I was looking for a file on the laptop that does not seem to exist although I know I wrote it, when I came across a letter I wrote back in 2009. The context is that because of the crappy economy the school system was having to make even more budget cuts, and one of the strategems they were forced to employ was to eliminate the media center clerk position in every school.

Let me note that those employees were not fired; they were mostly shifted to other positions in the school. My beyond-excellent clerk, Robin, became a kindergarten classroom aide and is still there. But my letter explained how—in my media center at least—the reduction in staff would have serious consequences. I post it here because it is well-written and I liked it.

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It was not against the law to be a lesbian in Victorian England.

Here’s why: when the Queen was presented with the legislation criminalizing homosexuality, she came to the part about lesbianism. She quite frankly did not believe such creatures existed, and so she struck that part of the law out.

Back when Newnan Crossing hit 1,000 students, I went to the SACS standards to see if I would be joined soon by a second professional media specialist. I was surprised to see that while the standards called for a second professional for high schools at that number, there was no such standard for elementary schools.

It finally dawned on me why: when the standards were written, no one could imagine anyone in their right mind building an elementary school with 1,000 students in it.

But people in their right minds have built elementary schools capable of holding 1,000 students. Your rationale has been that it’s more “cost efficient” to do so. The usual argument is “economy of scale,” which is generally taken as being cheaper to buy toilet paper.

The real economy, of course, is the salaries of those of us who serve the entire student population. Instead of two schools of 450, with two media specialists and two music teachers and two cafeteria staffs, you only have to pay one of each.

And that’s fine until you start actually serving the kids.

My circulation figures are running more than 30,000 checkouts a year. Yesterday, our circulation was nearly 300, and that’s a normal day. That’s 300 books to check out and 300 books to shelve every day, and that is my media clerk’s job. This means that 35% of our school walked in and out of the media center yesterday.

(I will also add that if this were at Elm Street, 35% would be fewer than 150 students, half the number I must serve. Even in good times, I am asked to do two jobs. Now, I’m being asked to do four? Without a lunch break? Once again, “economy of scale.”)

You perhaps imagine the media center as a place where classes arrive on some kind of schedule, do their checkout in a 20-minute slot, then leave, thus giving me time between classes to teach or to shelve. It is not. The media center is a constant flow of individual students arriving to check out books, to take AR tests, to do class research and projects, plus the classes scheduled for checkout and for instruction.

Next year, without a fully staffed media center, this will not be the case. In order to preserve the instructional program, I will shut down the foot traffic. Students will not be able to come to the media center on a needs basis, but only when their teacher has scheduled their class. The reading program will take a huge hit, but it’s all about limited resources—isn’t it?—and in this case the limited resource is my time.

How big a hit will this be? Out of the 300 checkouts yesterday, only 40 of them were from classes who actually signed up to be in there. That means around 200 students (estimating for multiple checkouts) were able to get a book when they needed one simply by getting a pass from their teacher and walking in. Next year, that’s a 1000 students a week who won’t get a book when they need one. How do you think that will impact reading at Newnan Crossing?

The really bad news is that study after study has shown that the single most important factor impacting student achievement that a school system has under its control is an appropriately staffed and funded media center. We lost funding this year, and next year we lose our staffing. I wonder, how much money will you spend on “programs” trying to boost achievement when you’ve gutted the one program that could save you?

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As it happens, I was only there for another year and a half before I retired from Coweta County and went to the Dept. of Ed. to be the director of GHP, but believe you me I would have started compiling data in that third year to show exactly how the reading programs had been impacted.

I have had a scathingly brilliant idea. I’m sure it’s not original, but it is exciting in many ways.

It occurred to me last night, as my head was hitting the pillow, that Pages (Apple’s word processor) will export files in ePub format. (This is in addition to PDF, .doc, and RTF files.)

You know what this means, of course? I can get students to write their stories or poems or essays, and we can publish them for iBooks on the iPad. We can create class magazines, or a school publication. Individual students who are assiduous enough to write books can see their handiwork distributed.

If they do their work on the iPads, they can “print” to the home computer, and I can prep the files there.

If they do artwork in ArtRage, we can lay it out in Pages and publish it.

If they do a comic strip in Comic Life, we can export it to PDFs and convert that to ePub via Calibre.

Students who are emerging writers can copy their work to SpeakIt and have it read back to them, helping them develop their inner ear.

We can build a library of student work. Students will want to read what others have written. Students will want to write in order to be read.

Turn, turn, kick turn , yes, it will work!

I have to brag about a lesson I started today with a fourth grade class. The teacher has been bringing them in almost weekly for writing lessons: persuasive, response to literature, etc. This week’s lesson was to be about figurative language.

Last week, we had ended one project and I was caught a little off-guard, so I just tap danced. Playing off their dread of poetry, I suggested Shakespeare instead, and I filled them in on the basics. The thing that always gets their attention is the fact that at every moment of every day, this man’s words are being spoken aloud, 400 years after he wrote them. That impresses the children.

So today, when they came in, I announced, “Poetry!” and let them groan, and then announced, “…by Shakespeare!” and they groaned even more.

But I handed out Sonnet 18 and we read it out loud. I explained the structure to them, then they brainstormed all the good things about summer that they might compare their True Love™ to.

Then we dove into the poem and discovered that he’s actually comparing his love to the downsides of summer, that he/she (which we didn’t get into) is better than a summer’s day.

Then I explained what we would be doing next week: we’d use our new iPads to create a Keynote presentation which illustrates the figurative language in another sonnet, #73.

We practiced with #18. I pulled up Google and asked for search terms. At first, they were giving me language straight from the poem, and I was trying to explain why that wouldn’t work. And then, I was inspired. When a kid suggested we search for “eye of heaven,” I said, OK, let’s do that.

Up came this image, which on the not-very-clear projector, looked quite gross, like a slimy bug or something.

“Here’s the point,” I said. “Computers are stupid. They’re literal. You tell them ‘eye of heaven,’ and they look up ‘eye of heaven.’ Humans have brains. You tell them ‘eye of heaven,’ and they think, ‘Oh, the sun!’ See the difference between literal and figurative?”

Light bulbs all over the room.

Can’t wait for next week’s lesson, in which they have to find three images to put into a Keynote presentation. Week after next, actually, we’re on break next week.

By the way, this is what a 21st century media center looks like:

I just spend 30 minutes teaching 2nd graders what a database was, how one works, how they use at least two nearly every day (the online library catalog and the Accelerated Reader™ quiz software), how I built and use one to keep track of AR™ Point Club tags, and we even built one based on a test question they had had.

Yes, that’s right, we’re testing 8-year-olds on what a database is and when to use one.

For the record, they were fascinated by my lecture/demo and a couple even asked how they might build one to keep track of stuff in their lives. I didn’t even have to prompt them on how we might sort the little cards I had them fill out: they were right on it with “last name,” “homeroom,” “birthday,” or even “homeroom THEN last name.”

This has been a message for those who are convinced that schools have gotten worse since they wrestled with Think & Do workbooks when they were in 2nd grade.