First Summer Post 2009

First post since school officially ended and I hope that you are all enjoying your summer. Of course it would be better with some good weather, but that’s what we get for living in New England. We can’t complain about the 4^th of July weekend though because those days were absolutely fabulous and, yet here we are, just days after that and we are contending with hail storms and intermittent rain accompanied by dark and foreboding clouds. Well, while I hope the weather improves soon, it has given a reason for staying indoors, and with that time I have been reading reviews as I prepare a book order for next year.

 

As always, I would love to get feedback from everyone (teachers, students and parents). I am ordering from Perma-bound and Follet books, and while both companies make their catalogs available online, you must login to Follet before you can peruse their selection (sorry). The partial list that I have already prepared includes most of the titles from the current reading lists and some books that have been recommended by students and teachers. I can e-mail you a copy of my current list if you leave me your e-mail in the comments section below.

 

Besides reading reviews and ordering books, I have had some time to spare and of course, that means surfing on the web. One of the sites I keep returning to is TED Talks because I love listening to smart people talk, even when I don’t agree with (or sometimes understand) what they are saying. Here is a list of talks that I really enjoyed from their ever-expanding treasure trove. This is the third time that I have mentioned TED Talks on this site, but I don’t think I have repeated any recommendations. The descriptions are lifted from the TED Talks site, with my occasional commentary in red italics.

How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history: While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics. An ongoing story that actually makes me think positively about the impact of real time, instant communication. Most times at HHS we are telling kids to put away their phones, when half a world away, they are using them to empower themselves.

 The world’s English mania: Jay Walker explains why two billion people around the world are trying to learn English. He shares photos and spine-tingling audio of Chinese students rehearsing English — “the world’s second language” — by the thousands.ay Walker explains why two billion people around the world are trying to learn English. He shares photos and spine-tingling audio of Chinese students rehearsing English — “the world’s second language” — by the thousands. Another fascinating, and somewhat creepy, video that also made me think about the speech above. When news and video of the protests in Iran broke on television after the elections, I remember thinking that it was really interesting how many of the signs were written in English. The protesters knew that their audience would be world wide and they chose to express their message not in their native Farsi, nor in the most widely spoken language, Mandarin, but in English.

 Cultures at the far edge of the world: With stunning photos and stories, National Geographic Explorer Wade Davis celebrates the extraordinary diversity of the world’s indigenous cultures, which are disappearing from the planet at an alarming rate. I recommend this video just because this guy would be great to travel with. Quite against the trend of the former video, this is the story of disappearing languages and “ways of being”. One of my favorite lines is, “Every language is an old growth forest of the mind.” I also found the notion of an ethno-sphere pretty interesting. Ethnosphere (n.) the sum total of all the thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions, brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness. Davis argues that the ethno-sphere is being degraded by the success of Western culture.

 The fragile Earth in wide-angle: In this image-filled talk, Yann Arthus-Bertrand displays his three most recent projects on humanity and our habitat — stunning aerial photographs in his series “The Earth From Above,” personal interviews from around the globe featured in his web project “6 billion Others,” and his soon-to-be-released movie, “Home,” which documents human impact on the environment through breathtaking video. Beautiful pictures with a simple and devastating message, “We do not want to believe what we know.”

 Are we in control of our decisions?: Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we’re not as rational as we think when we make decisions.

 Why we think it’s OK to cheat and steal (sometimes): Behavioral economist Dan Ariely studies the bugs in our moral code: the hidden reasons we think it’s OK to cheat or steal (sometimes). Clever studies help make his point that we’re predictably irrational — and can be influenced in ways we can’t grasp.

 Formula for changing math education: Someone always asks the math teacher, “Am I going to use calculus in real life?” And for most of us, says Arthur Benjamin, the answer is no. He offers a bold proposal on how to make math education relevant in the digital age. This is a short talk that I think our statistics teachers will certainly appreciate.

 Mathemagic: In a lively show, mathemagician Arthur Benjamin races a team of calculators to figure out 3-digit squares, solves another massive mental equation and guesses a few birthdays. How does he do it? He’ll tell you. I thought I liked the first Arthur Benjamin video and his message for reforming math education, and then I saw this video which convinced me that this guy is an absolute freak. He is obviously a savant of some kind …. ridiculously amazing. What does he know about how the rest of us think?

 Becoming Buddha — on the Web: In our hyperlinked world, we can know anything, anytime. And this mass enlightenment, says Buddhist scholar Bob Thurman, is our first step toward Buddha nature. Interesting conversation that has more to do with philosophy than with technology. A conversion of modern living and ancient enlightenment.

 Hope you find something interesting and thank you for stopping by.

 Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved.

Father’s Day Post

Mural Update

More than a month has passed since I last posted. At that time I asked the readers to help me out by submitting ideas and suggestions for the mural project that I was working on with the Afterschool Arts Program. As is usual with this blog, I got no responses. Although I am not complaining, just stating a fact, it is a curious thing to me that with so many people in our school, that not one person was interested enough in the project to say something to me.

Since then, I decided to simply go ahead and begin painting (as my student painters also did not come up with any design ideas). The outlining is done and it draws inspiration from a variety of sources. Many people have asked about the “SILENCE=DEATH” part near the center bottom of the mural. This small area is a tribute to Keith Haring who started out as a guerilla (or graffiti) artist and channeled his talent into a productive career as a mainstream working artist. Haring began his “artistic” career in the early eighties by using chalk to draw on unused advertising space (which were often covered by black paper) in the subways of NYC. Haring gained fame and notoriety during the mid to late 80’s as he incorporated social messages (anti-Apartheid, AIDS awareness) into much of his artwork.

I hope to continue working on the mural this summer and perhaps even next year. If you happen to walk by it, stop into the library and let me know what you think (since no one comments on the blog).

Library Notes

It seems a little silly to post any announcements with just one school day left, but here goes anyway:

FOR STUDENTS:

• Please double check your lockers and homes and be sure to return any books that you still have out as they tend to get lost over summer vacation. We don’t charge late fees, but we do charge for lost or damaged goods.
• The new summer reading lists have been updated on the HHS main page and are also available here through the “Reading Lists” page on this blog. Please be sure to get a jump on these assignments as they will better prepare you for success next year. I recommend that students read more than one of the books on their lists (you have plenty of time) and encourage you to always have a book with you this summer.

FOR TEACHERS:

• Please double check your rooms for any books that belong to the library, including those you may have checked out for your students.
• Make sure to return any videotapes that you have checked out. We need to take an accurate inventory of our videotape collection so that we may improve the selection of titles available.
• We will be sending out a short survey via school e-mail that has questions regarding the LMC services, facilities and equipment. Please take two minutes to give us feedback so that we will be able to better plan for your needs.

Closing Thoughts

I am an optimist by nature, a realist by training and a pessimist by experience. At different times of the year, the week, the day, any one of these can gain firm control of my spirit as I am propelled forward into the mix of the world. I don’t pretend to like any one of these forces more than the other, instead I try to stay focused on the work that must be done. No matter how I am feeling about myself and the world around me, I try to stay true to a few meaningful, but simple (some might say clichéd) rules with which to navigate. Perhaps some of you will find something useful and so, I share them with you now, as a parting summer gift:

• Know thyself. (variously attributed) Truly important if anything else is to matter.
• Do unto others … all is really one. (variously attributed) This is the golden rule of reciprocity usually attributed to Judeo-Christian philosophy, but found throughout religious and philosophic treatises. Depending on how far you want to take it, this rule alone could take a lifetime to master.
• Follow your bliss. (Joseph Campbell) This is only worthy of pursuit if you “know thyself”, for your bliss is about a higher calling to the best parts of your being.
• Just do it. (Nike advertising) Who says wisdom can’t come from commercials? The advertising industry uses everthing it can (psychology, money, sex) to get people to act in certain ways … they must know something about something. Anyway, there is one stipulation to this rule, and that is that it only applies to good ideas, that have been seriously considered, lead you towards your bliss, and further your understanding of yourself. Got that?
• Do not go gentle into that good night. (Dylan Thomas) This line of poetry is the clarion call for my every new day. We all must learn to “rage against the dying of the light” … whatever form that light may take for you (decency, respect, justice, freedom).
• D’oh. (Homer Simpson) Silly as it is, what I mean by this is to admit when you mess up … and say it out loud so others hear you.

Final Say (tricked you with the last header)

I began writing this blog in December 2007 (100 posts, 14,000 visitors)and have written continuously since then, but this marked the first time that I have written for an entire school year. I would like to especially thank everyone that stopped by this year and posted comments to provide feedback. It was very nice to hear from some readers and it inspired me to continue writing. I will try to write over the summer, perhaps biweekly, and hope that you occasionally check in to see if there is anything new, interesting or useful.

Thank you for reading and have a great SUMMER!

Oh and a Happy Father’s Day to all you true fathers out there.

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved.

Ideas for mural project?

I have been working with a group of students Tuesday afternoons as part of the ASOST program to paint a mural in the hallway between the TV studio and the LMC. This project actually fulfills one of the “5 things I want to accomplish this year” from my assignment for Mr. Cosgrove’s class (posted 9/7/08), so it makes it extra special. I have always loved murals and I really want to do a great job on this task, thus I have been hesitant to simply draw a mural myself and have the students paint it.

 Getting input and ideas from my group of after school volunteers, however, has been somewhat under whelming, so far. After three weeks of meetings, some lecturing and brainstorming, what I have gotten from my team up to this point is one 2” x 3” sketch of the letters “LMC” in a graffiti style font. I have tried to inspire their imaginations by recounting the history of murals, beginning with the spectacular cave drawings peppered throughout the world:

  

I have also spoken about the long standing tradition of public art throughout history being used to inform the masses and to record historic and/or religious events:

 

 Finally, I showed them the works of Diego Rivera, the artist whom many consider the father of the modern mural (and a personal favorite).

 

 Today, murals can be seen throughout the world, legal and illegal.

Some communities, such as those in Philadelphia, have even embraced murals as a way of beautifying their hard hit areas.

While I still have hope that my team of painters have more sketches and ideas coming, I can not simply wait for their input. That is why I am turning now to you, (the 12 or so readers of this blog) to provide some feedback about what you would like to see painted in that hallway. Keep in mind, that my artistic talents are fairly limited and that this is my first time painting anything in acrylics, and anything this big! Below you will find some samples of what the hall might look like with different kinds of murals. The mural that we intend to paint will be an original design, but it will draw inspiration in style and content, from other artists.

Thank you for stopping by and have a great Sunday afternoon. (GO CELTICS! … posted at 4 pm)

 

 Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved.

 

For those that come tomorrow

This poem was written for the May 9th community event hosted and organized by V.I.P. The pictures above show part of the crowd from the peace march, and I am sure that many of you will recognize many familiar faces. I want to thank Haverhill V.I.P. for inviting me to their 3rd annual march for a safer, more positive Haverhill. It was a wonderful show of solidarity and an example of self empowerment.

Thank you for stopping by and have a wonderful Mother’s Day.

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved.

May Post

Yes, it has been a long time between posts; just after I had hit my rhythm again. That usually means one of three things: I am being lazy, I am just too busy or I haven’t got anything good worth posting. I’ll have you know that this time it has been a little bit of everything, even though that may seem impossible. How can you be lazy and busy, I hear you asking. I mean I have been lazy in writing, but busy in living. I am sure that clarifies it for you.

As is usual after NOT writing for more than a week, there is so much news to convey, that I feel I must resort to the bulleted list:

•  Many of you have hopefully noticed that we are closed to visiting classes and study students this week due to testing. Teachers, staff, Virtual High School students and a few others with permission can still use the LMC facilities and computers to complete their work. All others are asked to please stay away from the LMC during the school day to ensure the quietest and best environment for students who are testing.
• We are preparing the MAGAZINE subscriptions list for next year and want feedback from everyone as to what they would like to see on our racks come September. We currently subscribe to 40 titles, 25 of which are newsstand staples such as Time, Newsweek, Discover, Scientific American, Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated. We try to change a dozen or so titles every year according to suggestions we get from everyone, so now is your chance to be heard.
• We are also preparing the BOOK ORDER for next year and would really appreciate your input. We collect suggestions throughout the year for novels, books, movies and other materials, but sometimes those Post Its get lost, ya know.
• The After School and Out-of-School Time Grant (ASOST) ACCESS ARTS program has started their new round of courses so please encourage students to check with Ms. Fontaine or Ms. Blim to see what is being offered.
• I (Mr. T) will be teaching the mural painting class in the ASOST program. I am really excited about the possibilities and would love to hear what people in our school think would make a great mural. We will be painting what is currently the large blue bulletin board covered in laminated magazine pages – (my earlier lame attempt to decorate this space) – located in the hallway outside the TV studio. I already have three students signed on to paint the work, and class size is limited to eight participants. We are still brainstorming ideas and won’t begin painting for a few weeks, so there is time for more students to register and time to get feedback from anyone.

 Thank you for stopping by, and I will see you tomorrow.

 Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved.

 

Musical links (personal list)

 This is one of those posts looking for a meaning; a collection of observations and musings (with links) that are only loosely tied. By now you too have probably heard something about Susan Boyle, the woman who wowed the judges and the world on the television show, “Britain’s Got Talent”. In under a month, one link of Boyle’s performance on YouTube has garnered 33 million hits! And there are other links to the same performance with another 20 million plus hits. It is remarkable what kind of attention this technology can garner. Susan Boyle’s performance reminded me of Paul Potts, who also floored the judges and left the audience gape mouthed with his rendition of an opera song — if you haven’t seen that, you can find it here. (Warning, it’s on YouTube, so you can’t watch it at school).

Anyway, both Potts and Boyle are just the latest reminders “not to judge a book by its cover”. In our ever increasingly superficial world, we are so quick to dismiss one another based solely on looks. It is an unfortunate truism about the media driven culture that we inhabit and it is getting worse with digital technology and photoshop able to erase all those “flaws” that make us beautifully human. It is a strange quirk about our nature, that if someone can demonstrate some other talent, we begin to forget (or not count so heavily) what they look like. Music, especially, seems to be able to close this divide and bring tears to our eyes.

Surfing around the net as much as I do, I often stumble across musical (and other) performances that leave me floored. Most times these just get bookmarked in one of my favorites folders and they remain there until … well, until I find some way to use them. Here then, are my recommendations for two performances that I believe deserve a wider audience:

P.S. 22 Choir: (Viva La Vida) During hard financial times, schools look to cut programs they deem as unnecessary or of limited academic value. This usually means that the arts, music and physical education programs are the first to go. Public School 22 in New York demonstrates what you can accomplish with a gifted, creative teacher and a little Internet publicity. While you are listening to these sixth graders sing, take a look at their little faces and tell me that they are not experiencing something valuable, meaningful and educational.

Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra: (Bernstein Medley) Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I played Tony from West Side Story in the 8^th grade (singing and kissing and everything!). So it should be no surprise that somewhere on this list you would find an entry that features some of Leonard Bernstein’s music from that play. This performance is amazing, and then you remember that these are NOT professional musicians, but a collection of poor kids from Venezuela who were given a serious arts program. Listen and enjoy!

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you have a great holiday!

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved.

A trove of free software

I love being a school librarian for so many reasons. For one thing, the term bibliophile made it sound like I had a serious condition and becoming a librarian was cheaper than seeking professional counsel. Of course I love reading, not just books, but newspapers, magazines and on-line sources, and as a librarian I get to share all that information with students and teachers. Lastly (and perhaps most importantly nowadays) being a school librarian gives me a real reason for spending so much time on-line (I’ll be off in a minute, honey – not now, kids, daddy is working).

Spousal and parental negligence aside, I really do try to do something productive with my time in the connected electronic world. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I am always thinking like a school librarian; wondering if something I have found or read or linked to could be useful to someone I know. Many times, when I find useful resources on-line, they are disconnected stories or links that don’t make much sense when they are lumped together. Occasionally, however, I store away a few good finds long enough to gather a real trove of resources that compliment each other. Thus is the following annotated list of free software that every student and teacher should have and learn to use for school. Links to download these programs come from respected sites trusted by the Internet community to be safe to use and virus free.

Open Office.org: This is an absolute “must own” for anyone who doesn’t have another hundred dollars to buy MS Office. Open Office provides the five programs most users are familiar with (word processor, spreadsheet, database, drawing and presentation) as well as a look that resembles Office. It took me less than twenty minutes to download and install the program at home. I used the word processor program to prepare this post and it worked flawlessly. According to a few reviews that I read, Open Office is dependable and all the programs work as well or better than their counterparts in Office. Open Office will work on a variety of Microsoft operating systems, including VISTA, as well as other OSes such as Linux.

Open Office Suite

 

Paint.Net: I already recommended this program in an earlier post, and I still believe that it is a great piece of free software. I discovered Paint.Net when I went looking for a replacement for my old PhotoShop which I couldn’t transfer to my new computer. Paint.Net worked mostly well for what I was doing, but I missed having more powerful tools. So, I continued searching and found …

The GIMP: Despite its rather un-PC acronym (it stands for GNU Image

Manipulation Program) and its sort of infantile looking desktop shortcut icon, GIMP is a fully functioning, high quality program with more filters and other bells than Paint.Net. A quick comparison of the tools/toolboxes from the two programs shows just how many more options GIMP has to offer. I haven’t had a chance to really play around with GIMP too much, yet, but just having a smudge tool again is enough to sell me on it. I was able to download and install the software in less than twenty minutes. While neither GIMP nor Paint.Net match up to PhotoShop’s versatility and power, most amateur users will be able to do everything they need to do by combining what each of the free software programs does well. Considering that PhotoShop starts at over $250, and that most of us aren’t professional artists or graphic designers, GIMP and Paint.Net are manna from the online gods.

FreeMind: In early February, Ms. Sullivan recommended to me the site ReadWriteThink.org when I was searching for a replacement for my mind mapping program, Inspiration. I found many useful templates and tools at RWT.org, and still highly recommend the site. However, I wrote that the essay map tool was, “exactly the kind of graphic organizer that I was looking for”, which may have been premature. What I was looking for was something like what you get at FreeMind, which is more open-ended and flexible than the essay map tool. FreeMind is still not as powerful or easy to use as Inspiration was, but I have already found myself playing around with it and finding that it serves my basic brainstorming needs. FreeMind allows you to import graphics, add hyperlinks, play with fonts, colors and backgrounds and even has some time management tools that shows how long it took to complete a project. Best of all, the mind map can be saved in multiple formats or can be exported as a .jpeg or .pdf to be included in other documents or presentations. FreeMind is not an Inspiration clone and lacks key features, like the “outline” view. But if you’ve never used Inspiration, you won’t know what you’re missing and you can save yourself $70 with a free, useful mind mapping tool. Like the other recommendations on this list, FreeMind took me about twenty minutes to download and install.

These four software applications give every teacher and student a good tool kit for participating in the connected electronic world. Anyone who already owns MS Office, Adobe PhotoShop and/or Inspiration don’t need the free software, but if you are missing any of these tools, OpenOffice, Paint.Net, GIMP and FreeMind are available for the asking.

Thank you for stopping by and may everyone enjoy their Passover and Easter holidays.

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved.

 

Mashing to make meaning

I am at a loss for words when I see some of the projects a few of our high school students put together for their classes. I have watched them cut and paste pages straight from the Internet along with grainy, poor quality, black and white pictures they gather easily from Google images. Hurriedly, and seemingly randomly, these students affix their “research” onto oak tag they get from us that morning or onto a presentation board they brought from home. This is not to say that there aren’t other students who do a marvelous job of researching, writing, editing, designing and presenting their work for class projects. It’s just that those aren’t the projects we see getting done, most of the times, in the library on the day the work is due.

This has always been true of some students, I suppose, but I am just floored that more students don’t take advantage of all the tools they have at their fingertips to complete their class projects. (I’ll write a future post about that). It find this interesting, considering how digitally connected so many of our students seem to be (I spend more time telling students to put away their phones, than saying anything else during the course of a school day – sad, but true). At our school, we’ve even chosen to block social networking sites such as MySpace and FaceBook, because the students were using all their free time on those sites. Of course, students weren’t spending their time on MySpace and FaceBook completing school work, but they were doing something.

Most of them were writing to their “friends”, updating their “status”, commenting on others’ pictures and words, embedding their favorite videos in their pages, taking silly quizzes, posting new photos of themselves and their world, adding songs to their playlists, changing the background colors and fonts on their pages, and doing a variety of other tasks that require skills we don’t teach or value much in education. I am not alone in wondering why this schism exists between how knowledgeable our students can be in some things, and how poorly so many seem to do in school.

We should not overlook or underestimate the role that technology plays in our lives, especially in the lives of younger people developing lifelong habits or ideas about the world. Cell phones, ipods, webpages, online virtual worlds, and the cacophony of media that is becoming ubiquitously available and instantly accessible, compete for our students’ attention, even when they are in school, sitting in class, walking the halls. I am not sure, yet, what this all means, but I have discovered a number of videos that have made me think that something seismic is happening.

The first two videos are from Kansas State U and address the notion that technology is changing the ways we communicate, because the tools have created new media for users to play with. The other links are examples of my favorite user generated videos (not professionals), taking pre-produced media, and creating a genuinely new work.

Note:  YouTube is blocked on our school computers, so to get to the links below, you will have to view this post elsewhere. (sorry).

A Vision of Students Today

Short video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today – how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. Created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University.

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

Presented by by Michael Wesch of KSU to the Library of Congress, June 23rd 2008. Worked with students to prepare over 40 minutes of video for the 55 minute presentation discussing how online users are generating new content and creating new social networks.

User generated videos

McLuhan – The Media is the Message posted by MyCluein

Video created by a YouTube user combining audio from “Speaking Freely”, hosted by Edwin Newman, featuring Marshall McLuhan and broadcast on Jan 4, 1971, with video from various sources. McLuhan was decades ahead of his time as a visionary and critic of electronic media and technology.  He is recognized as coining the idea of “the global village” and for advancing the need to understand how media impacts culture.

We are here: The Pale Blue Dot posted by palebluefilms

Reknowned astronomer and advocate of science education, Carl Sagan was also quite a wordsmith. In this user made video, Sagan narrates the words to his famous passage, “The Pale Blue Dot” reflecting on the picture of Earth taken by Voyager I in 1990, from nearly 4 billion miles away. The user says that it is, “set to some my favorite films and the music of Mogwai.”

The Matrix vs. Carl Sagan posted by dvlazar

This user made video asks, “Ever wondered if scientist Carl Sagan and Agent Smith from The Matrix might be the same person somehow?” I imagine that it is a pretty accurate portrayal (unfortunately) of how some students feel about sitting in science class. (Don’t worry Keanu is coming to save you.)

Have a great Sunday, and thank you for stopping by.

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved.

What does a HS librarian do?

          Everyone at my school received my e-mail in reaction to the summary from the Northeast Association of Schools and Colleges’ (NEASC) report of Haverhill High School. Granted, I haven’t seen the full report, and I really only looked at the part that addressed the library, so perhaps when all is said and written, my reaction will have been overstated. But I don’t think so and here’s why.

          I don’t think that my reviewers really understand what we do at the LMC and how we do it. (I am including Ms. Sicard, the other staff member, when I talk in the plural). Perhaps I shouldn’t blame NEASC. After all, they only spoke to me for thirty minutes, and they didn’t hang around to see what we do. Even students that I see every day and help with their Powerpoint presentations, algebra homework, college applications, formatting resumes, e-mail attachments, biology research and, of course, book selections are surprised when I tell them that you need a college degree to be a school librarian. I guess they just figure I know all this stuff because I read so much. My reviewers, however, obviously knew that I am a licensed teacher, and one was even a librarian from another school.

          That was why I was so disappointed to look under the commendations sections for School Resources for Learning, to discover that the best thing that they could say about the library and library services was to comment positively on, “The sizeable collection of print materials in the library“. That is a great review for a place that is seen as warehousing books, but not so much for a place that should be the hub of academic life at a modern high school.

          While many of the recommendations that NEASC makes regarding the library, focus mostly on issues of staffing such as, “Extend before and after school library hours“, “Ensure that staffing in the library is sufficient to deliver all the library services“, and “Expand the limited partnership between HHS and the public library“; others suggest that our staff, and particularly the library teacher (me), is not living up to their professional obligations as educators by failing to deliver the most basic of services. The two recommendations that I have in mind read as follows:

• Ensure that the library teacher has the opportunity to be knowledgeable about the school’s curriculum
• Develop a formal library orientation program to educate all students in library and information skills

          The first recommendation can be interpreted in two ways. If NEASC is suggesting that HHS needs to, “ensure that the library teacher … be knowledgeable about the school’s curriculum”, because right now the library teacher (me) is not familiar with the curriculum, then I feel you probably haven’t met the library teacher; and you definitely don’t regularly read this blog. (Bookmark it now for future reference).

          If we re-read that first recommendation and this time focus on the word “opportunity”, then we might understand it as just another suggestion to get more library staff, which we absolutely need. I suppose this would give the library teacher (me) more time to sit in on meetings. That is something I would NOT like, nor do I think it would make me any more familiar with the school’s curriculum than I already am.

          In our daily interactions with teachers (I am including Ms. Sicard again) we regularly get involved with helping to prepare resources for all kinds for projects from every subject matter offered. We not only prepare carts for research from teachers’ past lists, we also give feedback on recommended book titles, find articles in current periodicals, and suggest online resources for a wide range of classes. Not to mention the number of students that we work with individually every day. Just last week I estimated that, ”we (Ms. Sicard and I) see between five and seven hundred students a day in the LMC”. We’re very familiar with the school’s curriculum.

          And then of course, there is this blog. Not everyone in my school reads this blog regularly, but enough of them do that I feel it has become another valuable tool in my role as a HS librarian. I began this blog on December 16, 2007 with the announcement that it was an, “experiment in online librarianship”. During the 2007-2008 school year I wrote 51 posts. This year, so far, I have written 40 times, including this post. This is not meant as a boast, but as evidence of my commitment to try to make this experiment work.

          More important than how many times I’ve written, is what I have written, and what I have written about. Before I became a librarian, I was a classroom teacher, and before that I was an adjunct writing instructor at several colleges, and before that I was a teaching assistant at the University of Massachusetts School of Education. It was there that I used to instruct aspiring teachers to always maintain an up-to-date portfolio of their work. This portfolio was to include a current resume, letters of recommendation, collections of syllabi and lesson plans, samples of student work, and any other sort of documentation that would verify their professional work as an educator.

         For me, this blog has become a digital portfolio that serves to document my work as a HS librarian. It also happens to provide evidence against the second recommendation that we need to, “develop a formal library orientation program to educate all students in library and information skills”. Had the NEASC committee read this blog they would have found entries such as:

August 26^th 2008: “Freshman English teachers can schedule for library orientation”

September 6^th 2008: “All teachers should check the calendar kept at the circulation desk to book visits for freshman orientation, and/or to have classes select books or work on the computers. The dates fill up quickly, so earlier is better than later”. (Also gave thanks to Ms. Laws, Ms. Medvetz and Ms. Barberio’s classes who visited during the week)

September 12th 2008: “Ms. Hart’s and Mr. Coyne’s freshman English classes visited this week for their LMC orientations” and “I hope I was able to convince Ms. Quinney’s senior students that they need to appreciate the difference between the Deep Web and the surface web when it comes to academic research”.

          Had they visited this blog, they would have also seen what I was talking about when I explained to them that I regularly reference this site as a starting point for lessons about online research, reliable resources, accessing subscription databases and citing electronic sources. They would have seen that I have links to our Reading Lists and to the subscription sites available through the public library.

          More importantly, for me anyway, I was hoping that a visit to the site might have shown the NEASC reviewers evidence of my relentless curiosity and love of learning, and how seriously I take my job as a HS librarian and member of the Haverhill faculty. I get the feeling there were many of us at Haverhill High who felt short-changed or underestimated in the same way by the NEASC findings, and I am sorry for them, too.

          This all makes me think of three things.

          The first is a parable about five people who walk into a pitch black room where there is an elephant. Each one proceeds to grab a different part of the elephant, the trunk, an ear, a foot, the tail and the massive body in the middle. When they leave the room, they are asked to describe the elephant and each one proceeds, in turn, to describe something that is true in part, but does not give a picture of the whole. I feel like my job as a modern HS library teacher is the elephant in the room. (The same can probably be said of most dual title roles at HHS). 

          The second thing this makes me think of is a scene from Lorraine Hansberry’s play, “A Raisin in the Sun”.  A frustrated Walter Lee the Younger confronts the intellectual George Murchison and says to him, “Don’t you see no gleaming stars that you can’t reach out and grab? You happy? … You got it made? Bitter? Man, I’m a volcano. Bitter? Here I am a giant – surrounded by ants! Ants who can’t even understand what it is the giant is talking about.” Most of us can’t say that stuff out loud; but we carry little gems from a movie, a book, a song that help us get through the day.

          The last thing this makes me think of is that the library is a great place to store lots of books, and it’s a bonus when you have someone who knows how to use them.  (Self-commendation accepted).

Take care and have a wonderful Sunday. See you all tomorrow.

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved.

Quick Hit: Events in the LMC

I spend so much time writing and thinking about the amazing electronic resources available to us as educators and students, that I often forget to tell the readers of this blog about the most important resources of all which, of course, are people. This past week in the LMC we hosted two special events, thanks to our wonderful educators at HHS, showcasing how local resources can be brought into the school. 

White Ribbon Campaign (WRC): For two days during the lunch periods this past week, the WRC held a forum hosted by Mr. Polanco, a violence prevention specialist, addressing various aspects of the dating violence issue. Recently, meetings held by the Violence Intervention and Prevention (V.I.P) program made the news locally and the interest in the topic called for more discussion. In light of the attention that the Rihanna and Chris Brown incident has generated, many schools have taken this opportunity to talk about the wide-spread acceptance of violence, especially among young people. Organized by Mr. Polanco and Ms. Ireland, these sessions  addressed the issue of dating violence, in general, and violence against women in particular.   Three current and former HHS students, who have worked with Ms. Ireland and Mr. Polanco through V.I.P., also spoke about their personal experiences with violence. The overall messages of the discussions were that violence was not acceptable, that abuse comes in many forms, and that we are all personally responsible for speaking out against such actions.

Our wonderful health/wellness teachers, Ms. LaBelle and Ms. Matthews both alerted me to Oprah’s television specials which aired on consecutive Thursdays (3/5 and 3/12) focusing on the Rihanna/ Brown case. (I’m still really, really sorry I forgot to tape the second episode L ). Ms. LaBelle also brought to my attention a People Magazine article aimed at teenagers dealing with dating violence. Thank you both for passing along these useful resources for all students and teachers.

Guest Speaker Series: Mr. Levine’s sophomore Classical Academy Research Seminar classes have been treated to guest speakers over the past two weeks. This past Friday, the Reverend Ryuoh Faulconer, of the Nichiren Buddhist Sangha of Greater New England, came to speak to the students about many aspects of Buddhism, as students had been studying Eastern religions’ histories. He told the students the story of Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha. Rev. Faulconer went on to explain the basic tenets of Buddhism, differences among Buddhist branches, and a brief history of Buddhism’s rise in America. The reverend also shared his personal story and explained what brought him to his conversion. Rev. Faulconer answered students’ questions and thanked his courteous audience for their attention and curiosity. 

The week before, the speaker was Judge Newman, from the Lawrence Juvenile Court. Students were studying a unit on issues of national security after 9/11. The judge came to discuss concepts like due process,  habeas corpus, and other issues of personal privacy and constitutional rights. Judge Newman also discussed the Patriot Act’s provisions, details of a Supreme Court case involving a Guatanamo Bay detainee and the impact of crime on the local level. He answered students questions and thanked his attentive audience for their feedback.

Besides these two special events, we were also busy with visiting classes all week long. I was bothered as usual by how often I have to remind students to put away phones and unplug earbuds, which they mostly do very respectfully in the LMC. I was also struck, however, by how many of the students in the LMC were working hard, reading, studying, trying to get ahead.

On a typical day, the LMC may have anywhere from 7 to 12 classes visiting – we do have 50 computers now with our expanded media lab. There are seven classrooms located in the LMC which meet five times a day. Since we also sign up over one hundred kids a day for study hall in the LMC, I figure that we (Ms. Sicard and I) see between five and seven hundred students a day in the LMC. (And she wonders why she gets grouchy?) Most of these people, obviously, simply flow past us each day. But many (many, many) interact with us every day, and although I haven’t got the math to prove it, I would have to say that more than most of those interactions are great and positive. Students and teachers who view the LMC as a place to get work done or to catch up on reading are our greatest resource because they help to create the academic atmosphere that we truly value. The LMC is at its best when everyone, students and teachers, are there to use the resources for education and to promote the mission of Haverhill High School, which is “to produce self-directed learners who read, write, and speak effectively in Standard English and who apply analytical and technological skills to interpret information and problem solve.”

So, thank you to all the students who signed up for library study and used their time productively and didn’t have to be reminded to put away their phones, ipods, food, drinks, etc. Thank you to Mr. Mitton, who found and passed along a great math site that lets users play with different polygons to discover what makes them special. Thank you to all the students in our visiting classes (Ms. Baker, Ms. Greer, Ms. Ireland, Mr. Lavieri, Mr. Levine, Ms. Malbon, Ms. Mansour, Ms. Medvetz, Mr. Polanco, Mr. Silva, Ms. Sullivan, the Success Academy and anyone else I may have forgotten) for making the LMC the academic heart of HHS.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you have a great Sunday. See you all tomorrow.

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved.