Last Session of the Semester!

On Wednesday, I taught my last library instruction session of the semester. When that happens, there's always that brief moment of "how am I going to fill my time for the next four months?" panic, but that's always quickly replaced by my huge mental to-do list. Before I get swept up into that, I wanted to reflect briefly on my library instruction evolution.
I'm happy with where I am on my journal away from traditional bibliographic instruction. I'm glad I'm letting students explore on their own before I jump in with my two cents. I'm also glad to be incorporating more discussion and group work into these sessions. It's still hard to "let go" sometimes, but students have definitely seemed more engaged in the sessions. There have definitely been far fewer sleepyheads in my classes this semester, despite the large number of 8:00 classes (what's up with that?). So my journey, while not complete, is definitely headed in the right direction.
Also, I'm heading to LOEX at the beginning of May, which I plan to blog, and Immersion this summer, which will probably provide me with plenty of work to do. I'm really excited about this, and even starting to look forward to the whirling chaos that is the fall semester. I guess that's how I know I'm in the right field!

Busy teaching

I haven't posted in a while because I've been busy teaching. I figured that was a reasonable excuse. The class load is slowing down and the conference load is picking up. As far as the classes go, I'm still providing as much exploration time as I can and supplementing that with tips from me to search more efficiently. I don't have any data on how it's working, but students seem more engaged in what they're doing. Even at 8 AM. And that's not bad.