Language matters

I've been interested in how language changes for years, in part because when I was younger I went from having a mailman to a postal carrier, from stewardesses to flight attendants, and actresses to actors. It was also in part to my uncle being one of the founders of sociolinguistics, specifically language planning. As an…

Modeling good habits

This is one of those times I wish there was a 24-hour surveillance camera on me. Not because what I'm doing is so fantastically interesting, but because I'm trying to do what we tell our students to do when they're working on homework and large projects. What that? First, it's chunking large tasks into smaller…

#SpellcheckFail

At work we occasionally play "Six Degrees of Laura Pearle" because I make weird connections to people. One of those is my cousin, Ralph, who 'invented' spellcheck (fun fact: Ethan once pointed out that the family last name, Gorin, would be changed to, well... you get it, right?). Anyway, it's the end of the year…

Almost there

Thanks to the library building construction project and another surprise project, we're not quite ready for the year to end. But thanks to a massive push last week, we did get our summer reading recommendations out! These recommendations are our suggestions, with little or no input from teachers. There is required reading in many classes…

Please allow me to [virtually] introduce myself

Tonight, the Independent Schools Section of AASL will premiere a new recording of "The 'What If' Scenario", a presentation I first did with Sara Kelly-Mudie and Courtney Lewis in 2018. It's been updated because, let's face it, the worst kinda did happen to our libraries. All our libraries. Next month, my Upper School Librarian, Joanna,…

Fleeting connection

Usually, when we post to Instagram we get around 20-30 likes (less if it's a book-heavy post). A few have had more, like the post for last year's graduating class that got 47 likes. And then, yesterday, I had some time to fool around with Photoshop before the class I was working with started. And…

Racing towards Research Season

While teachers have been reworking their classes, adjusting things for hybrid learning and multiple time zones, we've been working on getting our (digital and print) collection ready and preparing to work with students virtually on their upcoming research projects. We know that many of the teachers who do the February project are concerned because they…

Rapid Response

Wednesday, after working on a semi-physically demanding project in the library I went home and took a nap. Then woke up to... well, we all know what was going on Wednesday afternoon. Scenes that reminded me of my vague memories of Chicago '68, with the fear that the Rodney King riots spread (I was in…

Finally, something normal

Last week I looked at this week’s forecast and saw snow was predicted. Fine... but it’s a week away. Over the next few days amounts of snow and arrival days kept changing: 5” Wednesday and 8” Thursday? no... 12” Wednesday and 3” Thursday? no... Tuesday it seemed to settle on 1-2” Wednesday night and 10+”…

Starting a revolution

Last week I met with my "book group". I'm using that term loosely to describe the amazing group of people I met during my time on book award committees; we miss talking about books with each other so we started a group that meets the last Sunday of the month (traditional Alex Award book talk…