Salutations!
Well, it’s been a little over two years since my last post. I feel like this blog has been bittersweet since I’ve started it in 2014: a joy and source of pride when I was actively posting items I thought would help people and a disappointment and source of unease when looking at all the time gaps in posts and how this content seems outdated in light of current decisions I’ve made; I have formally detached myself from K-12 education and am working part-time at my local library at the Reference and Children’s desks. This fantastic experience is helping me hone what I consider “true librarian” skills and customer service skills, while I finish up my MSLS online. I have two classes in progress this Fall and three scheduled for the Spring, so I’ll be finished around May 2024!
Along the way, I’ve learned several things about myself, my reliance on God (yes, I’m just going to say it; I’m tired of trying to separate my faith and personal life from my professional life. I doubt I would be the professional I am today without my faith and personality, so why continue to side-step them?), my professional interests and talents, my peace over my past, and my personal well-being.
As I write this, there are tears in my eyes of thankfulness. I’ve come to peace with my past professional decisions and have hope for my future being exactly where God needs me to be. He has brought me through this path with all its twists and turns, and I praise Him for the talents and passions He has instilled in me regarding people and books. I still believe in “Read+Learn=Grow!” and the basic philosophies I’ve tried to convey. However, the audience and content will shift to align better with where I feel I’m going, not where I’ve been.
I’ve updated my Goodreads account to reflect my current and growing interest in adult fiction and non-fiction (okay, clarification point: not adult in steamy/spicy content. I merely mean “adult” as in not kiddo), which was a great start to what I envision “Read+Learn=Grow!” becoming, mostly book reviews and some librarianship think pieces I actually wrote as part of class discussion boards during the MSLS. Like the apostle Paul wrote by God’s inspiration in I Corinthians 13: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” (KJV, verse 11), I feel I am putting away childish things as I see my vision for myself as a librarian grow beyond so much more than only a school library media specialist – that was where I was supposed to be for a season, now the season has irrevocably changed. I am “forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before” (Philippians 3:13b, KJV).
So, if you’ve been reading and perusing the blog all along, thanks for sticking around and weathering the ups and downs with me. If nobody is reading these posts or has ever been reading them at all, I know it is a great place for me to articulate my thoughts and document my learning.
RLGing,
Sarah Hope
PS. My signature and the general feel of the blog will be shifting to reflect my more adult, rather than kiddo, service orientation in my role as librarian.
Tag Archives: restart
Fresh Start, Restart
Dear Reader,
I 
feel like I’m almost starting over again with “Read+Learn=Grow!”. The past year and a half (at least) has been both a whirlwind and excruciatingly slow; from moving into a new position mid-year in September 2019 since I’d left my home state the previous June to learning how to teach/juggle/manage two elementary libraries’ K-5 patrons and collections simultaneously to schools shutting down in March 2020 due to Covid-19 and going completely virtual, it’s been quite an [interesting/unusual/trying/sort of exciting, etc.] time. Pick an adjective to describe what all has been happening which made my blogging hiatus happen. It wasn’t really intentional; I felt very bad thinking about all that I was experiencing with going completely digital in the Library via Seesaw (when I was working with students both online and in-person), the ideas from the new lessons my colleagues and I were creating, the reflections on doing Zoom read-alouds with classes and making #BookVideosEDU and all the learning happening in the many meetings with my colleagues that you, reader, weren’t getting an inkling of, since my blog was silent and stagnant.
Instead of bemoaning the lost months (in actuality the year plus a smidge) of information we could have been sharing about, I’m happy to say “Read+Learn=Grow!” is getting a fresh start, a restart as of today. I feel a little like Chase in Gordon Korman’s Restart in that I get to start over with my blogging life and choose to do things differently than before. I will endeavor to blog at least weekly during summertime and at least monthly during the school year. The format and content is going to remain the same; I hope to figure out how to display my #BookSnaps of “kidlit” since I just started up that awesome documentation of what I read last night with One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia. I plan to do at least one #BookSnap for each “kidlit” book I read this summer and forward, in all formats (chapter book, picture book, graphic novel).
One cool project I was able to work on this past school year, since Fridays were a virtual day for in-person students, was to finally get to genre-fy my first collection(s).I had double the work since I’m responsible for two entire buildings in my present elementary librarian position. More to come on that exciting process, with a photo or two.
Stay tuned for tech tidbits, as I piece together all the awesome stuff I’ve learned about Seesaw as a learning management platform and
what I’m going to learn about Accessit as a library collection management platform since my district dumped Follett Destiny, reviews and #BookSnaps of recently read “kidlit,” notes on my genre-fication journey, links to read-aloud #BookVideosEDU, and probably lots more as I get back into the swing of blogging regularly. I leave you with the following quote, which Goodreads quickly provided to my query of quotes about “starting over.”
You can start anew at any given moment. Life is just the passage of time, and it’s up to you to pass it as you please. ― Charlotte Eriksson
Happy RLGing!
PS. I’m trying out a new signature with the blog name as a verb, since we all engage in reading, learning, and growing in a cyclical process, sometimes daily without really stopping to think about it. What do you think? Comment below.