‘AN ELEMENT OF SELFLESSNESS’
“You have to have an element of selflessness. There's an element of selflessness that I think I've always had.”
“Athe end of the day, my goal is always I'm here to make the experience for my kids the best that it can be. So battling things like social media and cell phones is all really hard, but I find that if I bring my true self to the kids and they know me, I'm like a dorky, nerdy Mom character. I'm a caricature of a mom and even the kids who don't love the things that I love or even find me overbearing—I think the fact that I bring my genuine self to the table every day, like every day, like there's no bullshit. I'm here and I think that earns a certain level of respect. So I don't deal with a lot of discipline issues. That's never been a problem for me because most of the kids don't want to get kicked out of the library. I don't know. They don't. They like it here. But I worked really hard to earn that level of respect from them.”
“I do think you have to have some selflessness, because (…) there's not a lot of help. There's not a lot of other people stepping up, and if I cared about that I wouldn't come back. I do it because I want the kids to be happy and I know what's going to make them happy. And it's me showing up so.”
“I feel like I was able to build my resilience for discipline issues and things before cell phones and social media. This construct that children have that everything is fleeting, it's momentary, there's no filters, there's no consequences. And all of it's being recorded. It's a mindset that's very challenging. That's what I find very challenging with kids now, to engage them and get them excited. I've been finding a dwindling level of curiosity. As a librarian, that's like torture because all I do is ask questions. And I'm fifty and I'm still asking questions. I have questions every day and the kids don't ask questions. I'm like, ‘How can you not wonder about everything around you?’”
‘JUST PUT YOUR PANTS ON AND GO TO WORK’
“I wonder if for [a younger teacher] now it's (…) just harder to manage (….) My [younger relatives] all have this level anxiety. They'll call me and be like, ‘Can you believe this is happening?’ And I'm like, ‘Yeah, and it's fine. You can be okay. Just put your pants on tomorrow and go to work. It'll be fine.’ And they're like, ‘What? Don't you feel sorry for me?’ I'm like, ‘It's a sad situation, but like I said, you'll be fine.’”
“I don't know if it's my experience or my straight-up goofiness, but the combination works.”