Re: Librarians, was RE: [SG] HAMR

At 12:25 PM 3/19/02 -0800, you wrote:
>
>--- John Crimmins <johncrim@voicenet.com> wrote:
>
>> > What are you, a librarian?  
>> 
>> A children's librarian, to be specific.
>
>You poor bastard.  School?

Public.  Horribly enough, a lot of the schools in the area don't even
have
librarians; the budget's been slashed to the bone.  The Philadelphia
school
district has really big problems.

>> More a reflection of the frustration that comes of
>> dealing with a pack of 
>> maddened pre-teen children every afternoon. 
>
>Children:  Can't live with 'em, and it's illegal to
>drown them.  Frankly, I don't understand why anyone
>bothers with those things.  They smell bad and are
>heinously expensive.[1]  

It's the younger ones, the preschoolers, who makes the job worthwhile.
Pure enthusiasm, they actually *care* about learning and reading and
such.
A few years of school tends to beat that out of most of them, alas.

But I've found it impossible to do a storytime for infants or toddlers
and
walk away in a bad mood, so long as I remember the two cardinal rules:

1) Keep expectations low -- you'll get everyone's attention at some
point,
but never at the same time.

and 2) Tape the light switches in the "on" position.  'cause trying to
navigate through a dark room filled with two year old children is like
something out of a Hitchcock film.

John Crimmins
johncrim@voicenet.com