Category Archives: Professional Development

Building Connections

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Welcome to the official launch of the Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy (MSLL) 2018-2019 Book Study. I invite you to read one chapter each month and participate in weekly blog discussions throughout this school year.

Podcast – Episode 1: Building Connections for Learning

Maximizing School Librarian Leadership Facebook Group

Each chapter in the book opens with an invitation to connect your background knowledge and experience with the content of the chapter. The prompt in Chapter 1: Building Connections for Learning asks you to consider how the current culture in your school supports your personal growth and how does it support individual and collective risk-taking, problem solving, and innovation.

These may or may not be easy questions to answer. You may be new to a school, or you may be serving in a new role this year and have yet to realize the affordances of your current school culture. If that is the case, think about your previous school or work environment.

Have you served, or do you serve in a culture that supports your professional growth?

School Culture
According to the glossary in MSLL, culture is “a way of life. It is comprised of shared beliefs, values, knowledge, attitudes, language, behaviors, social interactions, and more. Cultures are created by people over time. Cultures are dynamic; they are not fixed. Cultures change as people’s needs and norms change” (Moreillon 2018, 170). For me the keywords in this definition are “people” and “dynamic.”

Building Relationships
When building a culture of learning in your school, your relationships with people are THE place to start. People who know, like, and respect each other are more likely to invest in the success of the entire learning community. As a school librarian, you make sure that the strongest relationship you form and nurture is with your principal. You will build relationships with library staff, volunteers, and student aides. You will build relationships with individual classroom teachers and specialists and with grade-level or disciplinary teams. You will build relationships with the Parent-Teacher Association/Organization leaders and students’ family members.

Simply put, you must build relationships in order to position your work and the library program at the center of the learning community.

There are many ways to build connections via relationships. With your principal(s), it may be through regular face-to-face meetings, via email or other electronic communication, by sharing lesson plans, monthly newsletters, and quarterly reports. It may be through professional development opportunities you are facilitating for faculty. Wise school librarians regularly leave invitations to see what’s happening in the library and other positive notes in their principal’s mailbox. All of these communication venues will focus on sharing how you assist your principals in meeting their goals for faculty, students, and the school.

The teachers’ lounge in any school can be a positive point of contact, or it can be a place for airing complaints. If it is the former, be sure to get out of the library and into the lounge whenever you can. Get to know about classroom teachers’ own children (grandchildren) as well as their students. Listen and learn as they share the successful happenings in their classrooms. Be on the alert for problems they might share that you can help them solve. Share yourself as well as the resources and learning experiences centered in the library. If you cannot change the teachers’ lounge into a positive place for developing relationships, steer clear of it.

Forming advisory committees that include administrators, classroom teachers, students, and families is one sure way to build relationships. Make sure these committees have a defined purpose, such as setting library procedures, overseeing the library’s Web presence, or planning a literacy event. Library student aides can become the school librarians “own kids.” Not only do they help manage the library, they also further develop literacies and give school librarians insights into possible challenges other students may be having in using and creating with information.

Building Connections
Effective school librarians build connections between professional development and practice; resources and curriculum; libraries and classrooms; inquiry and the disciplines; and future ready learning and college, career, and community readiness (see figure 1.5).  Building these connections can best be achieved in a learning commons model. This model “for the use of the library’s physical and virtual spaces, its resources, and the school librarian focuses the library program on knowledge-building by students and educators alike” (Moreillon 2018, 173).

Cultural Transformation
“Advancing progressive learning approaches requires cultural transformation. Schools must be structured to promote the exchange of fresh ideas and identify successful models with a lens toward sustainability — especially in light of inevitable leadership changes” (NMC/CoSN 2017, 4). I believe that school librarians can play a pivotal role in initiating, maintaining, and sustaining cultural transformation in their schools.

If the school library is known as a place for the open exchange of ideas, school librarians can help ensure that the school culture is a dynamic one. This open exchange will happen when there is trust among educators, students, and community members. With an exploratory and risk-taking approach, school librarians who have co-created a “learning commons” in the library will be on the forefront of identifying, testing, and developing successful strategies for transforming teaching and learning.

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

  1. What are your go-to strategies for building connections in your school learning community?
  2. How does your school library program reflect a “learning commons” model, and how can you capitalize on this model to transform learning and teaching in your school?

Works Cited

Moreillon, Judi. 2018. Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy. Chicago: American Library Association.

New Media Consortium and Consortium for School Networking. 2017. The NMC/CoSN Horizon Report: 2017 K-12 Edition. https://cdn.nmc.org/media/2017-nmc-cosn-horizon-report-k12-EN.pdf

Maximizing Book Study: An Invitation

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Dear Colleagues,
This is your personal invitation to join a professional book study during the 2018-2019 school year. As you may know, Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy was written as a book study selection. Each of the nine chapters is intended to be read and discussed – one chapter a month – over the course of an academic year.Ways to Use this Book
In her book, Professional Development: What Works (2011), Sally Zepeda provides guidance for how to form a book study group, choose a book, make decisions about how to read and discuss a book, and evaluate the book and the book study process. I have had first-hand experience participating in professional book studies and have facilitated or co-facilitated studies at two elementary schools (see Moreillon 2012, 150-151) and for one university faculty.

The following are my ideas for organizing a book study specifically for Maximizing School Librarian Leadership.

Lone Reader
You can read this book and interact with it as a lone reader. You can keep a journal and write about the discussion questions and reflection prompts. Although the majority of the activities are intended for small or large groups, you may find several that you can do on your own. One way solo readers can maximize learning from the book is to post responses, thoughts, and questions to colleagues in their professional learning networks (PLNs), such as posts on email distribution lists, in Facebook groups, or in Twitter chats. Another way is to participate on this blog.

Partner Reading
School librarians may opt to read this book with a principal, district superintendent, another school librarian, educator, or administrator. This strategy might be especially effective if one of the partners is new to learning how school librarians can positively impact school culture, professional development, and change initiatives.

If, from my perspective, it was the best of all possible worlds, a school librarian and principal would co-lead a year-long book study to immerse a faculty in the ideas in this book while they were in the process of building a vision, mission, and goals for their schools. Such a book study could be conducted in face-to-face environments or facilitated by online tools such as email, blogs, Google docs or sites, wikis, social media, and more. (If you are using Twitter, I invite you to use these hashtags: #SchoolLibrarianLeadership and #BuildingConnections4Learning.)

Small Groups or Larger Cadre Book Study
Small groups or larger cadres of school librarians may also select this book as a shared prompt for monthly discussions. In districts with district-level school librarian supervisors, these may be organized by the supervisor for the entire cadre. If there is no supervisor, job-alike librarians, such as all middle school librarians, may choose to organize their own book study group.

A group of district-level school librarian supervisors may also opt to use Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy for their own book study. The book is intended to provide inspiration, strategies, and guideposts to help site-level school librarians strengthen their practice. District-level supervisors may choose to pass on this information to the school librarians in their charge.

Discussion Questions, Activities, and Reflection Prompts
At the end of each chapter, I provide three discussion questions, three activities, and three reflection prompts. The discussion questions are my best guesses about what you may want to dialogue about after reading each chapter. The opening quotes or the pull quotes for each chapter can also be used for this purpose. Whoever is leading the discussions in your learning environment may develop site- or district-specific questions around which readers can focus discussions.

The activities are intended for partners, small groups, or whole faculty groups. They can be adjusted to meet readers’ needs. For example, the first activity in Chapter One asks readers to use a mind map to illustrate the interdependence of stakeholders and instructional activities in their schools. If you are working with a cadre of school librarian supervisors, you may each do this activity at your district level and then compare your map with those of your fellow supervisor colleagues.

At the end of each chapter, there are two general reflection prompts and one specifically for school librarians. Of course, readers may create their own prompts. Responses to the prompts can be shared orally, in writing, with a sketch, or any other way that makes sense for the reader(s). When reading with a group, sharing reflections with others can be especially important to making meaning and perhaps arriving at a collective meaning from the text.

Why a Book Study?
In my experience, professional book groups can strengthen relationships, develop collegiality and shared beliefs and practices, influence curriculum, and help educators work together as a team. These experiences are one reason why I wrote Maximizing School Librarian Leadership as a book study selection. Next month, my blog support for the year-long book study will begin in earnest. Stay tuned for a podcast Episode 1 and for four blog postings related to Chapter 1: Building Connections for Learning.

Questions for Discussion

  1. If you are reading this book with one other individual, such as your principal or your district superintendent, what will be your role in facilitating the book study and how will you ensure the success of your study?
  2. If you are reading this book with a group of colleagues—school library supervisors, school librarians, or classroom teachers for example—what will be your role in facilitating the book study and how will you ensure success for all participants?

References

Moreillon, Judi. 2012. “Job-embedded Professional Development: An Orchard of Opportunity.” In Growing Schools: School Librarians as Professional Developers, edited by Debbie Abilock, Kristin Fontichiaro, and Violet H. Harada, 141-156. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited.

Zepeda, Sally J. 2011. Professional Development: What Works. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.

Maximizing Systems Thinking

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In this quote from the book, I offer a critical foundation for succeeding in Maximizing School Librarian Leadership. When administrators, educators, students, and families have a collaborative mindset, they will be invested in each other’s success and in the success of the entire learning community. With a culture of collaboration as a foundation, principals and school librarian leaders will have built the necessary relationships to fully understand the system they seek to lead.

The Global View
Like principals, school librarians have a global view of the learning community. Effective school librarians and principals also reach out beyond the school walls to work with families and other community members. A close working relationship between principals and school librarians helps them share their insights into the various components of the learning community.

Systems thinking involves taking stock of the whole system before attempting to change any part of it. Systems thinking leaders search for patterns in the interdependent relationships among people and practices within the system. It is important, then, that leaders step into each other’s and every stakeholder’s shoes. School librarian leaders must ask: What does the school library program look like from the perspective of the principal(s), classroom teachers, specialists, staff, families, district-level decision-makers, and community members?

Systems thinking helps leaders identify areas of strength. These are the places in the system that support the learning community’s vision, mission, or goals. Leaders also look for stumbling blocks that may impede the school’s progress toward achieving their goals. In a collaborative culture, leaders use this information to further strengthen the system and collectively solve the challenges that could keep educators, students, and families from achieving success.

School Library Services Alignment
Collaborative school librarians seek to align their work—resources and teaching—with the classroom curriculum. Through coplanning, coteaching, and coassessing student learning outcomes they have first-hand knowledge of the instructional program from a school-wide perspective. Principals and school librarians can use that information to continually improve their own leadership as well as the success of other educators, students, and families.

Systems thinking involves working as a team. Team learning “is a discipline of group interaction. Through such techniques as dialogue and skillful discussion, small groups of people transform their collective thinking, learn to mobilize their energies and actions to achieve common goals, and draw forth an intelligence greater than the sum of individual members’ talents” (Senge et al. 2012, 8).

School librarians work with individual colleagues as well as with grade-level and disciplinary teams. This gives us the opportunity (and the responsibility) to personalize professional learning for each member of the teaching faculty. Our knowledge of the entire system, which we share with our administrators, helps school librarians collaborate with others to transform teaching and learning. It helps us know how we can capitalize on our colleagues’ individual strengths and the school’s collective strengths. It helps us develop strategies to address any policies, procedures, or practices that may be holding us back.

Systems Thinking in Education
Systems thinking is not a new idea in education. In 1992, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development published an issue of Educational Leadership called “Improving School Quality.” Frank Betts contributed an article to that issue called “How Systems Thinking Applies to Education.” As Betts notes, “Each educational system is composed of a unique set of elements arranged in a unique constellation of relationships. Furthermore, the relationships among elements, subsystems, and supra-systems are continually changing in search of equilibrium while avoiding entropy.” As the call for systemic change in education has grown even more urgent in the years since his article was published, there remains much to learned about applying systems thinking to transforming our schools.

Taking a systems thinking approach provides school leaders with the data they need to lead a change process. Strong leaders practice distributive leadership and encourage all stakeholders to actively participate in the process. Applying systems thinking and working collaboratively with others is the way to collectively take the risks necessary to maximize our effectiveness and reach for our capacity to meet the needs of today’s students.

Coming August 27th at 3:00 p.m. EST:

“Your Library on Steroids: Make an Impact on System Level Priorities” School Library Journal Webinar with Priscille Dando, Coordinator of Library Information Services, Fairfax County Public Schools, and Jonathan Hunt, Lead Coordinator of Library Media Services, San Diego County Office of Education

Questions for Discussion

  1. Do you feel that your school community is currently working together as a team?
  2. How do you or could you contribute to strengthening your school’s team?

Works Cited

Betts, Frank. 1992. “How Systems Thinking Applies to Education.” Educational Leadership 50 (3); 38-41.

Senge, Peter, Nelda Cambron-McCabe, Timothy Lucas, Bryan Smith, Janis Dutton, and Art Kleiner. 2012. Schools That Learn: A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents, and Everyone Who Cares about Education. New York: Crown Business.

 

From Where Does Your Authority Come?

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The authority of an author is one of the first pieces of background knowledge we ask students to consider as they weigh the value, reliability, perspective, or bias in information. The importance of researching the author’s or authors’ credentials, knowledge, experience, and prior contributions to the conversation on any given topic is equally important for educators who are considering reading a professional book.

To add to what you can learn about me from this blog, my previous writing, or a Google search, I would like to share three of the defining experiences of my professional life. These experiences have charted my practice, scholarship, and service. It may come as a surprise to School Librarian Leadership blog readers who were children or who weren’t yet born in the mid-1990s, but resource-based learning, flexible library schedules, and classroom-library collaboration for instruction have been part of our school librarianship and education history for decades.Resource-based Learning
As a preservice classroom teacher in the 1980s, I was schooled in literature-based teaching. This involved developing units of instruction in all content areas based on literature text sets. These topical or thematic text sets included fiction and informational texts in all genres at a variety of reading proficiency levels. Those text sets even included media (!), which in those days focused on films (and yes, filmstrips), cassette tapes and other recordings, artifact kits, computer-based programs, and more. The goal of developing text sets was to give students choice in exploring resources to develop their literacy and increase their content knowledge.

At that time, we conducted “research.” Most often classroom teachers gave students a set of questions or tasks to complete using the text set for resources. (We did not have a school librarian in our California school.) Most often, students produced traditional reports and presented their learning orally with some type of visual aide. In my classroom, students often had choices in how they presented their learning. Some chose to write traditional reports; others wrote poems or stories, performed skits, or created highly illustrated work. (We had only one Apple IIe computer in our classroom. Its primary instructional use was our student-published class newsletter, The Hang-Ten News.)

Library Power
It wasn’t until my early years as a school librarian that I was introduced to inquiry learning. In my third year of practice, I transferred school districts and secured a position in a high-needs elementary school in a district that had received a Library Power grant. The National Library Power Project was funded with a grant from the Dewitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund. Over the course of ten years, the fund provided $45 million 700 schools in 19 school districts across the United States.

I led the team at Corbett Elementary in writing our school’s successful Library Power application. This grant likely changed the course of my career in school librarianship. All Library Power school library programs in the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) were required to operate with flexible scheduling based on classroom-library collaboration for instruction. The grants included funds for purchasing new print and electronic resources and renovating the physical spaces of our libraries. Perhaps, most importantly, Library Power districts provided professional development (PD) for classroom teachers, school librarians, and principals.

Classroom-Library Coteaching
School librarians involved with TUSD’s project participated in “Cooperative Program Planning,” a week-long training provided by Ken Haycock. This training was focused on classroom-library collaboration for instruction. In TUSD, we launched a follow-up PD series for which Library Power school librarians were required to bring a classroom teacher colleague to learn and practice coplanning strategies, and prepared to coteach in the classroom or library.

I was hooked. To be honest, I had felt inadequate as a classroom teacher working solo in my classroom. As an isolated educator, I never felt I could simultaneously address the needs of English language learners as well as the students reading and writing far above their grade level. As a school librarian coteacher, I experienced the benefits of two heads for planning, four heads and four hands for coimplementing instruction and coassessing student learning outcomes.

I achieved more satisfaction as a coteacher because I experienced the power of two educators offering students more personalized learning than one educator working alone could provide. Students were able to succeed with individual and small group inquiry projects. And my collaborators and I shared a sense of achievement in meeting students’ needs and developing our instructional expertise alongside one another.

Classroom-Library Collaboration Testimonials
It wasn’t until I transferred to another Library Power elementary school and began regularly teaching a graduate-level course in school librarianship at the University of Arizona that I realized I could be recording classsroom-library ollaboration testimonials from classroom teachers, specialists, and administrators. I began recording in 2001, and other school librarians have since contributed to this page.  The most recent video was crowdsourced and includes testimonials from principals and district-level leaders from across the U.S. regarding their experiences working with professional school librarians: “Principals Know: School Librarians Are the Heart of the School” (2014).

My goal in capturing these testimonials was to inspire preservice school librarians to help them understand the benefits of classroom-library collaboration from the perspectives of classroom teachers, specialists, and administrators. Rather than “taking time away” from classroom teachers (losing or taking planning time or classroom instructional time), I wanted to show future school librarians that other educators would welcome their instructional partnership invitations. These testimonials show that educators and administrators value what school librarians bring to the collaboration table and know how our teaching increases student learning.

Questions for Discussion

  1. What are your defining professional experiences and how have the influenced the way you teach?
  2. Whose work has guided your instructional practices, and how do you currently apply their thinking and strategies in your teaching?

Reference

Haycock, Ken. 2007. “Collaboration: Critical Success Factors for Student Learning.” School Libraries Worldwide 13 (1): 25–35.

Maximizing Leadership: Keyword = Collaboration

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For the 2018-2019 academic year, I will be using my blog to support educators who are using my book Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy as a book study selection. This month (August), I blog about the information found in the preface and the introduction and the to use the book as a book study selection. In September, I will blog about Chapter 1: Building Connections for Learning and continue dedicating each month during the academic year to subsequent chapters in the book. You can find the schedule and links to these blog posts, on the book page of my blog. Each month, I will introduce that month’s chapter with a podcast.

For the month of August, I published a podcast called: Preview: School Librarian Leadership

All Podcast ScriptsPreface

In the preface of a book, authors often explain why they wrote the book. They often use the preface to establish their credibility in terms of their experience on the topic or their professional background. To apply an old term from the study of rhetoric, a preface is in a sense an “apology”: an explanation or defense.

As Simon Sinek, David Mead, and Peter Docker explain in their book Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team (2017), it is essential for people to determine their “whys.” While we may achieve “happiness” in “what” we do, our “whys” indicate the ways we achieve satisfaction. Our “whys” align with our values, our goals, our raison d’être. This book is about my “WHY.”

From a professional standpoint, “collaboration” is the skill and educational value that is primary in my heart, mind, and experience. For me to fulfill my purpose as an educator, I have chosen to collaborate with others to reach for my individual and our collective capacity to serve the needs of the students in our care. I know from experience that none of us can succeed with all students in all content areas if we choose to work in isolation from our colleagues.

Collaborative Cultures

I have served in collaborative culture schools and worked on non-collaborative faculties as well. I know the difference in terms of my ability to learn and grow. I know the difference in terms of what we can accomplish and offer students by working together. I know it takes a village to help students and educators reach their capacity.

Simply put, there is no comparison between a collaborative culture and non-collaborative culture learning community.

Culture is everything. At times in my teaching career when my collaborative purpose and the purpose of the learning community were aligned, there was absolutely no limit to what we could accomplish together—and no limit to my joy and sense of achievement. A culture of collaboration is focused on both individual and collective growth. “If every member of a team doesn’t grow together they will grow apart” (Simon, Mead, and Docker 2017, 195).

As a school librarian, I have had awesome (no exaggeration) opportunities to co-lead along with administrators and classroom teacher leaders in collaborative culture schools. These experiences have shaped me, and they shaped this book.

Maximizing School Librarian Leadership

This book represents almost thirty years of learning, seven years of intensive graduate-level teaching, and two additional years of reading, researching, and writing. During my tenure as an assistant, then associate, professor at Texas Woman’s University (TWU), I developed (from scratch), refined, and further refined a course called “Librarians as Instructional Partners” (LS5443). For me, this course offered graduate students THE reason to serve as school librarians. It offered preservice school librarians a “why” followed by “what” and “how.”

Over my seven years of service at TWU, I taught this course twelve semesters, occasionally teaching two sections in one semester. I learned a great deal from the over three hundred students who participated in the course. There were students who entered LS5443 with open minds or prior positive experiences with collaboration; they embraced coplanning, coteaching, and co-leading. There were other students who struggled to let go and trust their fellow students; they resisted collaboration. Some developed their collaborative ability over the course of the semester; others left our course adamant that they would seek library positions in which they could work alone.

When I completed this book in November of 2017, I realized that Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy, is the text I wish I had had to help guide the preservice school librarians who participated in LS5443. Perhaps this text would have helped me more effectively communicate the deep sense of purpose and satisfaction that is possible when school librarian leaders collaborate to co-create a culture of learning.

My Hope

I hope all school librarians will come to know through first-hand experience that teaching and learning within a collaborative culture of learning is the context in which they will succeed in educating students for the present as well as for their futures. When school librarians serve as culture builders, practice job-embedded professional development, and lead as changemakers, they can and will be leaders on teams that transform learning and teaching.

Questions for Discussion

  1. What is your WHY related to your career in school librarianship?
  2. What do you hope to learn, or wish you had learned in your preservice school librarian education?

Work Cited

Sinek, Simon, David Mead, and Peter Docker. 2017. Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team. New York: Penguin.

Note: I reviewed this book on my blog in two parts on October 16 and October 23, 2017.

#ALAAC18 Reflection

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I believe in reflecting after every learning experience. In fact, research shows that reflection/metacognition (thinking about one’s thinking) is the way prior knowledge is modified or changed and new ideas are added to our understandings. At a conference, it is often difficult to make time to stop after every meeting, session, keynote speaker, or event to talk with colleagues or engage in the necessary individual reflection that makes learning happen…

Twitter to the rescue! Now that the conference is over, I have the tweets I posted (plus likes and retweets) to use as reflection prompts. Since I began tweeting at conferences (nearly ten years ago), I have appreciated this social media platform as a tool for reflecting on whirlwinds of information and knowledge, especially for intense multiple-day conferences like the American Library Association Annual Conference, aka #alaac18. These are some of the highlights of my conference experience that may be of interest to readers of this blog.

The Lilead Project
My visit to New Orleans began with a day and a half of learning and strategizing with the Lilead Project. For the past year, this group of 20 changemaker school librarian supervisors, five mentors, and three project administrators has been growing a community of practice. The work of the Lilead Project with school librarian supervisors is a vital component of leadership development and moving the school librarian profession forward. The Lilead Fellows put their knowledge into action in districts across the United States. I am proud to have served as a mentor for the West Coast Lilead group. We will continue to meet and support one another in the coming year.

Left to right: Me, Jenny Takeda, Trish Henry, and Claudia Mason. Since our colleague Janet Wile was unable to remain in New Orleans, the poster she created that illustrates her Lilead action plan/learning is standing in (inadequately) for her behind us.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama
Hearing Mrs. Obama speak was a singular experience. Her strength, determination, poise, and most of all, her authenticity make her a leader and role model for many, including yours truly. I did not tweet or snap a photo during her interview with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. I was too star-struck so I especially appreciate those who did!

While standing in line to enter the auditorium, I was proud to see my hot-off-the-presses book, Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy, displayed in the ALA Store. I especially appreciated and learned from school librarian leadership conversations with Misti Werle, Carolyn Foote, and Pam Harland at various points during the conference. Thank you, ALA Editions for your support and thank you to those who purchased the books before they sold out at the ALA Store.

American Association of School Librarians’ (AASL) President’s Program
Part 1: More AASL members should attend this event! The award winners, many of whom brought family members and colleagues from their schools to share their achievement, gave inspirational speeches that captured the depth of their professional practice. I would like to spotlight the work the 2018 National School Library Media Program of the Year (SLMPY) Award recipients Mimi Marquet and Lisa Koch from Robert E. Lee High School in Springfield, Virginia. They even shared their speech in tandem! Such a powerful partnership! Thank you to Follett for sponsoring the SLMPY award.

Part 2: Thank you AASL President Steven Yates for inviting Dr. Jervette Ward as the speaker for his AASL President’s Program. I agree with Dr. Ward that silence on issues related to social justice is not a neutral stance. Silence is a decision and in cases of social justice, it is a decision in favor of oppression.  I have requested that my public library order her book Real Sister: Stereotypes, Respectability, and Black Women in Reality TV I look forward to reading it.

AASL’s Best Websites and Best Apps
The release of the 2018 Best Websites and 2018 Best Apps is a highlight of the annual conference. I appreciate the committee members who vet, annotate, and use these resources and tools in order to share the most effective ones with our colleagues. I was pleased to see the Stanford History Education Group on the Best Websites list. Civic learning is a hot topic in education, and this curriculum makes an outstanding contribution to this effort. I am not as familiar with apps, but I was excited to see Signed Stories among those listed. School librarians are charged with using and integrating tools that support literacy for all students. Thank you, AASL committees, for pointing the way.

A Bright Spot From Home (Arizona)
How wonderful to hear Lisa Morris-Wilkey’s news regarding her work with the Casa Grande (AZ) superintendent. Together, they are restoring elementary librarians positions. Brava, @LMWArizona!

Fake News or Free Speech: Is there a right to be misinformed?
Mary Minow, Damaso Reyes, and Drs. Nicole Cooke and Joyce Valenza each had ten minutes to share a perspective on this timely topic. I wrote about this session in my  6/18/18 “News Based in Facts” post before I left for New Orleans. The panel provided a great deal of food for thought. I appreciated the legal information Mary Minow provided and learned more about the extremely high bar for successfully prosecuting libel, slander, and disinformation cases in court. Here are just few of my tweets related to the other panelists’ comments.

My take-away from the panel is that information literacy and critical thinking are needed now more than ever. I completely agree with Joyce that stepping up our leadership in this area is essential for school librarians. And with support toward that goal, thank you especially, Damaso Reyes, for sharing your work with Checkology.org.

EveryLibrary
The EveryLibrary.org event was a reminder that networking and advocacy are not only essential “work” for librarians, but they can also be fun! Thank you at EveryLibrary for a smashing evening. I especially enjoyed talking with Dorcas Hand (Texas) and Kathy Lester (Michigan) about their advocacy efforts (and the shrimp and corn were real good, too).

The Public
Our profession is indebted to Emilio Estevez for telling this story and shining a light on a little-known role of librarians and libraries in today’s society in his film The Public.

If you did not have the opportunity to see the film at #alaac18, check out the trailer (no spoilers!) and know that the film is exceptional and the ending is perfect! I do hope Emilio Estevez succeeds with his mini-series. If so, I hope he will include the role school librarians and school librarians play in addressing literacy and technology-access gaps and meeting the needs of students, especially those living in poverty.

Newbery-Caldecott-Legacy Banquet
For me, sharing the authors’ and illustrators’ inspiring speeches with friends is always a highlight of ALA Annual. It was so fitting that Jacqueline Woodson is the first recipient of the renamed and reconceived ALSC Children’s Literature Legacy Award. Ms. Woodson’s empowered speech was the perfect way to launch this award. View a short view of Ms. Woodson’s response to earning the award. Read information about the name change on the ALA/ALSC website.

Our tablemate Audrey Cornelius snapped this photo at Table #51. Deb Levitov must have been visiting another table at the time the photo was taken. Front row: Connie Champlin, Becky Calzada, me, Pam Berger. Back row: Sheila MacDowell, Dorcas Hand, Karen Perry, and Barbara Stripling. And how fun that by an unexpected turn of events, Audrey, who was in my storytelling course at Texas Woman’s University in 2012, joined us at the table. Such a wonderful surprise!

The Extraordinarily Talented Brian Selznick
Scholastic Publishing invited Brian Selznick to draw the new covers for a Harry Potter 20th-anniversary paperback set book release. Thankfully, he said, “YES!” after creating a sketch that shows all seven book covers as a single poster. In this work, Brian explored the relationships between the characters and battle between good and evil. He used a snake to connect all seven covers. Brilliant! Preorder yours today!

ALSC Charlemae Rollins Presidents Program
Thank you to ALSC President Nina Lindsay for bringing together this esteemed panel to share their research, experience, and perspectives. This is just a quick snippet from the many thought-provoking ideas and questions they raised.

Dr. Emily Thomas started the conversation by pointing out the National Council of Teachers of English Resolution on the Need for Diverse Children’s and Young Adult Books (2015). She also talked about how stories matter and used the image of the cover of Stories Matter: The Complexity of Culture Authenticity in Children’s Literature, edited by Dana Fox and Kathy G. Short. (I have a chapter in that book that shares my journey as a cultural-outsider author of a children’s book.)

You can read about Dr. Debbie Reese’s reaction to name and description changes to the Children’s Literature Legacy Award on her website.

Margarita Engle shared her personal journey as a child who was unable to travel to Cuba to visit her grandmother and family. She had many quotable moments in her talk, including this one:

Jason Reynolds asked this question: “Is it that Black boys don’t read, or is it that Black boys don’t have books to read—mirror books that they can see themselves in?” For many young Black men his Newbery honor book Long Way Down may be just that book.

The continuing need for publishers to publish books from authors and illustrators from underrepresented groups was one take-away from this panel. This is not new, but all librarians can make a difference in how they develop library collections and serve ALL kids in their community. The need for increasing cultural competence among those who review, purchase, and share books is a critical aspect of today’s librarianship. The hashtag #alscallkids sums up a very complex and critical conversation.

Final Day in NOLA
I started the morning of my last day in New Orleans with a walk to Café du Monde, Jackson Square, and the cathedral. After checkout, I had the opportunity to have lunch with a dear long-time friend who lives in the Big Easy. Darlene and I became friends in Tucson during our daughters’ challenging adolescent years. Catching up, eating at Morrow’s (we highly recommend the BBQ shrimp!), shopping for grandchild gifts, and being silly together was the perfect way to wrap up this visit.

Only in New Orleans!

ALA Annual is truly about community for me. When I attend the Midwinter Meeting or the Annual Conference, I feel the camaraderie and excitement of learning with and from our nation-wide professional network. I especially appreciate the social justice and equity actions of our colleagues. I highly encourage you to get involved with our national association and its divisions. They are nothing without YOU!

Graphic courtesy of ALA

Maximizing Leadership: Chapter 9

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Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy was published by ALA Editions in June, 2018. Chapter 9 is the final chapter in the book.

Chapter 9: Sustaining Connections in a Learning Culture

“Courageous leadership and the perseverance to continually improve are critical to creating a better learning culture for all students and ultimately, to transform learning” (Sheninger and Murray 2017, 227).

Building and sustaining a collaborative culture of learning provides the necessary foundation for change. In order for any innovation to be successful, all stakeholders must work together to achieve that shared goal. In this culture, leaders engender trust and ensure positive relationships among team members. Beginning and ending with the plural pronoun “our,” all members of the school learning community share responsibility for learning and take pride in the outcomes. They all have a common stake in continuous improvement that results in student success.

A collaborative culture of learning allows individual educators to capitalize on the strengths their colleagues possess while they build their own instructional expertise. When school librarians enter into future ready learning partnerships, they help others achieve their goals. Working in teams, they build trusting relationships. In classrooms and libraries, educators practice reciprocal mentorship in order to improve student learning outcomes. They take risks together to coteach, and they believe that their instructional practices can develop at a much greater rate with more assured improvements when they collaborate.

With leadership, a successful change process breeds more change. School librarians working as change aides have the opportunity and responsibility to collaborate with administrators to codevelop and sustain library programs that are at the center of initiatives to transform learning and teaching. As leaders, librarians embody the vision, walk the talk, and go the extra mile.

What you will find in this chapter:
1. Graphic from How to Make a Switch (Heath and Heath 2010);
2. AASL Shared Foundations and Key Commitments (AASL 2018);
3. Your Plan and Reality Graphic;
4. Empowered Collaborative Culture of Learning Graphic.

For all stakeholders to work together over time, an empowered learning culture must be nurtured in order to sustain change. Time and time again, principals, school librarians, and teacher leaders will be called upon to renew and reinvigorate the learning community’s commitment to growth.
School librarians can be essential leaders who build and sustain the relationships that cement the foundation of a culture of learners—young and older—who strive to make schools joyful, relevant, challenging, and effective learning environments for all.

Works Cited

American Association of School Librarians. 2018. National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries. Chicago: American Library Association.

Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath. 2007. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. New York: Broadway Books.

Sheninger, Eric C., and Thomas C. Murray. 2017. Learning Transformed: 8 Keys to Designing Tomorrow’s Schools, Today. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

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Maximizing Leadership: Chapter 8

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Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy was published by ALA Editions in June, 2018. This is a preview of Chapter 8.

Chapter 8: Leadership and Advocacy

“Good leaders get people to work for them. Great leaders get people to work for a cause that is greater than any of them—and then for one another in service of that cause” (Pearce 2013, 40).

Leadership and advocacy go hand in hand; both are necessary for achieving future ready learning. Leaders seek to influence the attitudes and behaviors of the members of their team as well as other stakeholders in their endeavors. Trust is the foundation on which these changes are built. School librarians can be coleaders with principals to positively affect school climate and culture. They do so through developing trusting classroom-library instructional partnerships.

“Leadership is about social influence, enlisting the engagement and support of others in achieving a common task” (Haycock 2017, 11).  One common task of school leaders is to ensure continuous improvement in teaching and learning. Working together, school leaders and stakeholders are able to transform traditional pedagogy into future ready education for the benefit of students. This is a cause and an effort that requires the commitment and dedication of a team that includes administrators, educators, students, families, and community.

Advocacy begins when library programs are aligned with the vision, mission, and strategic plan for their schools and districts. School librarians match library programs with the agenda and priorities of library stakeholders. Working from that shared vision, mission, and plan, school librarians codevelop a vital, integrated, and results-oriented school library program.

School librarians have the responsibility to educate stakeholders about the value added by their teaching and leadership. They serve as “centralized” instructional partners who work with all school library stakeholders. This global influence gives librarians opportunities to positively impact learning and teaching throughout the building. School librarians collect and share data and use promotional materials to educate stakeholders about the benefits that result from the learning opportunities that happen through the library program. This is the most effective way to advocate for the program and build a cadre of advocates among library stakeholders.

What you will find in this chapter:
1. The Relationship between Leadership and Advocacy;
2. Public Relations and Advocacy Tools;
3. School Librarians’ Public Relations, Marketing, and Advocacy Checklist;
4. Sample Advocacy Plan.

Through their daily activities of coplanning, coteaching, coassessing student learning, and providing and engaging in professional development, school librarian leaders create advocates as an organic part of their work. Along the way, they nurture relationships with colleagues, families, educational decision-makers and policy-makers at the district and state levels, members of the business community, and voters who are also stakeholders in preK−12 education.

Works Cited

Haycock, Ken. 2017. “Leadership from the Middle: Building Influence for Change.” In The Many Faces of School Library Leadership, 2nd ed., edited by Sharon Coatney and Violet H. Harada, 1–12. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

Pearce, Terry. 2013. Leading Out Loud: A Guide for Engaging Others in Creating the Future, 3rd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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Maximizing Leadership: Chapter 6

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Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy was published by ALA Editions in June, 2018.

Chapter 6: Digital Literacy

“An effective school library plays a critical role in bridging digital and socioeconomic divides” (AASL 2018, 14).

“Digital literacy is the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, understand, evaluate, create, and communicate digital information, an ability that requires both cognitive and technical skills” (American Library Association 2013). As educators with expertise in curating and integrating digital resources and tools into curriculum, school librarians and libraries are perfectly positioned to be leaders and coteachers of digital literacy.

School librarians serve as technology stewards. Stewardship is an activity that requires one to practice responsible planning and management of the resources one is given, or over which one has authority. In school libraries that serve as hubs for resources, effective school librarians curate resources that support standards-based curricula as well as students’ needs for independent learning. Students, families, classroom teachers, and administrators rely on proactive library professionals who plan for, manage, and integrate digital learning tools and experiences into the daily school-based learning lives of students.

Access and equity are core principles of librarianship. With their global view of the learning community, school librarians have an essential role to play as digital literacy leaders who help address gaps in technology access. In schools with plenty, school librarians advocate for a digitally rich learning environment for students and coteach with colleagues to effectively integrate digital resources, devices, and tools. In less privileged schools, librarians will dedicate themselves to seeking funding and advocating for students’ and classroom teachers’ access to the digital resources and tools of our times.

What you will find in this chapter:
1. Strategies for Leading Digital Literacy;
2. Leading Digital Learning Organizations;
3. Future Ready Librarians Framework;
4. Selected Criteria and Possible Evidence for Future Ready Librarians.

The importance of digital literacy for students, particularly for students from less privileged homes, cannot be overestimated. Ensuring equitable access through professional development offerings and instructional partnerships, school librarians serve as digital integration mentors and coteachers alongside their colleagues. Future ready librarians also ensure that students have the knowledge and tools they need to be safe, engaged, and effective digital learners, creators, and citizens. Digital literacy teaching and learning is a leadership opportunity for school librarians

Works Cited

American Association of School Librarians. 2018. National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries. Chicago: American Association of School Librarians.

American Library Association. 2013. Digital Literacy, Libraries, And Public Policy: Report of the Office of Information Technology Policy’s Digital Literacy Task Force. www.districtdispatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/2012_OITP_digilitreport_1_22_13.pdf

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Candidate for AASL President, 2019-2020

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Last Friday, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced the 2018 candidates for AASL President-Elect.

As quoted in the announcement, “I am honored to be invited to run for the position of AASL President-Elect. If elected, I will conscientiously facilitate the work of our professional association and serve with passion and purpose to ensure a leadership role for school librarians and libraries in the literacy ecosystem of today and tomorrow.”

AASL has been my professional home since I started my Master’s degree program way back in 19XX. 😉 I was well schooled in the critical importance of our national organizations ALA and AASL as essential to the effectiveness and success of my own practice of librarianship. Our associations continue to give us a national voice while they support our efforts for continual growth and development at the building and district levels as well.

I am in the process of constructing my campaign wiki. While putting together information for the Bio page, I reflected on some of the most empowered opportunities I have had to serve our national associations. After nearly three decades of involvement, I have served in many capacities and reaped many benefits. These are just a few of the highlights.

•  Serving as an elementary school librarian during the exciting years of the National Library Power Project set my course as a collaborating educator committed to building effective classroom-library instructional partnerships (1993-1997).

•  I had the amazing opportunity to serve on AASL’s @your library® Committee from 2002-2004. Through this experience, I developed an understanding of advocacy and made lifelong librarian colleagues and friends across the country.

•  In 2008-2009, I served as the chair of AASL School Librarian’s Role in Reading Task Force. We created a toolkit and drafted the Position Statement on the School Librarian’s Role in Reading that was adopted by the AASL Board and was included in Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Programs (AASL 2009).

•  I served on the 2009-2010 Pura Belpré Book Award Committee, a year during which our committee had only 36 titles to consider. This experience solidified my commitment to diversity in library collections and in advocating for increasing diversity in children’s and young adult literature publishing.

•  Throughout my career, I’ve had many opportunities to collaborate with outstanding public library children and teen librarians. I am pleased to be a current member of AASL’s Interdivisional School-Public Library Cooperation Committee. Representatives from AASL, ALSC, and YALSA serve on the committee. We have created a soon-to-be-published toolkit that demonstrates and support collaboration among librarians who serve young people.

Clearly, serving on AASL and ALSC committees has been a rich source of professional learning for me.

2018 School Libraries Resolution
As noted in last week’s post, I made this resolution for 2018:

In 2018, I resolve to marshal a sense of urgency to support empowered school librarians and strengthen school librarianship by growing and sharing my passion, experience, knowledge, skills, and service to maximize our leadership and help our profession reach its capacity to transform teaching and learning in our schools.

I actually wrote this resolution before accepting the invitation to stand for the position of AASL President-Elect. If it’s possible to be even more committed to this resolution, I am!

AASL announced all of the candidates who are running for the Executive Board and other association positions in 2018. Please learn about all of the candidates and exercise your right to vote as a member of the only national association for school librarians.

Thank you.