MANAGING PERFORMANCE

Everyone wants to climb the ladder and know they matter!  Building and keeping trust with employees is very essential to evaluating staff.  Letting them know you appreciate the things they accomplish and do well is very important and you are there to help them grow, improve, and succeed.  Using performance evaluating forms to constructively recognize and criticize is a way to help your staff help themselves and make sure the library offers the best service and resources, as well as a safe, clean, and welcoming library for patrons.

STAFF DEVELOPMENT DAYS

I think Staff Days are a great idea.  I have not been having them, and I am definitely going to start.  I think it will be positive and effective for my staff and me and our library.  I have been getting great ideas at PLMI!

Red Lobster Service @ South Myrtle Beach

My experience at the South Myrtle Beach Red Lobster was fabulous!  Our waiter was very friendly.  He catered to our needs in a timely manner.  The  waiter ask how our vacation was going and listened attentively as we  explained the dramatic and even exciting adventure with an encounter with a baby shark, which was about four feet long.  Yikes!  Our food was delicious and lots of it I might add!  There was so much food, he bagged it up to take back to the villa for a late night snack or lunch the next day.  This was a very pleasant experience and I would definitely eat there again!      

               

The overall experience I had at Fall Creek Falls was great; loaded with valuable information and speakers/teachers who taught many things such as, core values, organization, team building, leadership, professionalism, discovering our brand,  the history of the library & were we are going in the future, long term planning, and  taking time to care for our self, so we can be a positive example and an effective leader. I met many new associate directors and managers that all influenced my life and career in some way.  The speakers and teachers Heather Lambert, Don Reynolds, Kia Jarmon, and Cathy Self were all stupendous.  I have taken much home with me.  I hope to gain new friends of our library and to build community.   

What I Learned from my Group's Topic and another Group's Topic

Today I learned I need to plan more in detail and write it down in an organized fashion!  I learned exactly how to do that and how to put a team together, along with needing strategies for solving team conflict.  I learned about having control in my library, but to not be controlling by empowering my staff and having plans and a vision.

Today was full of fun games & activities and lots of learning.  My kind of day because I love both!  During one of the activities we were instructed to meditate on our breathing and then meditate on a memory of a work experience that brought us happiness.  I immediately remembered a little girl that was in my second grade class when I was teaching.  She was having trouble with reading and because her mom worked night, the only support she really had after school was her very young uncle who did not want to help her with reading.  I was trying differentiated teaching strategies, small group, one on one conferencing, but she was not having the progress I wanted her to have, so I decided to let her choose a partner to read with every day several times a day.  One day, all my students were partner reading while I called one student at time up to my desk for one on one conferencing.  She came running to my desk and shouting, “Ms. Todd!  Ms. Todd! I can read!  Listen! Listen! I can read!”  She then proceeded to read her book to me.  As I was meditating on this experience tears just swelled up in my eyes.  This is why I am a librarian.  Reading opens up new worlds, experiences, confidence, and knowledge so anything becomes a possibility.  I reflected on one my goals at LPL, which is to help parents and guardians help their children to get ready to read or become better readers and the thing is, this can apply to all ages of people.  I then remembered how I have always collected books and loved reading ever since I was a small child.  One may not be able to physically travel abroad due to different circumstances, but they can travel abroad through a fiction story, a nonfiction book about a particular country they might be interested in, or through the World Wide Web by using a library computer.  So many possibilities…  I was inspired to keep my focus on my goals and to create a long range plan for LPL, so that our resources continue to help patrons reach their dreams and goals so they may experience all that life has to offer them.

My "I Am" Statement

I am a person who cares about your education and life successes.  I am here to offer resources that will help you reach your life goals.