what your library program offers? To facilitate this in my building, I created this front/back "Library Menu." On the first page, it introduces myself (the teacher-librarian), and my staff, including our library secretary and teaching assistant. In addition to a short bio, it also provides information on each person's duties a well as their contact information. Check it out below (I've redacted our personal/identifying information). 19421942 Don't want to create your own? The template is available on Teachers Pay Teachers. You'll be provided with a Canva template link, and will just need to create a free Canva account to access. Note: not all fonts and graphics are available with a free account, though all educators can upgrade to Canva for Education, free of charge. 

Have you seen the "He's a 10 but..." social media trend? Thanks to some Twitter inspo from Kesley Bogan and Megis County District Library , I had fun putting a literary twist on the idea. Here's my y2k aesthetic version of the trend.  Want to recreate, but save yourself the 4 hours it took me to assemble this display? Resources to create your own display or bulletin board are available for download here . Whenever possible, I like to make my library book displays interactive, especially if I can figure out a way to incorporate opportunities for student voice and choice. For this display, I included plastic cups labeled with "Not a 10" and "Still a 10" for each book featured. Students (when they come back next month), will use pom poms to vote, deciding if the main character is still a 10, despite their flaw.  This display translates well to a bulletin board, too. Just print and hang your signs, and staple the cups to the bulletin board to keep th...

As an introvert, I'm not a giant fan of icebreaker/get to know you activities that require awkward conversations with people you don't know. I'm not the only one - plenty of students feel the same way! Last year I came up with a beginning of school activity that introduces content, allows me to learn about each student, and begins to establish classroom community connections— AND it's cringe free! :) Our kids really enjoy this activity - there's lots of opportunity to be creative and it's culturally relevant with its video game tie-in. No Cringe Icebreakers In this activity, You: The Video Game , students share the things that make them unique and learn about their classmates' lives, but there's no uncomfortable conversations. Instead, students pretend their lives have been turned into a video game. They create a "screenshot" of their imaginary video game that includes 10 symbols, and write a bit of text to explain the meaning behind each symbo...

  I recently spent two weeks with a colleague that works at the elementary level. She'd just completed the most amazing project, organizing her nonfiction books into easily browsable genres. I love creating graphics, so with her input, I designed shelf labels and signs for 78 different nonfiction genres and 11 fiction genres.  If you'd like to purchase these genre labels and signs, you can buy them via my Teachers Pay Teachers store. The resource includes 78 nonfiction and 11 fiction labels in two different sizes: 8.5" x 11" and 2" x 4".  For a quick crash course in creating your own labels, keep reading! The first thing you're going to need is a  Canva account , preferably a Pro account or an Education account, to ensure you have access to ALL the photographs. Remember, education accounts are FREE for K-12 teachers. With Canva open, you'll click on "Custom Size" in the upper right hand corner, and then enter your dimensions. In my examp...