While I do a year-end review every year, sometimes it’s worth it to do a mid-year check. Once, when I had a new principal, I did a 9-week summary. The point was to share with a person, who did not know me, some of what my job entails and subsequent achievements. How can she evaluate me if she doesn’t know what I do?

This year, I have an end of first semester infographic because my district brought back full-time library aides after more than a decade. Do you know what you can do with an aide?! I went from no aide last year to a full-time one this year. Here’s a big statistic: I have increased the number of classes I have taught by 485%!

With one small graphic, I can show the difference in classes taught each Fall semester for 3 years. In 2022-23, I had a half-time aide (2 days one week, 3 the next), last year there was no aide, and this year I have a full-time aide. While the number 485% was shared in the email, I focused on making it part of the report but including other information. Some of the items may sound weird, like proofing school materials, but I do a lot of that sort of thing. If it encourages someone to ask more questions, all the better!

I did not list every class I teach. But we have an active, growing International Baccalaureate (IB) program and I thought it was important to pull out the classes taught to that particular group. I reviewed several IB papers and I could not have helped students as much without the freedom to turn over operations to the LMA.

For the record, I do not dump all of the operations on my LMA. I want to put away books because it lets me touch the stacks every day. I like to talk to the students at the desk and discuss what they are looking for. But having an aide means I can leave the room to teach in another room for a simple short lesson and then move to a different room. Having an aide means that the students know they can have me sit with them one-on-one or with a small group to go over their research. Having an aide means I can back up our IT person and help debug or fix Chromebooks. Having an aide means that coverage is not an issue and the doors remain open for 9 hours a day. The data on having an aide can be quantified in some ways and shared in a story form in others. For those of us lucky enough to share the job, the library media assistants directly enhance the library experience for our students, faculty, administrators, and parents.