It is, once again, that time of year—the time of freshly sharpened pencils, newly waxed floors, and almost infinite optimism. This year is no different, and as I prepare my own library for a brand new year, it is important to me to think about my focus and goals while I’m taking care of the normal prep work for the year.

I tend to be a fairly impatient person in my work life. Personally, when at home or generally being a non-librarian-type person, I am very patient, but when it comes to my career, I want to do everything at the same time and have trouble understanding why things can’t change right now or, ever better, yesterday. Because of this, I can often approach a new year (or quarter or month or week) like a hyper lioness trying to take down the entire zebra herd at once, leaving little accomplished on any front because I have spread myself so thin. This is the reason that finding my focus at the beginning of the year is so important to me; it helps me calm down and celebrate genuine progress without beating myself up for my perceived lack of progress in other ways.

The day I and my library stop changing is the day we both become obsolete.

As I begin my third year in the school library, it is easy for me to be impatient with myself: why have I not accomplished more? made a bigger difference? done more to set myself apart? But the truth is that there is no such thing as “more.” My library will never be perfect, because there will always be ways to grow, learn, and improve. The day I and my library stop changing is the day we both become obsolete. Therefore, I choose to instead focus on my “why,” the reasons I do what I do, and the small changes I can make this year to help make my library better for students and staff.

My school district is encouraging all staff this year to find and share their “why” as a way to connect to each other as colleagues and to our students. My why is closely tied to my personal history and what I value about education in general.

Education was very literally my ticket to a better life than I had known as a child.

I grew up in what would politely be described as a non-affluent environment. My parents were both blue-collar workers without high-school diplomas whose employment status changed frequently. I moved homes and elementary schools six times in five years. My single-parent household held poverty, addiction, mental illness, and emotional abuse, and I was homeless at least four separate times before I was 17. Please do not take this as an attempt to garner pity; they are simply the facts of my past. Home was not often a safe, supportive environment for me, and so I poured myself into the safest place I could find—school. Often, the only positive words I heard all day came from teachers, staff, and peers at school. I learned to gather my affirmation and sense of peace within the walls of whatever school building I was attending at the time. This served me well as I grew up and thrived in my studies. I ended up graduating high school as valedictorian, which helped me attend college, where I earned a bachelor’s degree (the first in my family) in education that allowed me to find a stable job soon after graduating. It was from that stable position that I was able to go to graduate school for my master’s degree in school library, which I received in 2017. Education was very literally my ticket to a better life than I had known as a child.

Because of this history of mine, my why is two-fold. I went into education, and ultimately school library, because I wanted to help provide that safe, affirming, and supportive space for all students, and also because I wanted to equip students with the skills they need to be successful, happy, and empathetic adults. Education can change the trajectory of a person’s life, and I want to be a little piece of that for my students, both emotionally and academically.

Of course, I cannot do everything at once, and I will continue to grow and improve as time goes on. However, here are the things I am going to work on this year to move my library forward:

• Overhaul 7th-grade orientation to make it more student-centered
• Promote our new makerspace and provide more maker programming to encourage more student creativity in the library
• Build new collaborations with staff—this year’s focus will be 8th grade Math, 10th grade World History II, and 7th grade English, with continuing my collaboration with 9th grade Algebra I.
• Work with our school counselors to organize a visit by a therapy dog to the library
• Possibly other social-emotional-learning initiatives? As I said, I tend to take on more than I should…

I hope to share my journey with these and more through my blog posts throughout the year, so stay tuned!

As you think about your why and your goals, keep these things in mind:

• What led you to choose education? With so many fields available to you, why did you choose this one?
• What keeps you coming back year after year? Education is hard work, so what keeps you going when the going gets tough?
• What is your vision for your ideal library? Dream big—what would that look like? What small step(s) could you take this year to get you closer to that vision?
• Look at who your library serves. What subgroups are not as active library users? What small step(s) could you take this year to help those groups be more active in your library?

Best of luck for a happy and successful school year! What goals do you have for your own library? I would love to hear about them in the comments.