When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania. What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. The problem was lingering trauma that does not go away when ignored. This is such a large aspect of post-shutdown life, especially in schools. Those of us lucky enough to return to the physical buildings with our health can’t escape the fact that one day in March 2020, we left school thinking we’d take a quick break and things have literally never been the same. Even though eventually I was back “where I belonged” with the job I loved, I didn’t trust it. What if something else changed and I was moved? What if another unexpected event swept us away again? If I, a relatively well-adjusted adult, felt such uncertainty, imagine how elementary schoolers must have been feeling? It was a tough school year. COVID is not gone, and life is moving on. Inevitably there will be more changing protocol, masking requirements imposed (or not imposed, leaving families to make tricky decisions), and more disruption of every kind. Instead of waiting for things to return to how they were in February 2020 (Spoiler alert! They can’t!), I’m looking ahead to this school year and dreaming up ways to push myself out of my comfort zone. Each possible change is a leap of faith, assuming that I will have the bandwidth to offer more to my school community. These following ideas would take a little initiative and a commitment to more than the bare minimum, which is all I’ve had in me for awhile. In the spirit of moving forward and growing from where we are, I’m ready to try. These are three things I’m considering in the name of continuing to grow as a school librarian and a member of my community. We are not finished with the disruption of illness or the possibility that we might have to shift course majorly, but these small things will help me continue to build the library culture I want, regardless of what happens.
