Sarah the Librarian

I survived my first instruction session, and while it certainly wasn't perfect, I managed to cover everything in my outline and the students seemed to have kept up with me, so I'm going to call it a success. The bigger deal to me was that I was barely nervous before or during the presentation. Many of my elementary and middle school teachers would be shocked at that statement because I was pretty well known for having nasty stage fright as a kid. I was also a cryer back in those days, so not only was I not able to do public speaking, I would generally end up a sobbing mess about it. So how in the world did I become a teacher? I think it has something to do with my desire to help people being stronger than my fear of public speaking. Growing up, I was the oldest child and one of the oldest cousins, so I got used to explaining things to the younger ones. In school I tended to catch on quickly, so there too I ended up helping others. Helping people became second nature to me. ...

As I prepare to teach my first class next week, I'm finding myself reading everything I can find on teaching styles and the state of information literacy instruction for inspiration. But instead of posting link spam to more articles than I could possibly give my two cents on and still keep you all interested, I'll just talk about my experiences a little bit. After doing my first dry run in the classroom, I realize there is a lot left to figure out before I'll be confident teaching this presentation. For the first time I'll be using a smart board and clickers. While both pieces of technology seem to work well, it's still a new layer I'm getting used to. Then there are the issues of working off a script I have to stick to so that the instruction remains uniform across all the different sections. I still don't get how to make my point with some of the activities we're supposed to do. My transitions are still clunky, largely because I'm still having ...

After months of searching I finally found found a job and I have to say that I'm really surprised with both where I landed and how much I'm loving it. After focusing primarily on the public library reference jobs that were similar to my most recent position, I stumbled onto a couple openings at nearby community colleges. When I'd first graduated from library school I heard somewhere that people who worked in community college libraries claimed they were this magical land where public meets academic, where you don't have to deal with spoiled rich kids and people are looking for things more stimulating than the latest James Patterson novel. But I went to library school so I could become a public librarian and I loved the public library job I eventually got, so I never really thought about that statement. While I loved my public library job, one of things I discovered I loved most about it was teaching public computer classes. Eventually it clicked with me that academi...