Cooking & Community Walks - Outside the SLLC

Being inside my library has been challenging this past week. On Monday, I was displaced because there was a request to use the library for some professional learning by a board group. Using the library for non-library reasons by groups other than students is a significant and thorny issue, so much so that some people who have taken the York University Teacher Librarianship AQ I teach have used this topic for their independent inquiry learning project theme. School libraries, especially ones in high schools, will sometimes have their physical spaces claimed for other purposes and groups. One consequence of this choice is that the students are unable to use the library for their own purposes. For me and my students, this means no book exchange that day, no recess visits, and classes are relocated and disrupted. Honestly, I don't like it. I'm glad that people enjoy the library environment for gathering, but I don't appreciate the temporary eviction. I want to be welcoming and accommodating, but when these meetings happen regularly, it prioritizes adult comfort over student learning. 

On Monday, I decided to turn lemons into lemonade by devoting time to cooking with my ESL students. I checked beforehand and none of the children were fasting for Ramadan or had any allergies. (We will take a pause on preparing any more food after this, so that tasty tempting smells don't fill the hallway and impact students that are not in the ESL classes.)

One group made pancakes and another group made French toast. The French toast was an effort to avoid wasting the eggs that we used for the Grade 1-2 STEAM egg drop challenge. We talked about the cultural significance of Pancake Tuesday and the economization of food resources with French toast. (It's a way of using stale bread.)

The things I learned while cooking with the kids included:

• youngsters do not know how to crack eggs unless they are taught (some just smashed them on the table to open them)
• cooking is messy
• pouring anything from icing sugar to syrup usually results in large amounts on plates
• students love to eat

We also practiced offering pancakes to other teachers. Asking questions in English can be hard!

On Thursday, I voluntarily left the library to go on a community walk with Mrs. Ngo and her Grade 1-2 students. This is part of our social studies collaboration. The students used iPads to take photos of important parts of the community, that we will annotate and document once we return from our mid-winter / spring holiday. A huge puddle in the middle of the walkway led to some improvised problem solving. We stopped off in the public library to get warm, since the day was chillier than we anticipated.

As for the seismic shifts occurring in the library - things are progressing steadily. The soft seating and new tables have been ordered and the layout has almost been finalized (for now). Now, I need to clean my office, where I have shoved things that I don't yet know where to place in the new set-up.