Thankful to be. . . “Library Girl”

    The other day at school one of our kindergarteners couldn’t remember my name. He said “Hey, hey, hi, hi Ms. . . Miss. .  . Ms. .  Hi Library Girl!”  I laughed and laughed  and then laughed some more.  I love that!  I started to wonder and think about how I went from the Social Studies teacher to Library Girl. . .
     Have you ever wondered what would have happened if you’d gone left instead of right?  Or asked that question? Or taken that chance? I have been reminded lately of the best decision I ever made.  When I make a list of the things I am thankful for, this is near the top of my list.
     Raise your hand if you know I have a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from Florida State University!  I thought so. . . Most people who know me know that!
     But here is what some of you DON”T know:  Two professors at FSU got a brilliant idea to transform classroom teachers into school media specialists.  They wrote a plan and  got a HUGE amount of financial help from the Laura Bush Foundation to turn that idea into reality.  Doctors  Eliza Dresang and Nancy Everhart created this whole thing called Project LEAD, and that’s how I got my degree.
     Way back in 2006, somehow I got an email from our district media services person. There was a meeting about this brand new program that would help teachers become school media specialists. There were going to be six spots in our county – and a meeting on September 11, 2006.   That was my fork in the road – and the choice I made has literally changed my life. I went to that meeting, met Dr. D and Dr. E and the rest, as they say, is history.
     We started class in January 2007.  It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.  Looking back those  2 1/2 years just sort of seem like a big blur. I learned so much more than I ever thought I needed to learn,  and was stretched so far out of my comfort zone.  Part of that time included my 6 week trip to London in the summer of 2008,  an absolutely fabulous trip, but again, way out of my comfort zone. I could count on one hand the times I’d been in a different STATE than my family, but to be in a completely different CONTINENT?  For 6 weeks?  I’d spent TWO nights in my life EVER in a hotel room alone.   It was hard, but it was good!
     Here’s the most surprising thing.  Somehow, along the way, my professor, Dr. Everhart, along with her husband Harry, turned into my friends.  I’m not sure how or when it happened – it may have been the 6 weeks in London.  Maybe the time we were both got carsick on the bus on the way to Stratford –on-Avon was the bond.  (I’m not sure but I think throwing up together may do it! )  I know  she moved to the “One of My Most Favorite People Ever List”  – when she found grits for me in London! I know it sounds silly, but I’m a Southern girl and I missed my grits!
     Oh and her husband, Harry? We just clicked. We talked about middle schoolers and there was just a connection there!  I read his blog (and so should you – it’s great – (http://everhart.blogspot.com/)
Since our graduation, we’ve seen each other here and there,  off and on. We’ve had dinner together a few times when they were in the area. I was looking at my old emails and when I got the media specialist job at my old school – I sent Harry an email. When I got my new job at my new school this year, I sent Harry an email!   For years, they have invited me to their home to visit Tallahassee.  So, finally I decided to take them up on it and headed north on November 10th.  had a fabulous weekend – but  that’s a story for another day!

     Here’s the thing. . . I can’t even imagine what my life would be like now if I hadn’t attended that meeting on September 11, 2006.  If I’d decided the GRE was just too hard, or I didn’t want to write that essay, what I would have missed. Today is Thanksgiving – and we think about the things we’re grateful for. I’m grateful that Dr. D and Dr. E had an idea. I’m grateful the Laura Bush Foundation funded that idea. I’m grateful that I could get my degree while I was still working, grateful we could do class in our pajamas at home.   I’m grateful for the friends I made along the way – the other girls in my county, the other Project LEAD people, for Dr. E and Harry. I’m so, so grateful for the opportunity I was given. I’m thankful that because of that, I get to be “Library Girl!”

A Magical, Mystery Place, right here in Florida. . .

Apparently, there’s a magical place right here in our state that very few people know about. But I’m going to share it with you.  What is this wonderful place?  The Florida School Book Depository!!  If you Google it, you can find this picture:

What is the Florida School Book Depository? Who really knows? Here is what I do know. . .
All textbooks in the state of Florida apparently come from the FSBD.  I have no idea how the books get there, or how big it is or how many people work there.  I really don’t know much, but I have very strong feelings about that place.
Here is what I think happens there. They (whoever “they” are) receive an order from the Polk County School Board. Apparently, it’s split up by school, with all sorts of rules – you can’t deliver on Fridays, this is how many, blah, blah, blah.  So, somehow there’s an order placed and “they” get ready to fill it.  When I say “filling the order” here’s what I mean. Someone (or maybe it’s robots, I have no idea) picks the books for my school off a shelf.  Then, they pack them on a pallet. But, before the pallet is packed, all of the boxes are thrown into a big, huge pile somewhere on or near a giant pile of dirt. They roll the boxes around in the dirt for a while, and then they put them on a pallet.  But, when they pack it, they put all the pallets they are going to pack the order on to, and put one of each kind of box on each pallet because, God forbid, we end up with two boxes of the same kind of material anywhere NEAR each other. 
Now, the packing must be some kind of big Jenga game.  Instead of little blocks of wood, they use boxes of textbooks.  I think there must be several  rules to this game: first, no two boxes of the same thing can be next to each other.   Next rule, they have to stop occasionally and throw even more dirt onto the boxes.  Last rule, they get bonus points for having all the labels on the inside of the pallet, so that no one can tell what’s actually in the boxes without unpacking the entire pallet.
Finally, when all of the pallets are packed, making sure to follow all the rules, they wrap the pallets in GIANT Saran wrap.  This must be super, duper Saran wrap, or maybe it’s the industrial strength Press and Seal.
Last, but not least, just for fun, they pack “Mixed Title” boxes.  These involve throwing a few lonely items from each kind of book into a box.  And again, if there are 4 Mixed Title boxes and there are 8 copies of a book, they put two in each box, instead of all 8 in one box.  Again, even Mixed Title boxes must be covered in the obligatory layer of dirt.  And these must always be placed on the very inside, very bottom layer of a pallet, so that just when someone thinks they are done with one book, SURPRISE – there’s ONE more in a Mixed Title box, buried under 22 workbooks of an entirely different grade and maybe even a different subject.

I really don’t know what goes on at the Florida School Book Depository.  I do know that I was so dirty the other day after digging around in some of my 12 pallets of Reading materials that I blew dirt out of  my nose later in the day. When I washed my hands, I made mud.  One of the men who is building our school walked past me and he was cleaner than I was. (And that is not an exaggeration.) 

I’m sure the people who work at the FSBD are very nice.  I’m sure they are loved by their mamas, daddies, spouses and children.  However, they are NOT on my Christmas card list. In fact, every time I think about it, I hear this song in my head:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZQVSxXTCjg

A First For Me. . .

     I’m not like other people. I figured that out a LONG time ago.  When I became a media specialist at Westwood, I was one of 20 something middle school librarians.  Before that, I was one of six, sometimes seven  Social Studies teachers at my school.  I am my own person, but I was just one of a herd.
     Now, things have changed a little.   There are five K-8 schools in our county.  Of those five, only three have a certified media specialist  - I’m the tie breaker. Until my school, we have two media specialists and two media paras.  Of those five schools, the other four are schools of choice – meaning students have to apply and they have rules about who can come to their school and who can’t.  Needless to say,  those schools of choice generally get a pretty good school grade. For some reason,  students who might bring down test scores don’t stay very long!  So my brand new school is a K-8 school, but it’s a regular school. We don’t get to choose or remove students.  We are bound by all the “regular” school rules. So I’m in a pretty unique position – there’s no other media specialist in all of Polk County in the same situation as I am.  I’m special!
     Today was my first school orientation ever with elementary  age students.  It was . . . different. It was fascinating.  Some of them are so little and most of them are so, so excited about school. Our school is brand new, which is very exciting for all of us, and the vast majority of kids and parents I saw today are all excited.  I’m excited!
     So today, one of the first families I saw had a mom with a pink cast on her foot, with a knee scooter like my friend Laquita used last year after her bunion surgery.  This mom was wheeling around like an expert. She told me she’s been on it for almost six weeks.  Her little girl is in first grade. They wanted to look around my beautiful new media center so of course, I let them!  This little girl was adorable. Her eyes were as big as saucers.  She didn’t say much, but she was soaking it all in.  They told me she was home-schooled for  kindergarten last year, so this is her first experience in school.I talked to her a little, asked if she was excited about school, if she liked books, just general small talk.  She nodded at me, and they went on their way.  
     A little while later, they came back to the media center.  I thought maybe there was a problem since the guidance counselors were fixing problems in the media center.   I asked if everything was OK.  Her mom said

“Oh yes, she told us we had to come back in here so she could tell her librarian goodbye.”

I almost cried. I knelt down so I could see her more closely and she just looked at me and smiled. I told her thank you and that she made me very happy.   
     I’ve worked in middle school for a really long time. Middle schoolers may like you, but they don’t always  act like they do. They may  tell you later, when they are older, but not so much while they are in middle school. 

     I don’t know why my new principal chose me.  I don’t know what the future holds for this job. (I don’t like change – so I intend to stay here until I retire! Moving is too hard!) Leaving my friends and family at Westwood was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done – definitely the hardest decision in my professional life.  I thought of the verse in Esther that says “Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”  I’m not saying I’m as important as Queen Esther. I’m not here to save an entire group of people.  But I’m firmly convinced that God had a plan for me all along.  I’m here at this place and this point for something.  Maybe this sweet little girl is one of the reasons.  I can’t wait to see what happens next!   

For Good. . .

On Monday, (first day at my new school) I'm walking back from lunch and a wifi run and this young man who is working stops me and says "What is your last name?" I told him - he said, "didn't you used to work at Inwood or Westwood - one of those 'wood schools?" I said yes, that I worked at Westwood. Yesterday, he passed me while I'm walking with my sister and says "Hi Ms.Jimmerson." My sister just rolls her eyes and says "Really? You know him?" (It always amazes her when my former students show up far away from Westwood. In Winter Haven, it makes sense, but not in Davenport.)
Today, I'm digging around in my storage space looking for some office supplies and a young man comes around the corner looking for one of the carts they supply to move stuff. I tell him he can have the one I'm using because at the moment, I'm not really using it. He comes to get it and says "I can't remember when or where but you were my teacher." We went over the time and place, he was so, so nice. (As a plus, he told me I don't look any different now than then so SCORE!)
I've been sorting, cleaning, digging through a lot of my teacher stuff this summer. I keep finding things that I inherited when my friend retired. Ii have borders and a dolly from Mrs. Smith, lots of books and other good stuff from my friends Mrs. Grant and Mrs. Turner. I find books that I used with Mrs. Barry, when we taught the same subject, things that I shared with lots of other teachers.
Looking through and packing up my library stuff, I find things that my friend Mrs. Sharon found to make my media center pretty. I found beautiful letters that my friend Mrs. Kathy decorated, my wooden letters that my sweet church babies decorated for me. I see lists and things that I made to organize that huge media center space at Westwood and I remember all the people who came and helped me move and rearrange and clean.
     
     I keep finding things, but those things remind me that the most  important things are not THINGS.  Mostly, I'm amazed by the time and energy that other people have poured into my life.   When I think of my 22 years at Westwood, this sums it up:

So, let me say before we part:
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you.
You'll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart.
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have rewritten mine

If I could write or sing a song about how I feel, this would be it:

For Good - from Wicked

Tomorrow A New Adventure Begins. . .

Two years ago, I started a new chapter in my life when I moved from my classroom to the media center. In some ways, my life didn’t change that much, in some ways it changed drastically. Tomorrow, it’s not just a new chapter, it’s a brand new book – a new story, if you will.

I’ve started school at Westwood Middle School for 22 years. For 22 years, I’ve had nervous dreams the night before school started. School doesn’t start tomorrow, but I’m going back to work tomorrow. But, for the first time in 22 years, I’m not going to Westwood Middle. I don’t have any school keys for the first time in years. I’ve been working on stuff all summer, and emptying my old media center, speaking to book vendors, processing new books for my new media center. Tomorrow it’s all different.

Tomorrow, I step foot into a brand new media center that no one has ever had before. Any and all book placements are me. Any book processing specifications are me. If it looks a mess, it’s me. If it doesn’t flow properly and transition nicely, it’s me. It’s exciting.

I’m terrified. Absolutely, positively terrified.

I don’t know one single soul. I have no best buddies waiting for me. I’ve emailed my new secretary, but I have no idea what she even looks like. I’ve met my principal and assistant principals, but only in an interview. I’m afraid I’m going to mess up. I’m afraid my new principal is going to change her mind and think “Why on earth did I choose this person? What was I thinking?” I’m afraid I’m going to do things that don’t make sense. I’m afraid I don’t know enough. I’m afraid I’m not good enough. I’m afraid I’m not enough.

But, then I keep thinking about the strange way this whole job thing worked out. I wasn’t even looking for a new job. I didn’t sweat much in my interview because I was content where I was. I really thought that God was just going to use this interview to confirm that I was where I was supposed to be! But apparently, He had other plans for me – and I can only trust that this is the right thing.

So, I may shelve books wrong – and I may end up moving books around in October. If it doesn’t flow nicely, I’ll rearrange. My books may not end up processed all the same, but they’ll all be similar. I may have chaos and confusion for a few days (or weeks!). I may not know enough. But I’m enough, because I firmly believe that I’m right where I’m supposed to be. So tomorrow, when I step foot in that brand new media center, I won’t be alone. I’ll be OK. There are WAY too many people who love me and who have prayed for me and have poured into me for me to completely screw this up!

Once upon a time. . .

I had a pineapple bed. I’m not sure that’s what it’s really called, but that’s what we always called it.  One of the first beds I ever remember us having in our house was the pineapple bed.  It looked something like this:

This isn’t mine, but mine looked something like this. We called it the pineapple bed, because the head and footboards have pineapples on them.  We had that bed my whole life I guess. I can’t remember us NOT having it.  We took turns sleeping in it. but it seemed to be mine more than my sisters.  No matter where we moved, it seemed to always go with us.  This single bed was the bed I slept in for years.  I actually never got a bigger bed until after my mom passed away in 2001. 

I loved my bed.  We used to run and jump on it. All of our names had been scratched into the headboard. I think I did most of the scratching of names one summer when I was punished by having to go to bed at 7:00 every night.  It was still light outside!   We didn’t have air conditioning in our house, so the windows were open and I could hear the rest of the neighborhood  kids playing outside.  I read my first romance book lying in that bed. I’ve been all over the world, in that bed, reading books.  It’s been repaired several times, probably from the running and jumping on it.

It hasn’t been assembled for a while. It was standing up against the wall in my old house.  When I moved to my new house, I didn’t need it, but I just couldn’t get rid of it. 

So, fast forward a little. One day I was wandering around Pinterest and saw a bench made from a pineapple bed.  It was beautiful, but I wondered who could  make it for  me. 

I’m very blessed to have some really, really good friends who are really, really crafty.  My friend Mr. Donald is a craftsman who make beautiful things. He turns acrylic blocks into pens, he makes wood blocks into pens, he makes cute bowls and beautiful bookshelves.  He can also make a bench from a pineapple bed. 

Today, my friends delivered my bench.    It is beyond  beautiful. I love words, but words escape me. When he brought in my bench, I cried a little bit.   The memories that flew through my mind,  and just how beautiful it is the brought me to tears. Again, words fail me.  I thought about sitting on that bed with my head in my daddy’s lap, while he and my mama checked my newly pierced ears.  I remembered lying on that bed, waiting for him to come and spank me.  I remember Mama sitting with me while I was sick.  I remember both of them sitting with me while I said my prayers.  Now, there will be a whole new set of memories from that bed. 

So, are you ready?  With no more words, may I present, my recycled pineapple bed that is now my pineapple bench!

A room without books. . .

For Christmas, my sister made me a beautiful picture that has this quote on it: “A room without books is like a body without a soul.”  It’s attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero, a Roman statesman who lived a LONG time ago.  I love that quote and luckily, I have no rooms in my house without books.

When I moved in March, I got rid of a lot of my books.  I didn’t get rid of the special ones, but a lot of paperbacks went away. It made me sad, but it was OK. And then, I realized I didn’t have enough bookshelves to hold the books I was bringing with me.  Big problem. 

Right now, not counting my cookbooks, and the bookshelf in my bedroom, I have five large bookcases in my house.  And this may sound foolish, but the bookcases are just as special as the books.  I was thinking today that the places where my books live are just as important to me as the books themselves. Let me explain.

When I moved in this house my friend Mr. Donald built two beautiful bookcases for me. They are literally works of art.  Not only did he build them, but he painted them and delivered them. I came home and they were here. They are pretty big and I thought they would hold all of my books, until I started unpacking them. I not only love those bookshelves because they are beautiful, but because he MADE them for me.  He put part of himself into those bookshelves.  As long as I live, every time I see them, I’ll think of him. 

 

I brought a black bookshelf from my old house.  I repainted it black, but it’s been black for years. This bookshelf has traveled to lots of different houses with us.  For years, it had a pencil sharpener attached to it.  It always seemed bigger when I was a little girl.

(Yes, that’s Master Yoda on top and yes, it’s not arranged very nicely!)

 

Tonight, my friend Dan helped me bring home two other bookshelves.  These don’t look quite as pretty as mine, they’'ve been a little more used and they are a little more beat up. But that’s OK with me.  See, they were my Daddy’s.  Someone who was his friend built them for him, just like Mr. Donald built mine for me. Daddy took them with him through several moves, they’ve been painted (and need it again) and there are dings and knotholes and scratches  in them.  But I think  I’ll keep the dings.  I’ll keep the hole that he cut so it would fit around an electrical outlet.  And when I put my books on it, I’ll smile and I might even cry a little.  Because some of the books I’ll be putting on it came from him. He packed them up for me. I’m not even sure what’s in some of the boxes.  I know there’s some Dave Dawson books and some old Tom Swift books and maybe even an old Tarzan book.

It’s funny how an old bookshelf that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else can mean so much.  Most people wouldn’t have those bookcases in their home, they wouldn’t fit into the décor of their  house, or wouldn’t help create the ambiance they want. But they fit me just fine. And as far as ambiance goes, they hold my books.  And my books hold part of me. It’s like being surrounded all the time by the things and people I love!