Oh, man. You turn around and discover that this is the first Day in the Life that I've done all year. Well, it's high time! And Tuesday, September 3 was the perfect day to do it. Here's how my day went:
8:35a - I arrive at work, return my library books and CDs, and put my stuff away.
8:40a - I start setting up the meeting room for Mother Goose on the Loose - our first storytime of the fall session! Woo! We’re switching things up a little bit, so I spend a little extra time going over my storytime plan. We use the same format every week, but I was a bit tired of the same old things, so now I have to ignore my autopilot and pay attention to our new plans.
9:10a - I refill displays around the department and take down our craft table before we have the perfect storm of kiddos coming in. (If you have a craft table, do you take it down when you know a large group will be coming in? Or does that make me Mean Librarian?)
9:25a - I research lesson plans for Mr. Popper's Penguins for one of our local teachers and email her with what I find.
10:00a - Mother Goose on the Loose! We have 4 kids, three of whom are new faces. We’ve changed the program outline a little bit, too, so I’m constantly checking my notes to make sure I don’t go back to autopilot and miss a bunch of stuff.
10:40a - I help clean up toys, wrap-up my program, and come out to desk so that T can start getting ready for Toddler Time.
10:40a - 1pm - I'm on desk. I sign up a couple of Mother Goosers for our brand-new 1000 Books Before Kindergarten program. We're actually much quieter than I expected on our first storytime day, but I suspect that the long weekend has thrown everyone's morning schedules off a bit. I chat with one of my new employees about the Success by 6 Action Team and Conscious Discipline, which our school system is using this year. I check email. Miss A comes in at 12 and is back from almost a week of vacation, so we chat about school collections, etc.
12:45p - Our regular volunteer comes in for her hours and I get her started shelf-reading the paperback series books and prepping some craft supplies.
1-2pm - Lunch time!
2:00p - I work on some budget stuff for my director. I send email to my department with new procedures for marking items as damaged or missing (changing ILS’s is hard to do).
2:40p - I discuss a school collection issue with staff member. Then I meet with one of our local historians about a Bicentennial project we're helping with.
3:00p - I print off booktalks for tomorrow and prep for other programs later in the week. On Friday, a local pre-K class is coming in for storytime and I pull together the stuff I need. This week is jam-packed, so I'm taking advantage of every spare minute!
3:45p - I report to Miss A to help out with today’s storytime! It's our very first beginning readers' storytime and Miss A has planned it. Since Miss A is new to our staff and new to storytime, I'm helping out with the first one. I greet people and get out the nametags for them before we open up the doors to the program room.
4:00 - 4:45p - Reading Rock Stars storytime!!!! I'll definitely have a blog post up with more about what we did. Afterwards, I spend a little time giving Miss A some feedback and helping her clean up.
5:00p - I heck emails one last time and respond to my director about professional committee commitments of my staff for this year and next.
5:30p - Time to go home!