Invading a Space.

Mrs. Ward's Classroom - 2006

 If I've been silent about the new J-O-B, it's been on purpose.  I actually have written a couple of posts explaining and venting about some of the new things I'm experiencing working at a public school library.  But after reading and re-reading them with the perspective of an employer, I thought best to leave them unpublished in the virtual world. I can send them to you personally if you're really, really interested in my honest perceptions.  Please know, I really do enjoy the job, it's an incredible challenge.  I am walking into a library that has been without a leader since December.  Well, I shouldn't say that.  The Jackson library has remained open with the help of a long term substitute and the retired Jackson librarian for 15 years.  She is actually the first lady I met when I toured the school.  Her advice to me then before I even had the job:  "Make it your own."

And that's really nice to hear.  Except that I am only there 3 days a week and two previous librarians are in and out the doors helping and supporting me, which is very kind.  But it's very difficult to make any changes when the original creators are still there.  When I was at UHCL, this is the mantra that all of our professors shared:  "In your first year, change nothing.  In your second year, change everything.  In your third year, realize your mistakes and change it back."  I love that advice and you don't have to be in a library to use it.  Consider anytime you've taken leadership of something.  Maybe you thought the previous leaders did it "wrong" and you could do it better.  What do you do?  You make tons of changes only to realize that there was probably a reason for those older ideas.  And without sounding like a book of idioms, I just have to be smart enough and not so impulsive that I throw out the baby with the bathwater or the champagne with the cork.  How's that for folksy advice.  

I've been thinking a lot about my time at Lutheran South, or really, about the weeks directly after I left  teaching.  A first-year teacher took my spot, and I thought I was being helpful leaving directions and ideas and my phone number to call me with any questions.  She never did call.  And good for her.  She didn't need my old assignments, my creative ideas, my constantly changing desk positions, or my overused Pachelbel Canon CD.  But I didn't want to say goodbye to it.  I'm the one who had a hard time with someone else moving into my spot, that was completely mine.  I'm the one who had to bundle up nine years of stuff I'd accumulated that represented me and my vocation. That was really hard.  And as I write this, I'm still a little sad about that lost space.  Yes, I chose to leave, but I don't think I ever got over that those years of work are now thrown in bins in the garage.  Except for my smile file.  I kept that out.  All those letters from students or parents or teachers - they are all there to grab and read and remember. 

It all makes sense. I understand the feelings of the previous Jackson Intermediate librarians who gave the space their personalities, who decorated it with their flair, their creativity, and who lead with their own strengths. They have their own smile-files of memories.  

I am that first-year teacher invading their space.  I get it.  And it's not easy.