Gearing Up for a New School Year

Can you believe summer break is almost over? I know for many of our readers, school has already begun, but here in Northern Virginia, our students don't come back for a few more weeks. I, on the other hand, head back to work next week. And, even though summer ends every year, I'm feeling a bit stunned that it happened so fast this time around. It's hard for me to go from 0 to 60 on day one, so I'm focused this week on getting my school year mojo back. Here are some things on my to do list for the week as I prep to go back to the library.

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1. Roll back the alarm. Alas, I set alarms all summer -- my kids do swim team and band camp and all sorts of things. But we wake later in the summer. This week, I'm rolling back the alarm a bit (not all the way to 5:30am,  but earlier than our summertime 7:15am). Getting accustomed to waking up early again makes the transition a bit easier.

2. Read some professional literature. A few things on my reading list this week:

• Purpose Over Passion: Getting Started and Finishing Creative Work (A.J. Juliani, 7/1/2019)
• 8 Things Teams Do to Sabotage Their Work (Educational Leadership, Summer 2019)
• Teen Advisory Boards Work to Impact Libraries—and Communities (School Library Journal, 8/5/2019)
• Why Teaching is Still the Best Job in the World (TeachThought, 8/3/2019)

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3. Participate in a Twitter chat. Some of my most valuable professional learning has occurred through my personal learning network on Twitter. Twitter chats are a great way to connect and there are so many different ones, across all different interests and content areas. I think I'm going to jump in on #satchat or #sunchat this week to help ramp up my own back-to-school energy.

4. Make in-person professional connections. I'm looking forward to meeting up with a few district colleagues one evening this week -- a casual get together that will help get us focused on the school year. 

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5. Set goals. Just one or two to get started. A couple of my goals for the school year

• Revamp library orientation (we've done the same one for the past few years and it has worked really well, but our district is rolling out a new library management system so I need to figure out a fun and engaging way to train students on this new tool).
• Start a student library advisory committee so that our program is more student-driven.

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What do you do to get into the back-to-school mindset? What other reading suggestions do you have? Who do you talk to to increase your back-to-school energy? I'd love to hear your ideas!

-Gretchen

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You might also like:

• Back to school, back to reality (August 5, 2017)
• Back to School Night: We're all in this together. (August 30, 2016)