November 16 - Day Nineteen - Panmure Redux

Practicum Day 19
hours worked: 8
hours to date: 106

Back to Panmure on the south side of Auckland. Today marks the day when I have officially spent 100 hours exploring professional roles and work of librarians. Strangely, today was the day that was most reminiscent of work I did at Cleveland Heights. Engaged in some of the practical tasks, thinking like a customer, being available to help when needed, a mix of planning and execution, balancing the necessary with the exciting and elusive. In its own nerdy way (meaning ultra-precise in detail and application), reshelving books is instructive and interesting. Shelving books lets you know what patrons are checking out and what else is in the collection. With more context, you start to wonder about where books should go. Why is the Johnny Cash biography with the music books, rather than the biographies? Why are the bodies of work of photographers in photography, not biography? (In a nod to dewey, music biographies are 780.92, which may generate from 920 being the number for biography) These tasks have a bit of Mr. Miyagi's aura about it - learning through meditative repetition. One lesson I learned is to start shelving with the art books, which are thicker and so there are fewer of them per cart.

I was lucky to be included in storytime, yet again. This time the theme was clothes, and I got to read You Can't Go To School Naked! by Diane Billstrom. And why not? Because you would get sunburn, or frostbite, or slimed on by frogs at show and tell are all good reasons. The most compelling to me involved what would happen to you by the time you get to the bottom of the slide - getting fried! The afternoon rolled around very quickly, and with it came Akozone, the after school homework club. Trading reading for computer time works very well. Sometimes I find myself engaged with the reading, like today's book about tigers as an endangered species, but you can only take so many readings of Franny K. Stein. I find though, that once you get to know kids, and they know that you care about them, they will give you a chance to offer them something new. I was so happy to get to that point with a few kids on only the second time there. As evidence, I submit the girl who sat through a book of Marc Chagall's work (which I had shelved earlier in the day).

in the staff room

hot chocolates today: 0. Panmure does not have a hot chocolate machine, although they DO have a very nice balcony that just needs maybe a potted tree and a nice chair.

hot chocolates to date: 21