From Downtown Magnets High School 

I was well prepared to be a Teacher Librarian because I had been a:

Voracious, omnivorous reader
Independent scholar
Online researcher
Information broker
Marketing, purchasing, and administrative manager (large corporation, small non-profit, and my own business)
Technology consultant
Mental health worker
Meditation teacher
Improvisational musician
Rock drummer

But the magic secret experience was….my work as a television stagehand, where I learned to change scenery quickly and professionally to set the stage for different functions and atmospheres while remaining invisible.

What I brought into the library

Creative anti-authoritarianism from the 60’s

A sense of the visionary emerging educational possibilities in Internet based computing

A sense of what moves teenagers, from being a rock drummer (plus a drum set I kept ready to play in a storage room in the library, and a pair of sticks and practice pad I kept at my desk)

A large zen lineage chart and a Stanford wall calendar I kept on the wall behind my desk

Willing and able to make an ever changing flexible learning space from being a stagehand

Four years in tough inner city elementary schools taught me the parameters of “classroom management”

A binder/portfolio from each course in my Teacher Librarian credential program

The annual reports for the ten years I worked at Avnet to share with the Business Magnet.