It’s a tough time for libraries, and people in customer service. And while we don’t want to veer into any toxic positivity, it is good to spend a little time focused on building your happiness level. We are not going to solve people’s serious mental issues here. But bringing some happiness skills to your week can be helpful to everyone!

Mondays can be a little hard, even when things are going fine. Use this small injection of a happiness skill to your week. We are here to support you, and to help you to be a little happier in the library.

One of the best ways to build your happiness levels is to spread some kindness around your library. Being kind to others, when you don’t expect anything in return, boosts your own happiness levels Give it a try!

You can read more about it in the article Kindness Can Have Unexpectedly Positive Consequences; we share an excerpt here:

“Across multiple experiments involving approximately 1,000 participants, people performed a random act of kindness—that is, an action done with the primary intention of making someone else (who isn’t expecting the gesture) feel good. Those who perform such actions expect nothing in return.

Across our investigations, several robust patterns emerged. For one, both performers and recipients of the acts of kindness were in more positive moods than normal after these exchanges. For another, it was clear that performers undervalued their impact: recipients felt significantly better than the kind actors expected. The recipients also reliably rated these acts as “bigger” than the people performing them did.

Our work suggests that simply being part of a positive, prosocial interaction is meaningful beyond whatever it is a person receives. People understand that cupcakes can make folks feel good, to be sure, but it turns out that cupcakes given in kindness can make them feel surprisingly good. When someone is thinking primarily about the tasty treat they are giving away, they may not realize that the warmth of that gesture is an extra ingredient that can make the cupcake even sweeter.

Missing the importance of warmth may stand in the way of being kinder in daily life. People generally want to perform kind actions—in fact, many of our participants noted that they’d like to do so more often. But our data suggest that underestimating the impact of one’s actions may reduce the likelihood of kindness. If people undervalue this impact, they might not bother to carry out these warm, prosocial behaviors.

Furthermore, the consequences of these acts may go beyond a single recipient: kindness can be contagious. In another experiment, we had people play an economic game that allowed us to examine what are sometimes called “pay it forward” effects. In this game, participants allocated money between themselves and a person whom they would never meet. People who had just been on the receiving end of a kind act gave substantially more to an anonymous person than those who had not. Meanwhile the person who performed the initial act did not recognize that their generosity would spill over in these downstream interactions.

These findings suggest that what might seem small when we are deciding whether or not to do something nice for someone else could matter a great deal to the person we do it for. Given that these warm gestures can enhance our own mood and brighten the day of another person, why not choose kindness when we can?”

You can read the whole article here.

CMLE can be part of your support network; we are here for you, and support you in your library work. Take a nice deep breath in, and whoosh it out; it’s going to be okay today.

Are you thinking about getting a library media specialist certificate? Would you like to look around and to see about the opportunities for moving up in your school? Or maybe you would like to move into a new profession?

Check out the opportunities from our professional colleagues at St. Cloud State to get a graduate certificate!

Graduate Director: Dr. Jennifer Hill jchill@stcloudstate.edu

The Library Media graduate program will support you as you seek licensure as a school library media specialist especially if your goal is to work in a public or private school.

You will study library and media management, applications of technology for teaching and learning, and instructional development and media productions. You’ll gain the skills necessary to develop a library media
program by applying theories and practices to the selection and evaluation of materials, reading, listening and viewing guidance, and current technologies. This program is available online.

Program Highlights

Engage in coursework that allows for authentic

• Coursework covers many topics including but not limited to the administration of media, enhancing the curriculum with technology, children’s and YA literature, collection development, and information literacy instruction.
• Perfect for teachers seeking additional licensure.
• Those who do not yet have a teaching license must complete a professional education sequence to be recommended for licensure. Advising available.
• This program is fully online and meets synchronously via Zoom. Courses meet weeknights during the school year and during the day in the summer.

Quick Facts

• 30-35 Credit Certificate Program
• Summer ’23 Courses Include:
  ED 551 Literacy in the Content Areas
  ED 624 Evaluation of Children’s Literature
  ED 659 Enhancing Curriculum w/Technology
• Pairs well with the Library Media Master’s Degree program
• We offer rolling admission so you can begin fall, spring, or summer semester.

Scholarship and Financial Aid eligible!

Request Info or Apply today at: gradschool.stcloudstate.edu

On this date, in 2020, our schools officially closed down to start the quarantine. It’s been such a tough time since then for everyone, and for schools and libraries of all sorts, the troubles seem to just increase.

So, I just wanted to reach out today to remind you that – just as we were every single day of the quarantine – CMLE is here for you. We can’t fix all the problems everywhere; but we can always provide a listening ear, and maybe some suggestions.

For this entire school year, every Monday morning I have posted an article in a series called Happier in the Library. While it’s not going to make your life hugely better – it’s just a small weekly reminder that we are here and that we care about you and your library.

Take a few minutes today to just pause and reflect on the positive things you see around you. It doesn’t stop the bad stuff – but I’m a believer that life is always best when I make that effort, so hopefully it’s good for you too.

Yes: it’s obvious. Banning books is something only the small-minded, fearful little people do. If it wasn’t such a destructive hobby, you could feel sorry for people so determined to show the world how terribly afraid they are of other people, life, and everything around them.

I try to feel sorry for them, I really do. Some days I can do it; some days – when I read about the damage and hurt and injury these terrible people are gleefully inflicting on the rest of is – I can’t feel even a small amount of sympathy.

So, read this article excerpt, from an author talking about having her book banned, and what it feels like to be part of a terrible process of harassment. You can read the whole article here.

“Women of color are taught from a young age to take up as little space as possible: to be soft, to be quiet, to be careful.

So when I learned that my book about young women of color owning their confidence and learning to code was banned last year, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Because at its core, the ban on my book isn’t about books at all. None of them are. Rather, book bans are about oppressing girls—especially girls of color, queer girls, and nonbinary people—by making us believe that our stories aren’t worth sharing, our aspirations aren’t worth pursuing, and our identities aren’t worth celebrating.

Today, on International Women’s Day, it’s more important than ever that we fight back.  

Being a banned author is certainly a dubious honor, but hardly an uncommon one. Books like mine are being stripped from shelves across the country, with a particular focus on erasing stories centering Black and queer voices. From July 2021 to June 2022, PEN America tracked over 2,500 book bans, novels pulled for uncovering systemic racism and honoring trans lives, casting light on teen activism and celebrating religious diversity. If there was a common thread uniting these titles, it was that each offered an underrepresented point of view—one that could empower someone who shared it to challenge a broken system, and rebuild it in their image.

In that sense, book bans are part of a larger, manufactured culture war to keep young people from understanding and uprooting harmful systems of oppression—all under the guise of, ironically, shielding them from harm in the first place.

To be clear: every student pays the price for this so-called “parental rights” battle—and indeed, girls are hardly the only group, or even the primary group, being targeted. But girls, and especially Black and brown girls, queer girls, and non-binary kids, are disproportionately affected by these bans—and they’re the ones whose futures will suffer for them…

Coupled with the rapid backslide of the body positivity movement, the toxicity of social media, and the prospect of coming of age with fewer rights than their grandmothers, and it’s no wonder American girls are in crisis. Last month, the CDC recently reported that 60 percent of female students experienced persistent sadness or hopelessness, with nearly a third of high school girls reporting that they seriously considered suicide—double that of their male counterparts.

And so goes the insidious cycle of book bans, much like any means of withholding education from minoritized populations: make girls feel like they don’t matter, so they don’t pose a threat—economically, politically, or socially—to those making them feel like that way; rinse and repeat.

But if there’s hope, it’s that the opposite is true, too. Because as I have experienced firsthand, when you offer girls books that tell them how their differences make them special, they believe it. When you share stories that show them their dreams are possible, they pursue them. And when you give them proof that their world is changeable—and that they can change it—they won’t just do it; they’ll lead the charge. 

Indeed, history has shown time and time again that there are few things more powerful than a teenage girl armed with equal parts self-confidence and righteous fury. Today, from Austin, Texas to York County, Pennsylvania to Wentzville, Missouri, empowered girls are wresting back control of their education in order to create a better future for themselves, their friends, and every person touched by these bans.

Against all odds, these young activists are brave enough to spark a movement. Now, we need your help to grow and sustain it.”

Read the whole article here!

This season we are exploring all new ideas for books and book suggestions, so you can expand your reading horizons, and share more information with your library community. We are looking at prompts from the 2023 PopSugar reading challenge this season. You can read along with their challenge, linked in our show notes, or just enjoy some different books. 

We are ready to have a good time this week, as we explore books with mythical creatures! If you can dream it up, it’s in a book somewhere; so let’s explore some stories that will be filled with adventures.

Check out our show notes page for links to our beverages, our resources, and the books we share today.

Thank you so much for joining us on Reading With Libraries! Join us next Thursday with another topic or genre and many more books to share and discuss. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss a single episode! 

And if you want to hear more about the work we do in libraries or expand your library skills, check out our podcast Linking Our Libraries! Right now that is dropping short episodes with a few book suggestions; so subscribe to get that every Tuesday.

Bring your book ideas, bring your beverages, and join us back here on Thursday!