I first saw the idea of a book vending machine a few years ago. I thought it was an amazing way to get kids fired up about reading but the possibilities of getting one were daunting. Those things are expensive. Worth it, but expensive. I put the thought out of my mind for a time, until Paul Holimon, a colleague from my middle school days, sent me an article about a school in Oklahoma that was able to get a book vending machine. Sooooo, I started thinking that maybe this was possible after all.
Then one day, I was talking to two of our superstar teachers, Jamie Sebold and Megan Noe, who floated the idea of using walk-a-thon money to pay for it. Over the past two years, we raised a lot of money through our walk-a-thons and we had never decided where we wanted to use that money. They suggested to Tammy Brown that we should use some of it to buy a book vending machine. Suddenly, we had secured funding!
After contacting Global Vending Group, I picked our model and we paid a bit extra for a custom wrap that would make our Lely machine stand out. After some snags arranging payment for this (there is a lot of red tape and processes to pay for something like this), we were ready to formally place our order. Global Vending Group had our order. Now, it was time to wait. And wait we did.
In the brochure, they say the wait is between three and four months. It was a bit longer for us because of supply chain and labor issues at the company. However, last Monday, we got the email that our machine had shipped! It would be in Naples in three days' time. Now, our only worry was if it would fit through our media center door. On the literature from the company, it said that the shortest side was 35" and our door was 34.5". I had emailed with the company this past summer to make sure it would fit and was assured that indeed it was only 32-34" on its shortest side. We held our breath, hoping that that information was accurate.
The truck pulled into the parking lot and it was time to jump into action. The driver would deliver to the curb and we had to take it from there. Yanka Ruiz, our amazing facilities director, was ready. She had our pallet lift and moved that machine to the media center door. But, it would not fit through the door opening on the pallet. We had to take it off the pallet. After getting a few staff members involved to help, we lowered the machine on its side and tried to get it through the door. No luck. The door push bar was in the way. Yanka had a solution. She took the door off the hinges and we set it aside. The machine coasted through the opening smooth as butter. At that moment, we all let out a collective sigh of relief. Our machine fit through the door to the media center. We were home free.
We got the machine upright and unwrapped all of the plastic and cardboard to reveal a beautiful, fun, kid-friendly book vending machine. It is striking! After we got it into place, we were finished for the day. Kids came by to see what all of the hubbub was about. After all, we had blocked the hallway while getting the machine through the door and they had to take a detour, so they knew something big was happening. As kids walked by, we heard lots of gasps and comments about how cool the machine was. It was having the desired effect.
Now, we have the machine turned on and everything tested out perfectly. We still have to load books into the machine to get it ready for our new reading incentive program. More on that later. We have a special day of events planned for October 20 to celebrate our new book vending machine. We think this will inspire many kids to read, find "their books", and have a fun and festive environment around the idea of reading. Needless to say, we are so stoked to have this book vending machine in our school and plan to use it to increase the reading among our kids. Stay tuned for updates!
We talk all of the time about student voice and choice. We aim to hand over the decision-making responsibility to our students as they go through our school system. We coach them in what makes a good decision, ramifications of those decisions, and then we let them begin making more and more decisions. One of the things I love to see is when kids start making decisions about their learning. There are so many ways we can incorporate student decision-making into the everyday lives of kids at school. I see teachers everyday giving kids opportunities to choose learning experiences, collaborative teams, and ways to meet their curricular standards.
We started incorporating student recommendations this year by creating a gallery in the media center windows. When students pass by, they see pictures of our kids with a book that they recommend in their hands. Kids can identify their schoolmates and see what books they love. They may be more inclined to pick up those books if they know that their friends have read them. One of the most powerful ways to get kids reading is to have peers recommend books. It helps build a culture of reading when we all talk about our reading, and over time, kids learn to be proud of all of the books they have read and their future reading goals. Our student book recommendations are a hit. We knew they would be. Our kids are using their voices to celebrate their reading. We could not be happier about it.
Lely Elementary School is a special place brimming with rock star teachers and talented students. Everyday, we see the kiddos at Lely do the right things: help other students, show kindness, display grace under pressure, and work hard toward their goals. Our amazing teachers plan some of the coolest learning activities for them that I have ever seen. There is always something awe-inspiring going on.
One of my goals is to make the media center a hub of the school and nurture kids' love of reading. I want them to spend time there reading, looking for books, making, collaborating, listening, and learning. I know that an increase in student traffic is a good measure of how they perceive the media center. Do they like it? Do they want to spend time there? Do they come back? Do they avoid the place? I'm trying to remake the media center into one of the most kid-friendly elementary school libraries in the state of Florida.
One of the things that we have been working on is transforming the space into a vibrant, colorful, interactive media center where kids always find something new. To that end, last weekend, we installed the Garden of Readin' right outside of our media center. This was an idea a few months in the making. We took an area outside that is adjacent to the media center and remade it into a colorful, interactive, peaceful place for kids to read, chill, learn, imagine, and wonder. This is the Garden of Readin' (scroll down for many more pics).
Anyone who works in a school knows that every day will be a new and different day. We hear our friends in other professions talking about the hum-drum, boring work tasks they perform everyday. Not so in education. Our days start off with a solid plan but with the ebbs and flows of each school day, we adjust and tweak our plans to make sure the kids get what they need while juggling several unexpected occurrences. Truly, teachers and staff at your local public school are intellectually agile people who can troubleshoot in seconds and make even the most challenging situations into learning experiences that look like they were planned out for weeks.
One reason that teachers are so nimble is that we live with the constant of change. In education, nothing stays the same. We receive new students to the school every day, we navigate changing classes, student absences, schedule changes, fire drills, code red drills, and a host of other changes in the normal schedule. Through all of this change, teachers excel. They take it all in stride and wind up turning even the most difficult situations into learning opportunities for students. I've seen countless occurrences of "teachable moments" when a teacher turns a potential problem into a seamless learning experience.
At Lely Elementary, we have experienced a lot of change as of late. At the end of last year, our principal made some changes to the teaching staff that included moving teachers to different grade levels and giving many teachers some new responsibilities. As anyone knows, when you move people into other jobs that they may not be comfortable with, they may not like it. However, our teachers accepted the challenge of their new roles. We are four weeks into the school year, and our teachers are performing beautifully.
Some of the benefits of teachers moving grade levels is that they are intimately aware of the expectations and curricula of the grades they came from and can look at issues with a different perspective. They can even help align curricula and activities based on what they did at their old grade level.
Another benefit of moving teachers is that a different kind of synergy emerges. Teachers who may not have worked together before can now bounce ideas off of each other, draw on past experiences and successes, troubleshoot problems, and dream a little. I know that I am at my most creative when I can talk to another teacher. We bounce ideas off of each other and within ten minutes, we have a viable plan to solve a problem or start a program. When we put teachers in the same room, that kind of energy multiplies. I have often said that giving teachers time together with no agenda is the best way to get some new and bold ideas.
We have also had a leadership change at Lely Elementary. Our new principal comes to us excited to make a difference in the lives of the teachers and students. We know we are at the beginning of a renaissance at Lely Elementary and the previous principal put us on solid footing to make great gains. Our new principal will have the opportunity to guide our school to new heights. We are on board and we are eager to continue our journey together, helping our kids develop their fullest potential.
Look out Collier County! Lely Elementary is ready to make some big strides!
There is always so much promise at the beginning of a new school year. Everyone is fresh and rested when they show up for the first day and really happy to begin a new school year. While this was a very short summer break, teachers and students still returned to school with positive attitudes about the year ahead. This year, there are a lot of things to be happy about at Lely Elementary School. It's going to be a good year.
One of the new things that we'll be doing this year is using a new literacy program. All instructional staff had a two-day training to get up to speed on the program's emphasis and resources. Based on what I saw during those two days, I think this program is going to lead to a huge improvement in student learning. For one thing, phonics takes a front seat in literacy learning. I'm not sure what has happened to phonics over the years. It seems that when I started (in the late 1980's), phonics was in vogue, and over the course of my 30+ years in education, it has gone in and out of fashion in schools. I never understood why. Phonics is a great way for many kids to learn to read and it should have been in our toolbox all along. Now, it is back and I think we are the better for it. Kids in all elementary grades, K-5, will have phonics incorporated into the literacy lessons. Yes, even fifth graders need phonics. Well, many adults do too :)
Another improvement is the district emphasis on reading in class. It is long overdue. I remember a few years ago when I was observed by a principal and my kiddos were reading. We read every day for thirty minutes of our ninety minute block. It took a while to get the kids to buy in but after a while, we created a cool reading community where kids would find "their" books, read them, and share them with others. I made book recommendations, of course, but the kids did most of the recommending. It was a beautiful thing to see. However, my principal at the time was not a fan. The message to me was that I was wasting our time by having kids read in class. That was an activity that was not on his principal checklist. There was no box to check for what I was doing in class and therefore it was not a valid activity. Of course, I explained the research behind having kids read in class and the great learning strides that kids made, but my advocacy fell on deaf ears. There was no box for it on the checklist. Now, reading in class is a point of emphasis and the kids will all be better for it!
Another thing that will make a huge difference in our school year is our Leader in Me program at Lely. This will be our first real, uninterrupted year of implementing this program. We are all familiar enough with the program now that we can administer the program and grow it over the course of the year. Teachers' mindsets have evolved to include the kids in planning activities even more than we did before. While in the past couple of years, we have been able to get one or two things off the ground, this year, I expect we will get dozens of new aspects of this program integrated into our school year. Nearly all of the teachers are on board and we have excellent leadership, so the pieces are in place for a great school.
We also have some "Wow" factor things planned. Kids and adults like to come into the building and see something new, something awe-inspiring, and they are going to have those experiences several times this year. We have many things in the works that, over the course of the school year, will provide that jolt of excitement for students and teachers when they walk through the doors of Lely Elementary. Now, I won't spill the beans here, but if you subscribe to our Facebook page (facebook.com/lelymediacenter) or follow us on Instagram (@doneckert_libraryguy) or Twitter (@dayankee). you will see all of the amazing things we are bringing to the school this year. And watch this space too. I'll be updating all of the cool and wonderful things that are happening at school all year long.
While the first week of school is over, the positive vibes of administrators, teachers, and students is palpable, and it's just the beginning. This is going to be a great year at Lely, and we can't wait for these kids to experience their best school year ever!
