Wednesday, October 7, 2015

What I've been doing professionally all this time...

Let's just say that the last two years have been very busy for me. It's been quite cyclical, in more ways than one!

First, I quit my job as a librarian in May of 2014. I was just burned out and felt that my soul was being destroyed by standardized testing. How does this happen to a librarian? Easy, when the librarian is used as the go-to test proctor for every test on campus...147 hours of it...you really learn that the library is not all that important to your administration.

I knew I had to have something to escape to, so my dream of starting a writing workshop happened much earlier than retirement. That's how I came up with Fort Worth Writer's Boot Camp. It has kept me extremely busy, in finding instructors, scheduling classes, teaching some myself, and figuring out this whole marketing thing.

Two months after I quit, I got a message from a librarian friend at the school where I had taught many years ago. It was basically one of those, "I found another job, now I'm scared to leave this great school to whomever comes along." Did I want to go back? Yes, please!

So, I'm in my second year as a librarian at my dream school, as well as my second year running a business. With all of that, how could I possibly have time for anything else? Well, I did get a book written and self-published called Tips and Tricks for Classroom Management in the Real World. It is pretty much all the organizational tools I used to keep my classroom functioning without going insane! It's all about being real and offering realistic solutions to problems you'll be presented with in a real situation. The focus is mostly for secondary schools, which helps because there is so much out there for the elementary level, but very few for the bigger students.

That's it on the professional level. My other writing has not fared as well, but I hope to turn that around soon.