School is starting again in the next few weeks, and once again I’ll be heading back through the doors of an institution of learning. But this time it will be as an elementary school librarian instead of as a student.

I found out during my interview that the school I’ll be working at owns a number of those nifty Flip cameras, which means I’ve spent some time brainstorming how to use those. I decided that it’d be really fun to have the fifth graders make some movie trailers of the books the younger students are reading. I think it’ll be a fun way to foster a sense of a reading community and connect students of different ages over the same books.

I’m also planning, at the suggestion of my supervising librarian here in Texas, on doing a “One School, One Book” program, encouraging every teacher and student to read Ramona the Brave in the early part of the second semester since the movie will be coming out in the spring and the Ramona books tend to appeal to a large age group. In connection with that, I’m hoping to have every child make their own “Celebrity” READ poster with a copy of the book. How fun would that be?

I’m excited to use the READ software to do some really exciting and creative things in my new library. Any other good ideas?

Impossible. The beeping alarm sounds at least 3 hours too soon. No possible way it could already be 6:40am. But, alas, it is. Welcome to Monday morning. I rise and begin the daily routine: make the coffee, take a shower, check the weather, get some breakfast… This is the morning agenda. It unfolds this way because the repetition requires little thought from someone not known as a “morning person”. Any deviation from the routine can prove problematic.

Therefore when I tip the cereal box and only a few errant flakes fall into the bowl, the whole morning comes to a halt. My brain does not think of alternatives. It does not consider the full bag of bread and toaster oven just to my right. It does not remember that an apple also serves as breakfast when in a pinch. It only perceives the nearly empty bowl.

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A question I have received often over the past weeks is in regards to installing Photoshop Elements, the software packaged with the READ CD Box Set. I can imagine these READ CD users, poised at their computers, ready to create READ posters, the folder opened to install Photoshop, only to find they have no cereal. Serial. The serial number! A serial number is required to install Photoshop Elements?? Where is it?!

That much-needed number is on page 3 of the Getting Started Guide. And indeed knowing where the cereal/serial is, helps with getting started in the morning.