I may have the coolest boss… in the WORLD!
Yesterday I told my boss about how the lady had given me trouble after story time, and I realized now that my boss is very cool! She suggested that I just stop having story time for 6 and 7 year olds. What a novel idea! She said kids that age don’t really want to sit still anymore, and if they aren’t going to appreciate what I’m doing then I shouldn’t have to stress myself out doing it anymore. I couldn’t agree more. I’m only 24! There’s no point in burning out before I turn 25.
That’s why, even though I’m slightly afraid, I’m going to try just reading one or two longer books and then doing a craft. Children and scissors frighten me. One of the pages was helping with a craft with the kids and even though we were using child safe scissors, the kids cut the page and she bled all over her white shirt. (why she was wearing a really nice white shirt when she knew that she was going to have to work with the kids I’ll never understand).
I was talking with a co-worker about this whole thing and I mentioned that things might have been different if I had taken education classes or worked in day care for a while before becoming a librarian. I got my bachelors in English and went right away to get my masters in Library Science. So there was no time to learn how to beat young children into submission. Even in my masters level courses, we really didn’t learn too much that can actually be used everyday in the library (except maybe the reference course… But since I work in a small library we don’t make much use of Bartlett’s Quotations or Who’s Who in America. Usually people just want to know what the most recent Danielle Steele book is called and if they can find it on the shelf [that’s when I titter under my breath]).
Needless to say, I really have no experience with kids, and my predecessor wasn’t much help. She basically left me a lot of junk to clean up, 30 years of books to weed and no story time rhymes or notes what so ever.