New term, new start

Hello again! It’s been a bit longer than I intended, but I’m back!

I only did one half term in my job and then it was the summer holidays, which was very nice. I spent quite a lot of time catching up on reading some YA fiction, so I feel a bit more confident about recommending some titles and authors to the kids.

Some of my haul from a lovely Oxfam bookshop!

Then, all of a sudden, the summer was over and it was back to school! The last two weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind, but, thankfully, I’ve been keeping a work diary to remind myself of all the things I’ve done and everything I’m learning. It’s a really useful way to keep up with my trainee year.

Currently, we’re short of a library assistant, so I spend most of my days monitoring the sixth form library. It’s great to work with the older students and get to know them – and when it’s quiet I’m getting lots of other jobs done too. It’s been with us busy doing all the new term admin, but so far some of it has included:

• Adding new students onto the online library system, and adding them into class groups;
• Making a display for the main library;
• Helping run an induction for the new sixth formers to introduce them to the library;
• Processing the new books we ordered in;
• Preparing for the afterschool craft club I run;
• Repairing a few damaged books;
• Putting together wider reading lists for the sixth formers and arranging new book orders; and
• Helping out with the reading tests for year 7s.

Overall, it’s been a very busy and tiring but exciting start back!

It also feels like a new start for another reason… in a couple of weeks, our new library assistant will be joining us! While I enjoy working with the sixth form group, I’m looking forward to getting back down into the main library. I spend my afternoons there, tidying, shelving and providing homework help to any KS3 kids who hang around after school, but I’m excited to spend more time with the lower years in the day too.

On one final note, I’m starting to look at where to go for a librarianship masters! I’m sure I’ll be posting about it a lot more in the future, so I won’t say too much, but for now I’m just weighing up my options and starting to think about it all, which is very promising.

I’ll try to update a bit more regularly in the future, but for now I’ll say farewell until I have more excitements to write about.