Who’s going to #edcampcode in Raleigh on June 20? @nathan_stevens?

I’m working on the concept map for my makerspaces in libraries lit review. Nice progress so far and I’m a little less than half done.

Surprise work session today! Took advantage of bonus nanny time to get a couple’s work session in at the coffee shop near my house. Get you a partner who will sit across a table in silence from you while you both have your laptops out and secretly look at pictures of the kid you have together after you use a little work break to upload them to your shared album.

On to the reporting!

I reviewed and wrote synthetic notes for three studies today. Call that 600 words.

Then I transcribed synthetic notes for twelve studies from my notebook into Google Drive.

NEXT STEPS: revisiting my conceptual synthesis spreadsheet and adding new details to it. Making a new concept map. Revising my outline. Getting this chunk of my comps package drafted.

When I learned Noelle Stevenson was showrunning a She-Ra reboot, I was psyched. I haven’t read Lumberjanes or Nimona yet, but her Avengers fan art and D&D tweets are top-notch. I was super into She-Ra as a kid, and I love that this new one is called She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.

I’m on board with modern girl culture, at least as it’s manifesting in animation and comic books. I was talking to another parent recently who said she’d been afraid to let her daughter watch My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, but was pleasantly surprised by how feminist it was.

I recommended she look into DC SuperHero Girls and see if she would feel okay sharing that with her daughter, because I think it has a similar vibe.

And I need to read the “new” Jem and the Holograms comic, I know.

I love that the stories I’m seeing about girls and young women in these media place the girls at the center and let them have their own adventures. Romance tends to be sidelined. The girls are dealing with identity development and relationship building. Each of these properties has characters who are so different from each other in their interests and personalities. We’re seeing that there’s no one right way to be a girl or a woman, and I love that. The other thing I love is how they take colors and art styles that are coded feminine and use them to communicate that you don’t have to choose between strength and femininity, and that there are many different ways to be strong.

I’m sure none of them is perfect and I know that they are vehicles for selling toys, but I’m still excited about them.

I would buy that She-Ra poster and hang it on my office wall.

(By the way, DC SuperHero Girls creator Shea Fontana is going to be at ALA Annual and you can bet I’ll be at her session. DC SuperHero Girls is an incredibly accessible way to get to know the DC universe and figure out which characters appeal to you. I say this as an inveterate Marvel loyalist.)

As promised yesterday, I’m going to start tracking my daily work productivity, mostly to help me realize that yes, I’ve actually done stuff. First we’ll get a macro picture of everything I’ve written as part of my doctoral program, and then I’ll get into the work I’ve been doing for my comprehensive exams, where I will detail more than just words written.

I have written the following items as part of my doctoral coursework:

• The Maker Movement and Learning in School Libraries. Literature review. 8,000 words.
• The Role of Archives and Special Collections in K-12 Instruction. Literature review. 7,000 words.
• Organizing and Describing Information for Children. Literature review. 5,000 words.
• School Librarians as Leaders. Literature review. 5,000 words.
• Special Education Training for Preservice School Librarians. Original research. 4,000 words.
• "A Real Fun Scene": Learning Improvisational Comedy in Community. Original research. 7,000 words.
• Everyday Life Information Needs of Adolescents. Literature review. 4,000 words.
• Designing Information Retrieval Interfaces for Children's Use. Literature review. 5,000 words.
• Libraries, Tabletop Roleplaying Games, and Teen Identity Development. Literature review. 6,000 words.
• Cultivating a Community of School Librarian Scholars. Literature review. 6,000 words.
• Unlocking the Door to Adventure: Cultivating a Community of Practice in Improvisational Comedy (and related assignments). Original research. 10,000 words.
• Expansive Learning, Third Spaces, and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (and related assignments). Literature review. 5,000 words.
• Learning from Library Escape Games. Research proposal. 1,000 words.
• Decolonizing and Participatory Research with Youth in Library Makerspaces (and related assignments). Literature review. 7,000 words.
• Possible Selves. Literature review. 6,000 words.
• Teen Participation in Library Makerspaces: A Grounded Theory Study. Research proposal. 5,000 words.
• Youth-driven School Library Services. Research proposal. 1,000 words.
• Racial Equity Initiatives in North Carolina's Public Schools. White paper. (Co-authored.) 6,000 words.

Not bad. (Please don’t ask how many I published.)

Now, let’s talk about the work I’ve done on the comprehensive examination literature review package.

I identified 179 studies that were potentially of interest. Of those, I have identified as useful, read, and reviewed 35 studies. I have written synthetic notes for 33 of those; at an average of about 250 words each, that’s a total of 8,000 words. This is a marked drop-off in word count output. There are several non-writing reasons for that. I’m going to ramp it back up in the near future.

So that’s where I was as of yesterday. Look for another update after today’s work session!

I love reading about other creative people’s processes, especially writers, so this look inside Wil Wheaton’s head as he revises his first novel is my kind of deal. (Add on top of that my near lifelong crush on Wil Wheaton and just… yeah.)

And it inspired me. I’ve been chipping away at my comprehensive examination package, a giant literature review and a milestone in my doctoral progress, slowly but slowly for a very long time. I started while I was still technically doing coursework in the fall, and spent the whole spring semester on it as well. And I expect to be done in December, because I expect it to take me as long as they will allow. (#thanksparenthood #gradstudentmomlife) But I have really been struggling to feel like I made progress.

So starting tomorrow, I’ll take a page from Wil’s book and actively blog each day about the progress I’ve made. I’ll begin with a report about my progress since August, and then add a little bit each day. I’ll be dropping all that stuff in a category called “What Kimberly Wrote” (nothing there yet). It will be everything that counts as part of my writing process, not just getting words out.

Finally taking on Kim Werker’s Craftsy class, Next Steps in Crochet. Here is my little swatch with a row of bobble stitches.

I love the amazing work that the students at Mount Vernon Middle School are doing to educate school librarians on how they can make their libraries more equitable. I can’t wait to learn more about the #libfive!

Finished 05/09/2018.

This is a (perhaps the) foundational work on young adult library services. I disagree with Edwards in a few places, mostly due to her being a product of her time. Writing before the advent of true YA literature as she did, she tends to consider books for teens as a step on the way to more mature reading, rather than an end in itself. And she also suggests that librarians shouldn’t sponsor clubs that aren’t book clubs. (She doesn’t look too highly on book clubs themselves, either.) Whereas I think there is a wide range of activities that a teen librarian can sponsor and still be within the library mission. Still, Edwards has a lot of good to offer even those of us who already have a degree in and experience with YA librarianship. Some choice gems:

• • You've got to read books if you're going to recommend them to teens. And you can do this by squeezing in reading in all those little moments. For myself, I'm trying to read at all the times when, for the past several years (since I got a smart phone, basically) that I would check my phone. Bye, Facebook. Hello, Stuff for the Teenage and the things you recommend.
  • There are some basic tools that it's easy to forget about in our tech-saturated world, but that doesn't mean they're not valuable: having teens recommend books to each other, giving book talks, making book lists.
  • Treat teens with respect.
  • Remember that in a few years, teens will be voters.
  • Meet readers where they are.
  • Be friendly and helpful.
  • Librarians are not police officers.
  • Librarians need to get out of the library and connect with the community.
  • Many librarians are in the business of customer service, not technical service.
  • Treat your patrons as guests at a party.
  • Focus on people rather than systems.

Art by Mari Andrew.

If you are a person for whom Mother’s Day is less fraught, perhaps you spent it like I did: claiming “me-time” by buying flowers and cards at Target while your partner played with the kid at home, hosting a gluten free brunch for your mother and mother in law, getting a little tipsy on mimosas, and napping.

And then getting up with every intention of taking a shower and realizing that no, you need even more napping.

As my kid would say, “Night night!”