Nov 07 2006
What happened to Hallowe’en?
I can’t believe we’re well into November already. The last couple of weeks have been hectic but in an enjoyable way (well mostly).
I have attended my second meeting of the 3-18 Learning and Teaching Strategic Group. I find the overview perspective this gives me fascinating. I have always kept up with developments and initiatives in DGS to make sure that the library provides relevant support to the school community. Now I have the opportunity to do so at authority level. As Field Officer for East Lothian Library Service I am able to feed back relevant information to my fellow school librarians and also to the SMT of the library service. There is a great deal of potential to be explored. The first example of this being the Extreme Learning project. The meeting at the Marine recently allowed us to begin considering in detail the relevance of our professional information management skills to the aims of Extreme Learning.
In the same week as the 3-18 group and Extreme Learning, I also attended the briefing on single status and job evaluation, our McCrone if you like. Check Brian’s Blog for more details on support staff’s concerns.
Last Monday was another of those woman versus technology days - loser again! But the week improved. On Wednesday CRAW (our Creative Reading And Writing group) met as usual. We heard the third installment of our novel, courtesy of Ms Aiken. Chapters 1 and 2 had been written by students. Everyone in the group has to write a chapter and we will think of a title for it at the end. I can’t remember when my turn is. I hope it is several weeks away. The standard has been set high.
The new library space is proving a suitable venue for all sorts of events. On Thursday we had an author visit by Keith Gray. Keith has visited DGS before. He gave a talk to all of S1 and S2 - an audience of over 200. This time we opted for a creative writing workshop which was attended by about 20 students. It worked well. I know this because we were supposed to finish at 12.30pm and most people were still there at 12.45 and having to be forcibly evicted! It was a mad gallop to Haddington to make sure Keith had time for lunch before he went on to give a talk at Knox Academy. Next month, thanks to EL Library Service and Scottish Book Trust, we will be visited by Beth Webb who will be talking about her new book.
Question of the week - from Thursday and fairly obvious. “Do you need a hand tidying up miss?” i.e. “Its 15 minutes to lunch. Do I have to go back to class?”