The Secret to Getting All the Library Books Back!

Are you frustrated at the end of every school year (yeah, yeah, not by faculty pep rallies in a 100 degree meeting room; not by professional development courses one week before the summer brain drain; not by parents complaining about NEXT year’s teacher…whom they haven’t even met yet)? No, I mean by the very thing librarians LIVE FOR! Getting back all the library books at the end of the school year?

What’s the Secret?

Want to know the secret for getting all the library books back? Forget the students. Forget the parents. Go after the teachers! Use all your powers of ~~bribery~~, ~~coercion~~, professional partnership-ness to entice the teachers to have a stake in getting all their students’ books back. Teachers are very competitive.

“My teal and pink chevron classroom banners are prettier than yours.”
“My students adopted a polar bear and saved the ice cap.”
“My students jumped 40 Lexile levels this year.”
“My students are so bad, they are headed for juvie.” NO, WAIT. Wrong kind of competition!

Each year, I post an ongoing graph outside the library with the teachers’ names on it (yes, yes, it is supposed to represent the teacher’s students…but…) Here is what I hear in the hallway:

“I want my our name on the graph, people!”
“Don’t we want to be the first third-grade to get on the graph?”
“Who still owes a book…who is holding us back?”

I had one teacher whooping in the hallway when his name went on the graph…and we had to interrupt his class in music to share the news!

Another class begged me to declare a “tie” with another class, since I was not in the library when their last student came to return his book! (Loophole! They’ll be getting lawyers next!)

I’m laughing my head off. But I got back about 1,000 books already, and I am down to a dirty dozen holdouts. One week and two days to go!