About+Your+Librarian

= Mrs. Whiteman =

.....My name is Mrs. Whiteman and I have been the elementary librarian for Otto-Eldred School District since August 1985. Yup - that's a long time! I used to live in southeastern Pennsylvania about 1-1/2 hours north of Philadelphia. I went to college at Kutztown University to get my degree in Library Science. I also have a master's degree in Instructional Media (that's all kinds of technology mumbo jumbo). .....I have a lot of things I like to do when I am not teaching you guys. The two most important ones are working at the zoo and taking dance classes. I have been working at the Erie Zoo since 2007. I do a lot of different things for them, like creating their library from a room piled with books. My favorite thing to so there is animal handling. I have seen some of you at ZooBoo during Halloween. You may have seen me with a rat, snake, scorpion, or tarantula. When I handle their animals I am teaching people about those animals and about how important they are to our world. Other animals I handle are rabbits, chinchillas, doves, ferrets, hamsters, guinea pigs, chickens, tenrecs, hedgehogs, turtles, skinks, hissing cockroaches, bearded dragons, and more! My favorites are the reptiles and my all-time favorite animal to handle is the baby alligators. Sometimes I get to paint with the animals. I also take animals on "field trips" to visit schools, museums, and lots of other places for education and entertainment. I take dance at Dance Arts in Olean. I have been taking tap since 1997 and jazz since 2009. I have also done belly dancing! Other things I do for fun include geocaching, traveling, reading, drawing, doing animal rescue runs for Joyful Rescues in Cuba, NY, and playing games on Pogo.com. .....I have been married since 1992 to my husband Bob and we have an awesome daughter named Samantha. We've been taking foster kids since about 1995 and have had over 35 kids live in our home. We adopted one of them - Amanda. At the moment we have a very bouncy pup named Pepper, an old cat named Hugs, a brat cat named Mischief (but we call her "Hairball" because she is a big puff!), and a degu named Fiona. A degu is a rodent which looks like a mix between a gerbil and a squirrel. I live in the "boondocks" behind Eldred - and I love it! This is a beautiful area and I am really glad that my job brought me to Otto-Eldred!