​Last weekend, Gretchen and I had the opportunity to travel to Anaheim, California to present at ASCD Empower17. We were thrilled to represent our incredible school district, FCPS, and were blown away by the support of the teachers who attended our session. We also were able to check out a variety of talks by educators, consultants, and administrators from across the country. 

This past weekend, I had the honor of serving on a panel at the NoVa Maker Educator Meetup, a new part of the annual Maker Faire NoVa. I represented middle school making and spoke along side public educators from elementary school, high school, and higher education; we were joined by maker facilitators from private school, community spaces, the public library, and a children's museum. It was very cool to be part of these conversations, the first of hopefully many more coordinated efforts of this group.

Next week our school will take a leap that has been a long time coming as we begin our student enrichment program. This is something we have been pondering for many many years and I for one am happy that we are finally taking a step to change our teaching and learning practice. Currently, students go to a homeroom class in the middle of the day for 25 minutes. They can use this time to complete homework or to visit a teacher for extra help. Sometimes students who don't have homework might choose to use this time to read or study. It can also be a time used for make-up work or retakes. 

​In our very first BubbleUp Take5 post, I mentioned that I had attended a sketchnoting session at edCamp NOVA. Driven by the in-person energy of Margaret, a fabulous FCPS colleague who exudes pure inspiration in everything she does, I decided to try it out. I promised to share my first attempt on our blog. The end of the school year is a good time to look back and reflect, thus, my first sketchnote is a year in review.

We are so close to  summer, I can taste it...I can feel the sunshine...I can sense the adventure. I love this time of year for a chance to step back, spend more time with my own children, and slow down a bit. But, I also love what I do for a living and am grateful to have summer to be able to focus more on growing as a teacher and a librarian. I read a lot of middle grades and YA fiction for fun, but I like to consume professional development books when I have more breathing room (shocker: this librarian loves to read!). There are some phenomenal recent titles (and one less recent but still on my list) out there that I know will help me to be more creative and are certain to energize my practice as an educator.

We are closing out on year two of the Kilmer Library Makerspace. Ours was one of the early library makerspace initiatives in FCPS and it is incredibly exciting to see makerspaces become more common additions to school library programs in our district. I believe passionately in our maker effort -- it allows our students to build their critical and creative thinking skills, to collaborate and communicate as they work together. It is in direct alignment with the 21st century skills we talk about so often in education and meets the student needs that we were not previously addressing. It serves as a safe haven for many students and brings others in who have not been traditional library users.