Haleigh's Practicum Diary

My Intro to the West End Library

Date: 5/26/26

Time Worked: 9am-1pm and 2pm-5pm (approx. 7 hours)

Name: Haleigh Hare

Supervisor’s name: Marisa Bateman/ Julie Kulikowski (Marisa is supervising my entire experience within the D.C. Public Library System, while Julie is supervising me in this specific, West End Library, branch)

Description of the Day:

I was very nervous about my first day at the library, but it was quite a success! The head children’s librarian at this West End branch, Julie, is incredible- she has been there for 30 years, and she has been so hands-on with making this practicum an enriching experience for me. I was able to meet other staff members as well as acquaint myself with the physical space when I arrived in the morning. In order to help me acclimate to the collection as well as handle some morning housekeeping duties, I worked with Julie to pull holds from the shelves, pull books that needed to travel to other branches, and reshelve some things that had come from the circulation desk. We had a quick turnaround because we were hosting a toddler exploration time from 10 a.m.- 12 p.m. in the open area of the children’s room. We set out books, toys, instruments, and some big body movement tools (hula-hoops and a small ball pit. We ended up with 40 people attending (toddlers and caretakers), and it was a lively crowd–we popped in intermittently to interact with people and model social-emotional and early literacy skills.

I had my first dicey interaction with a member of the public during toddler exploration time. I was sitting on the ground helping children to play in the ball pit when I had to gently correct a child who was throwing balls at the others. The mother came up to me very upset and began talking about her experience with domestic violence and narcissism and how my actions triggered her–she ended up pulling her child from the ball pit entirely. It was clear that the issue was out of my control, so I calmly apologized and maintained focus on the children. Julie said that I handled it well!

After we cleaned up the materials from toddler time, I did some planning for next week. The library system is celebrating its 130th birthday, and Julie thought it would be neat to have a birthday-themed story time. It will skew to a younger audience (ages 0-5), so I have planned some signing, movement, and reading to keep us occupied the entire 30-minute program.