Working in media centers is, of course, a great way to provide a positive service to the school community. And – it’s also tough and can be lonely. For all of these things, it’s good to have a community of colleagues. Being able to spend time with people who do what you do, and know about the good and bad parts of your job is a wonderful service.

So joining in the group that is organized by our colleagues at Metronet is great! Their next meeting is coming up – and you want to be there.

Elementary Media Meetup

Media Specialists serving elementary schools, join this group to discuss topics and generate ideas to support and encourage your work. Laura Gingras, Media and Digital Learning Coordinator at Laketown Elementary School in the Waconia School District is hosting the event. Olivia Moris, Program Manager from Metronet, is facilitating. During this meeting we will discuss Curriculum & Standards. What do you teach? How do you develop lessons? Let’s share ideas and deepen the knowledge base for us all.

Thursday, January 19

3:30-4:30pm

This event will be held on Zoom, select the button below to register. Future dates follow; registrations to be sent prior to each date.

Here are the upcoming dates for the Elementary Media Meetup:

(registration will be sent one week prior, register for one or all!)

• February 16 – eResources. Minitex speaker
• March 16 – Book Vendors. Who do you buy from? What do you look for?
• April 20 – TBD
• May 18 – School Year Review

Register for January 19 right here!

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.

Spending a little time this week doing some meditation can bring some calmness and serenity to your life. Check out this excerpt from the article Eight Benefits of Practicing Mindfulness Meditation (According to Science):

“Mindfulness meditation is the process of slowing down and noticing your experience in the moment, without trying to change it. It may be one of the most available and effective tools to improve your overall health. Experts in many fields, from psychiatry to oncology, recommend it. Here’s a look at some of the many benefits mindfulness can have for your health and well-being.

• Lower stress
• Support emotional well-being
• Help with pain management
• Manage physical illness
• Promote productivity and lessen burnout
• Improve memory
• Strengthen relationships
• Boost your sleep

“Mindfulness meditation is practiced all over the world for its health and wellness benefits. Hundreds of studies have shown that it helps with stress, sleep, physical health, quality of life, and more. You can begin mindfulness through simple activities like mindful breathing, and expand your practice with structured apps, classes, or therapeutic programs.”

Get all the details and read the whole thing 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.

This season we are talking about library programs – giving you some ideas about different ideas you can try in your own library. It is always good to share ideas across libraries, and we are all better! Each week we will look at a different theme of programs.

Check out our show notes here, to get all the links and information.

This week we are shaking off the winter blah feelings, and planning to get outside for a while! Everyone is tired of being cooped up, and we need to think through some ideas to help you and your patrons to get outside and to get moving.

We talk about going outside and doing fun things out there pretty often. You might call it exercise; but it’s fine to think about it as just moving around and having fun. No need to get formal with your programming, unless you really want to. The main point to most programming is to just have fun, and to give your patrons an opportunity to enjoy themselves.

We have a whole podcast series about our Minnesota state parks. Each short episode has a fact about a park, then we suggest six books to go along with that fact. You can listen to the episodes as you trudge around the state parks, or just enjoy listening to books and facts.

CMLE has (VR) kits available for members to borrow! You can use these in your library for a month at a time. Each kit has eight VR headsets; we suggest you take two kits (maybe three – depending on demand that month!).

Our kits come with over 700 lessons available to our members. Want to share content with your students about art? Biology? Design? History? Math? Physics? Travel and Tourism? All of these topics are available!

You can check out the VR content here. Our vendor is ClassVR.

This material functions kind of like 360 degree view PowerPoint slides. You, and your teachers, can use any sort of wording to go with it – lectures, story telling, playing music, or just letting students quietly explore each one. This makes the content infinitely flexible, and able to be used by any age group.

Some of the lessons come with worksheets that not only add some written content that teachers can use, but also adds QR codes to make content available through Augmented Reality (AR).

You can download the entire list of content available here; or if you want to register with CMLE to join our account, you can see everything there.

All of this: the headsets, the lesson plans, the worksheets, and anything else ClassVR offers, is available at no cost to our members! We obtained this equipment through an LSTA grant, and make it available to members.

If you want to get on our reservation list, it’s easy! Just send an email to mary@cmle.org. Tell me how many kits you want (we suggest two), and what month you want them. If you are in the St Cloud area and can come to pick them up – super! That may speed things along. And if not, we will work out delivery to your school.

I will set up a time to do some training with you on using the administrative portal. It’s pretty easy to use on the user side (students) – and most of the kids we have seen pick it up really quickly. (Especially if they are already gamers!) It takes a little more time to set it up on the admin side – library staff and teachers – but it’s not a problem.

We have a variety of material we have created to help you get started in our program.

Let’s add some cool services for your patrons!

That’s right: every week we are going to celebrate some small holiday! We want you to join us in celebrating every week – because really, everyone needs a little more happiness in their lives.

Join us in celebrating the holiday just yourself, and take some small quiet time to enjoy it. Or, take our book and program ideas, and celebrate in a larger way in your library. Take a small, goofy opportunity to have a little more fun today! (We celebrate you in doing this!)

Wow – this is a really relevant holiday! I bet you are like me, and have looked at recent utility bills and not only winced, but possibly fallen to the ground in physical pain. We have a lot of winter ahead, and it would be really helpful to you, and to the power grid, to work on this. You can celebrate saving money and being a good community member!

A few books you might browse this week:

• Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings-10th Edition: Save Money, Save the Earth, by Jennifer Amann, Alex Wilson, and Katie Ackerly
• The Renewable Energy Home Handbook: Insulation & energy saving, Living off-grid, Bio-mass heating, Wind turbines, Solar electric PV generation, Solar water heating, Heat pumps, & more, by Lindsay Porter
• Saving Energy – A Step by Step Guide for Saving Electricity, Gas and Water in Every Room of Your Home, by Jody Graham
• Wind Energy (Saving the Planet Through Green Energy), by Colin Grady
• Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, by Katharine Hayhoe
• Saving the Planet Without the Bullshit: What They Don’t Tell You About the Climate Crisis, by Assaad Razzouk

And you can put together a few programs in your library, to encourage everyone to celebrate this holiday:

• assemble a set of resources, or a guest speaker, to talk abut resources people can use when they are having trouble paying their utility bills (we are a community, and want to support people who are struggling)
• share Low-Income Energy Library: Federal Resources and Tools, from the Department of Energy
• bring in a speaker to talk about doing energy audits in the library or in your home, and share resources from your local energy company
• check out Watts Up? energy meters at your circ desk, so you can help people to track their own energy usage at home

Maybe you can take a minute to celebrate by burning your old utility bills, after you make some cuts and save yourself some money!

The main thing today: just take a few minutes to enjoy yourself and to have a happy minute. We are here for you, and your year-long celebrations!