Congratulations! Holy Crap: Tips to Survive your First Professional Job

"25 Honest Lunchbox Letters" on Cracked

When I was 22, I was desperately seeking literally any job that I could use my bachelor's degree for a job in education or writing. Though I was open to all over the country, I only applied for jobs where I knew people, so I could use their addresses when applying, which turns out to be a terrible idea. But, you know, YOLO.

I ended getting a call the Tuesday before Labor Day. By Thursday I was in the office of a principal in rural FL, being interviewed for the position of Reading First reading coach, a position that technically needed, according to the grant they ended up hiring me with, an actual Master's in Reading, which, at the time, I happened not to have (I did know a lot about reading, however; it was the credential that I was supposed to need). I was appointed as the TAP mentor for special areas and special education, which I also had no business doing.

The principal told me they needed a reading coach to attend their district meeting in 2 hours, and could I attend?

Show Me the Awesome: Iron Fist Part 3

Artwork by John LeMasney, lemasney.com

This week I'm glad to join the many awesome people posting for Show Me the Awesome: 30 Days of Self-Promotion, started and curated by Liz Burns, Sophie Brookover, and Kelly Jensen. Here's a post at Stacked explaining the project, and All the Awesome is collected here.

I'm writing this post jointly with my new coworker, Brooke, who writes about her adventures in librarianship at Reading with Red.

As a former educator and classroom management survivor, I've written a few times about managing our Children's Department, complete with a to-scale boat and a life-size giraffe (here and here, respectively). It's been a trip, and we're finally getting to a place where our space is used by children mostly as it is intended.

I realized, though, that now we've gotten a handle on the kids, we're experiencing something that I haven't written about before:

Mythbusters for Kids: Sneaky STEM #2

Source

In April, I decided to do a bunch of science programs and call them "Mythbusters." The premise was based on the fact that this website exists, but when I got deep into what I could plan for cheap/free and what wouldn't need parental waivers or worry about balloon allergies and stuff, I turned to other science books and websites. And just when I  thought I was done for, I turned to the mother of all STEM websites, Gizmos, Gadgets, and Goo. I link to that so early with the implied promise you'll come back here. I talk about it later + an extra treat for you!

Everyone knows the best part of "Mythbusters" is proving whatever family member/high school acquaintance who shares those stupid memes on Facebook wrong (or right). It's the vindication, the ability to say, "I saw that happen, man." This is why, when we Confirmed, Busted, or "Plausible"d a myth, it was based on whether or not we could do it. If our conclusion conflicted with science, I'd say something like, "look at this! Some scientists have actually said this myth is CONFIRMED, but we said it was BUSTED! We're making new science right here in this room!"

Time Crunch Librarian

Click here to see our slides

A few weeks ago I was able to present with Anna (Future Librarian Superhero) and Anne (So Tomorrow) at the Michigan Library Association's Spring Institute in Lansing, MI. Though Anna, Anne and I talk through various social media outlets, I just met Anna in person last May at the WAPL conference, and neither of us had met Anne until the day of the presentation. If you're wondering how we managed to stay relatively on message for this hour long break-out session, I'll have you know it was due to the wonder of technology. We mostly brainstormed on Twitter and Google chat, and created a shared PowerPoint on Google Drive. While adding to the presentation, you could see where someone else was adding to their part or doing some revising. It was simultaneously a magical and creepy experience.

Maker-Spaces for Kids, Attempt #1

During our school's spring break, it was the perfect time to try out this trendy new "Maker Space" thing I've heard so much about. Back when we had to have programming list completed for Spring, I wasn't sure what I'd do; but whatever it was, it would have to be a Maker Space. Afterward, searching for things to do, I encountered many arguments supporting the idea that "Maker Space" is just a fancy-wrapping name for things Youth Services librarians have been doing for years, in a way that's appealing to adults. I wholeheartedly agree with them.

It's kind of funny how everything gets repackaged every so often. Most recently, I read a tweeted-out article about Flipped Classrooms that claims, "Self-Directed Learning is the New Learning." Yes, it's so new that it's been around since the dawn of Man. I would go way farther into how this the article actually kept me up one night so that I had to write an extensively about it at 2 AM, but here we're talking about Maker-Spaces.

So anyway. Spring Break "Maker Spaces":

Awesome GIF Finding with Bryce and the Superhero

Note: this is a two-part series regarding GIFs. The second can be found at Anna's blog by clicking this link. Please be advised that it may not be a series if only two parts, but here we are. 

The picture to the left uses Comic Sans; but I'm sure you agree, dear reader, that our likenesses are serious business.




About a week ago I woke up to a cryptic message:

Cool! Anna at Future Librarian Superhero and I are in the midst of collaborating on a presentation with Anne at So Tomorrow, but these ladies are awesome and I'd like to do more. I'm not sure what super-professional career embarkation I was expecting, but as I opened up Drive, it sure wasn't this:

I immediately was like this, then like this, then like this. Then, I was like this. And finally, in the Five Stages of GIF, I was like this.

And so, I present to you--
Bryce Don't Play and Future Librarian Superhero on: Finding GIFs.

Awesome Easy Elementary Outreach

I'm sometimes asked how I have time to blog about my programming. The way I see it, though, is different:
I have to blog about my programming.

1. I'm a blogger by my very nature. From ages 11 to 23, I wrote in a physical journal every single day. They travel with me as I move because as much as I wouldn't want anyone to feel anything about stuff that happened in the past (I even hate reading them), I just can't bear to throw them out. As soon as I (unceremoniously) stopped, I started writing at a Live Journal address. Looking back, I actually talked about work on it a lot. (But don't you look, reader, because I'm sure it's embarrassing or something. I just posted the link so you believed me).

2. I'm self-reflective about my programming anyway, and it just makes sense to write it down. Without writing it down, my reflection just goes in circles in my head until it spirals. "What could I do better next time?" quickly becomes "Why was I so dumb to think that would work?"; "I need to find something more cognitively appropriate for those kids." quickly becomes "I just can't work with that age group!" I mean, it gets negative and self-defeating, even if I talk about it. There's something in the flow from brain to keyboard that lets me not worry anymore. Maybe it's the act of knowing my thoughts are saved for later. It actually might be that forgoing blogging as a time saver in the past few months added to my stress level. That would make sense.

3. Blogging, in fact, saves time. I've talked before about my belief in writing scripts and how it's worked for me (here, here, and here). Take yesterday, for example: I found myself heading out to do outreach at an elementary school, and all I did was print out pictures!

...Okay, not exactly. But it was WAY easier than it might have been otherwise.