I’m Marie Ferner, Library Teacher at State Road Elementary School, in Webster, NY. My school is one of seven elementary schools in my district, with approximately 550 students in grades K-5. I teach 28 classes each week and often see classrooms for extra classes or research time during the week. I’m a techno-coach in our building and try to incorporate technology into many of my lessons. I struggle to update the thousands of links to resources on my Library Webpages. I’m hoping to learn new strategies for getting control of technology during this course.

I graduated from UB in 1996. I was the SLMS at Bloomfield Jr-Sr High School for 3 years and came to Webster in 1999. I am beginning my 9^th year as an elementary library teacher and I love it. I started out planning to be a librarian in an academic or museum library, then I had 4 children and waited to get my masters. After all my children started school, I decided to change my focus to working with children, and now that my children are all grown, I still get to see the young ones at work. Best of both worlds!

My two daughters are married, one married a Brit that she met online (!) and they live in St. Louis. Oldest daughter, husband, and my 5^th grader grandson live in Perry. My two sons each have girl friends, and both graduated from RIT. Oldest son lives in Annapolis and is a computer “something” -- those titles don’t really make sense, all I know is he makes the big bucks J  Second son has IT degree and is a wireless network person at U or R’s medical center.

We recently decided to downsize our home so we moved from Henrietta to Walworth, to a beautiful ranch with a great view. We may have done the downsizing a bit too soon, since second son is still living with us, but at least he keeps the wireless network at home running with the latest technologies…. Eventually we’ll have that 3^rd bedroom as our office.

During the year we were moving and building a new house, my library was also being packed up and moved out to have the carpet and asbestos tile removed. We are back in the library and will eventually have enough shelves for the books. The carpet and NEW PAINT are beautiful, and we are getting used to the new locations of the books.

I am also a knitter and crafter trying to run my own online shop “in my spare time.” I have an afterschool knitting club with students and staff. We create items to donate to needy organizations.