Tag Archives: instructional leadership

Twitter Chat: Job-Embedded Professional Development

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This fall graduate students in “IS516: School Library Media Center” are participating in bimonthly Twitter chats. The schedule is listed below. The chats will be based on the pull quotes from chapters in Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy (ALA 2018). We invite you to join us for our first chat on Monday, September 9th from 7:00 to 7:30 p.m. Central Time. Chat questions will be posted on this blog on the Wednesday before our Monday chats.

Monday, September 9, 2019: #is516 Twitter Chat: Job-embedded Professional Development

“A team is not a group of people who work together. A team is a group of people who trust each other” (Sinek, Mead, and Docker 2017, 104).

Professional learning embedded in the everyday practice of educators is an effective way to transform teaching and learning. In this model, school librarians can serve as professional learning leaders. They enact this role in a number of ways: through providing formal staff development; by serving as a member or team leader in one or more professional learning communities (PLCs); and through classroom-library collaboration, which involves trusting colleagues in coplanning, coteaching, and coassessing learning outcomes.

Coteaching offers educators the opportunity to hone their craft while teaching “actual students in real time, with the taught curriculum, available resources and tools, and within the supports and constraints of their particular learning environments” (Moreillon 2012, 142). School librarians add value when they co-collect evidence (student learning outcomes data) to demonstrate the effectiveness of their teaching in terms of what is important to colleagues and administrators. These data point the way toward continuous instructional improvement. Coteaching also creates the opportunity for school librarians to co-lead in a culture of adult as well as student learning in their schools.

#is516 Chat Questions
These are the questions that will guide our chat on September 9, 2019 at 7:00 p.m. CT.

Q.1: What does the term “reciprocal mentorship” mean in terms of classroom Ts & #schoollibrarians #collaboration? #IS516

Q.2: What is your experience in coplanning w/Ts? #IS516

Q.3: What’s an example of “engaging curriculum”? #IS516

Q.4: How do #schoollibrarians & administrators work together for change? #IS516

Please respond with A.1, A.2, A.3, A.4 as each question is posted.

Join us and bring your ideas, resources, experience, questions, and dilemmas to our conversation so we can learn with and from you!

Thank you!

Works Cited

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 Harada, 141-156. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited.

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.

 

#IS516 Twitter Chats: Time: 7:00 – 7:30 p.m. Central

Second and Fourth Mondays – Fall 2019

September 9 | Twitter Chat #1
Topic: Chapter 2: Job-embedded Professional Development
Questions posted on Twitter and on my blog (SchoolLibrarianLeadership.com) on: 9/4/19

September 23 | Twitter Chat #2
Topic: Chapter 3: Inquiry Learning
Questions posted on Twitter and on my blog (SchoolLibrarianLeadership.com) on: 9/18/19

October 14 | Twitter Chat #3
Topic: Chapter 6: Digital Learning
Questions posted on Twitter and on my blog (SchoolLibrarianLeadership.com) on: 10/9/19

October 28 | Twitter Chat #4
Topic: Chapter 7: Assessment
Questions posted on Twitter and on my blog (SchoolLibrarianLeadership.com) on: 10/23/19

November 11 | Twitter Chat #5
Topic: Chapter 8: Leadership and Advocacy
Questions posted on Twitter and on my blog (SchoolLibrarianLeadership.com) on: 11/6/19

December 9 | Twitter Chat #6
Topic: Chapter 9: Sustaining a Connections in a Culture of Collaboration
Questions posted on Twitter and on my blog (SchoolLibrarianLeadership.com) on: 12/4/19

Next Steps

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Dear Maximizing School Librarianship Readers and Blog Post Followers,

We/I have come to the conclusion of a ten-month cycle of book study blog posts to support my book Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy (MSLL) (ALA 2018). When I wrote the book, composing posts and podcasts related to each chapter in the book was a commitment I made to myself and to readers. I planned for blog posts by interspersing four pull quotes in each chapter. After the introductory posts, I have based each blog post on a pull quote. The content of the podcasts evolved beyond my own recordings to include interviews with selected school librarian leaders.

This photograph was taken at a California beach in May, 2019. The smaller footprints belong to my grandson who was fifteen months old at the time. The larger footprints belong to his dad, my son-in-law. This image came to me when I was walking with them on the beach and thinking about this final MSLL blog post. I knew I wanted to address “next steps” but it wasn’t until I saw their footprints that I realized how I could so.

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” Lao Tzu

Small First Steps
It has often been said that change agents should start small; that the best strategy to sustain long-term improvements is to take measured steps. When you come to the realization that it is time for you and the library program to move forward in a new direction, you are ready to begin a change process. Aligning your steps with the goals of your administrator, school, or district is the most effective way to make sure that your “library” goals will help others succeed. Remembering the charge to serve others serves school librarians well.

Having a plan helps you chart and measure your progress. Developing your plan with school library stakeholders is a wise choice. As a team, you may take two steps forward and one step back, but if you keep your goals in mind, you will always be able to see your reality in terms of forward progress (see Chapter 9: Figure 9.3: Your Plan and Reality.) When missteps and reversals happen, having a supportive team can give you encouragement and ideas for taking a new step and moving forward again.

Each step you take—with purpose—is one that leads to your goal. Your goal may be related to students’ or classroom teachers’ equitable access to the resources of the library and your expertise. Your goal may be a flexible schedule that offers students opportunities for deeper learning through the library program. Your goal may be increasing access to and the effective use of technology tools for learning and teaching. It may involve informal or formal professional development, or grant writing, or an advocacy campaign. Whatever your goal, each step along the way can get you closer to your desired outcome.

“Anything can be achieved in small, deliberate steps. But there are times you need the courage to take a great leap;
you can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.”
Former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George

Crossing Chasms
Great leaps are possible. These steps require courage; they also require a community of support. Large-scale change in any school should be led or colead with the school principal. Again, aligning “great leaps” with initiatives underway at the site or district level gives “library initiatives” a leg up.

One leap that many elementary librarians have taken involves scheduling. Flexible scheduling allows for school librarians to reach their capacity as leaders, instructional partners, information specialists, and teachers. A flexible schedule based on classroom-library collaboration for instruction makes deeper learning for students possible. It also helps school librarians measure and document their impact on student learning outcomes. Without this evidence, school librarians’ value may not be recognized.

One leap that secondary librarians have taken involves classroom-library collaboration for instruction; it involves coteaching with classroom teachers in more than one subject-area department. Classroom teachers and school librarians plan for learning from an interdisciplinary perspective. “Each disciplinary perspective contributes specific concepts or findings as well as specific modes of thinking to shed light on a particular problem” (Wineburg and Grossman 2000, 27). This type of learning design mirrors they way people work and live outside of school (see also Chapter 5: Figure 5.1: Cross-Discipline and Discipline-Specific Questioning Matrix).

The “size” of your steps forward may be irrelevant. Their impact on teaching and learning depends on the culture and goals of the community you serve. Only you, along with library stakeholders, can decide if a step is a small one or a big one. Plan, take action, reflect, revise, and repeat in order to bring your vision into reality.

Advocacy and the School Librarian Leadership Blog
Each school librarian is the representative of the profession for the students, educators, administrators, families, and community members they serve. In your daily practice, you show others why a state-certified school librarian is an essential member of every school faculty. With your expertise and extensive literacies toolkit, you have the opportunity to fill a niche that would otherwise be lacking to the detriment of students, colleagues, and families.

The blog posts I have authored and the podcasts I have published to support a year-long book study are available and linked from the menu at the top of School Librarian Leadership. com. These resources will be available for future MSLL book readers. In many ways, for me, this feels like the end of an extra long teaching semester.

When I taught at Texas Woman’s University, I often pulled out and posted this quote at the end of each semester. (It is one that I had hanging in our library office when I was a practicing school librarian.)

“True teachers use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own.”
Nikos Kazantzakis

In your role as a school librarian leader, I know you will build bridges/connections for learning with the students, colleagues, and families you serve. I know you will reach out into the wider community of librarians and library stakeholders to move our profession forward. The school librarian profession is in good hands with professionals such as you who are continuously developing their craft, deepening their knowledge, and growing their leadership.

I invite you to use the MSLL book study posts and podcasts in any way that supports your work. I also invite you to continue following this blog. My posts from June 10th on will be aligned with the courses I’m teaching, research, events, and issues related to effective professional school librarian leadership.

Thank you for reading and listening and most of all, for leading.

Work Cited

Wineburg, Sam, and Pam Grossman. Eds. 2000. Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Challenges to Implementation. New York: Teachers College Press.

An Effective Teaching Force

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When marketing the expertise of the school librarian and services of the library program, it is imperative that we find out what our administrators, colleagues, students, families, and community want and need. While stakeholders may have numerous specific needs for resources and tools, there may be one thing everyone agrees upon.

Every school needs an effective teaching force.

An Effective Teaching Force
An effective teaching force contributes positively to school climate and embodies the school culture. Effective educators build positive, supportive relationships with students, colleagues, and families. They create a welcoming environment in their classrooms, libraries, and labs. They spread welcome in the hallways, at student performances, and athletic events. They are committed to creating a climate in which learners and learning can thrive. In such a school, the library is a “hospitable” space for learning, teaching, meeting, and simply hanging out.

Effective educators also have shared values and practices that create and sustain the school culture. Through open and honest communication, educators collaboratively reach, revisit, and revise agreements regarding the core teaching and learning practices based on shared values. They have contributed to and embody the school/school district’s vision, mission, and goals. They are team players who know it takes an entire village to raise joyful (and effective) readers, writers, and thinkers.

Educators Matter
According to the RAND Corporation organization, one of the least-biased research and reporting non-profits in the U.S., teachers matter.

  1. Teachers matter more to student achievement than any other aspect of schooling.
  2. Nonschool (sic) factors do influence student achievement, but they are largely outside a school’s control.
  3. Effective teachers are best identified by their performance, not by their background or experience.
  4. Effective teachers tend to stay effective even when they change schools (RAND).

In short, effective educators help level the playing field for students.

School librarians are about equity of access to the resources students and educators need for success. Equity, however, applies to intellectual as well as physical access. Getting a book or a resource into the hands of a student is an essential first step, but it does not ensure that reading and learning will follow. Students need the tools to make sense of text. They need comprehension strategies, opportunities to discuss their learning with peers and experts, and support in making connections to school-based learning and taking action in the world outside of school. Equity requires vigilance and continual instructional improvement.

Continuous Improvement, On-going Assessment
As the lead learner in a school, principals are deeply invested in and charged with elevating the instructional proficiency of classroom teachers, specialists, and other certified staff, including school librarians. To that end, school librarians can be principals’ partners in providing formal professional development and job-embedded informal PD that results in improved teaching and learning opportunities for students.

A focus on “development” suggests that learning is about change over time. “Viewing learning as a never-ending journey that students and educators undertake together keeps the focus on development (assessments) rather than on a final destination (evaluation)” (Moreillon 2018, 110). While students’ standardized test scores may occupy an overrated top slot in the hierarchy of evaluation, wise educators focus on the daily relationships they build with students; They focus on improving their ability to spark students’ curiosity and help them find their inner motivation to pursue learning. Wise educators focus on their own skill sets in order to improve the school-based learning lives of students. They focus on a continuous cycle of assessment, feedback, and improvement.

School librarians are partners with principals, classroom teachers, and specialist colleagues on a continuous improvement, on-going assessment journey. School librarians can commit to improving their own ability to learn and lead. This is how an effective teaching force is developed and sustained. In fact, that is precisely how school librarians achieve their capacity to influence and improve teaching and learning their school communities.

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

  1. What is your commitment to supporting all of your colleagues in reaching their capacity?
  2. How do you frame your contribution to other educators’ learning (and your own instructional improvement) such that your principal and school community value the role you play in school improvement?

Works Cited

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

RAND Education and Labor. nd. “Teachers Matter: Understanding Teachers’ Impact on Student Achievement.” https://www.rand.org/education-and-labor/projects/measuring-teacher-effectiveness/teachers-matter.html

Continuous Learning, On-Going Assessment

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Learners—of all ages—must “replace, modify, or eliminate established patterns of behavior, beliefs, or knowledge. Learning is not about reaching a specific target and then resting on one’s laurels. Rather, it is about a continuous process of building and tearing down and building up again. Transforming a learning culture requires change with a capital ‘C’” (Moreillon 2018, 19).

As centralized instructional partners, school librarians are perfectly positioned to model continuous learning. Along with administrators and teacher leaders, they can initiate, monitor, gather and analyze data, adjust, and propel any change initiative underway in their schools.

Principals’ and School Librarians’ Shared Roles
While changemaker school librarians can make a modicum of progress working with selected classroom teachers, they cannot achieve schoolwide success without the leadership and support of their principal(s). A school librarian’s relationship and communication with the school principal must be a primary focus if a change process is to succeed. School librarians who seek to open the library for additional hours, move to a flexible schedule, adopt a schoolwide inquiry process, improve school climate, culture, and more, must partner with their administrators.

“Together, they develop a culture of collaboration and continuous learning in their schools. While people have both fixed and growth mindsets in various contexts, principals can lead learning by modeling a continuous openness to growth” (Moreillon 2018, 12). Principals who position themselves a “lead learners” and practice distributed leadership may create the most conducive environment for school librarian leadership.

Principals and school librarians can then work together to nurture and sustain the supportive environment that Peter Senge and his colleagues call “schools that learn.” These schools are “places where everyone, young and old, would continuously develop and grow in each other’s company; they would be incubation sites for continuous change and growth. If we want the world to improve, in other words, then we need schools that learn” (Senge et al. 2012, 4–5).

Continuous Learning = Continuous Improvement
Maximizing School Librarian Leadership (MSLL) is intended to provide educators with instructional and cultural interventions that can “help create new norms that foster experimentation, collaboration, and continuous improvement” (Guskey 2000, x). As professional development, the information provided and strategies suggested in MSLL can serve to validate learning and teaching as currently practiced in readers’ schools.

For progressive school libraries, schools, and districts, MSLL may serve as confirmation that the transformation process currently underway is headed in the most effective direction to improve student learning and educator proficiency. For those readers, the book may also serve as a prompt to stretch themselves a bit further, to take another calculated risk, to gather and analyze additional data on their path to excellence.

For other school libraries, schools, and districts that are not as far along on their path to transformation, MSLL may provide targets, guideposts, or tools for self-assessment to further direct the change process. Using this book to clarify vision and mission or goals and objectives is a worthwhile outcome for a professional book study. Engaging in professional conversations around these topics can strengthen communication and relationships among faculty members. These conversations can provide a stronger foundation on which to build collegiality and common agreements.

Confidence
“School librarian leaders nurture, develop, and sustain relationships with all library stakeholders. They build their confidence by continuously improving their skill sets, including pedagogical strategies and technological innovations. School librarians develop their communication skills in order to listen and respond to the ever-evolving needs of learners—students and educators alike” (Moreillon 2019). Through relationships and communication, school librarians lead with confidence (Everhart and Johnston 2016).

School librarians, in particular, may find the information in MSLL will increase their confidence, their willingness, and their ability to lead. By increasing knowledge and improving skills, school librarians can shore up the necessary confidence to step out of their library-centered comfort zone and expand their influence throughout their school, their district, and beyond.

Schoolwide or districtwide goals will require collaboration with stakeholders and on-going assessment of the change process. School librarians who are armed with information and confidence can enlist their site and district administrators as strategic partners who ensure the central role of the school library program in the academic program of the school. They can ensure that state-certified highly qualified school librarians are leading through library programs across their district and their state. “Collaboration is an indispensable behavior of school librarian leaders who help all library stakeholders reach their capacity. Through leadership and collaboration, school librarians cocreate and colead future ready education” Moreillon 2019).

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

  1. What supports are in place in your school or district that make it possible for educators to engage in continuous learning?
  2. What is your role as a school librarian in promoting continuous learning and gathering and analyzing data for on-going assessment toward school/district outcomes?

Works Cited

Everhart, Nancy, and Melissa P. Johnston. 2016. “A Proposed Theory of School Librarian Leadership: A Meta-Ethnographic Approach.” School Library Research 19.

Guskey, Thomas. 2000. Evaluating Professional Development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

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

Moreillon, Judi. 2019. “Leadership through Collaboration: Memes with Meaning.” School Library Connection Online. https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Home/Display/2193152?topicCenterId=1955261&tab=1

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.

 

Advocate for What Students Need to Succeed

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While it is all educators’ responsibility to advocate for what students need to succeed in their futures, school librarians can use their leadership and instructional partner roles to advocate for authentic, relevant, and challenging curricula. They can colead and advocate for initiatives that result in transforming teaching and learning.

School librarians’ overarching goal is to prepare students for lifelong learning. It could be said that preK-12 educators have always prepared the next generation for their lives after high school. But the speed of technological and other change in today’s society make it more difficult to predict those needs. Education organizations have suggested various skills and competencies for educators to consider as they guide future ready students’ learning. (Competencies are applied skills; all of the standards cited in this post are intended to be applied in authentic learning experiences.)

Among those skills are the Partnership for 21st Century Learning’s 4Cs (communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity), the International Society for Technology in Education’s Student Standards, NextGen Science Standards, National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies, and more including the National Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries (AASL 2018).

In Chapter 8 in Maximizing School Librarian Leadership, I draw connections between leadership and advocacy. Both are essential behaviors of school librarians if we are indeed positioning our work at the forefront of innovation, change, and reform in education.

Leadership
“Leaders maintain an understanding of what the mission and goals of an organization are and how these can be fulfilled” (Riggs 2001). Leaders inspire and influence the thinking and behaviors of others. From the global view provided by the library—the largest classroom in the school—school librarians are stewards of the widest range and variety of resources. Their job is to develop a collection of resources that meet the needs of the learning community.

In their daily work, school librarians connect books and other resources with students in order to help them develop as strategic readers, who enjoy and choose to read for pleasure. Strategic readers use comprehension strategies to think critically, to understand an author’s purpose, separate fact from fiction, news from propaganda. They also ask probing questions, seek credible answers, and develop new knowledge that helps them make sense of the world.

School librarians connect books and other resources to the curriculum by working with classroom teachers and specialists. They help other educators extend student learning beyond the textbook and offer resources on curricular topics at multiple reading proficiency levels to help all students build their reading skills. School librarians advocate for learning experiences that give students voice and choice and set them on the path of lifelong learning.

School librarians are on the constant lookout for resources that will spark students’ curiosity while supporting classroom teachers’ required student learning objectives. In many schools, school librarians are stewards of the most up-to-date technology tools and have expertise in marshaling the power of technology to improve student learning. They have expertise with digital information, including databases. They teach digital citizenship and help students understand the implications of the digital footprint they are creating today and how it may affect their futures.

Advocacy
“Collaborating school librarians have the potential to influence teaching and learning for every classroom teacher and every student in their building. To embrace a leadership role is an opportunity to co-create a collaborative school culture of learning that truly transforms education” (Moreillon 2019). Through coplanning, coteaching, and coassessing student learning alongside classroom teacher colleagues, school librarians have the opportunity to advocate for effective instruction, relevant learning tasks, and meaningful inquiry-based learning experiences that improve student learning outcomes. This work supports administrators’ goals for their schools and their district.

“Advocacy in all its forms seeks to ensure that people, particularly those who are most vulnerable in society, are able to: Have their voice heard on issues that are important to them. Defend and safeguard their rights. Have their views and wishes genuinely considered when decisions are being made about their lives” (SAEP n.d.). When school librarians advocate for future ready students, they are advocating for students’ voices and agency, their rights, and their empowerment to pursue learning that will make a long-term impact on their readiness for college, career, and community life.

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

  1. In your way of thinking, how are leadership and advocacy linked?
  2. Describe how your passion for school librarianship, your role as a school librarian, and the role of the library in future ready learning has led you to advocating for future ready students.

Works Cited

Moreillon, Judi. 2019. “Leadership Requires Collaboration: Memes Have Meaning.” School Library Connection Online: https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Home/Display/2193152?topicCenterId=1955261&tab=1

Riggs, Donald E. 2001. “The Crisis and Opportunities in Library Leadership.” Journal of Library Administration 32 (3/4): 5-17.

seAp.org. “What Is Advocacy?” https://www.seap.org.uk/im-looking-for-help-or-support/what-is-advocacy.html

 

 

 

 

 

Assessing Students’ Dispositions

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Assessing one’s development of future ready dispositions is an important aspect of self-assessment. During the course of inquiry learning, students have multiple opportunities for choice and voice that can lead them to becoming proficient as self-regulating learners. Feedback regarding dispositions is essential because it helps students see their progress and points them in positive directions for improvement.

Dispositions such as confidence, persistence, and self-direction may be more visible to educators than others such as flexibility, openness, and resilience. Students and educators can share joint responsibility for assessing students’ progress with regard to dispositions. Their different perspectives can create opportunities for social and emotional growth for students and greater understanding of students on the part of educators.

Student Self-Assessment
Assessing dispositions directly is a challenging proposition. It may be true that a student’s own perception of her/his progress in developing specific positive dispositions may be the most effective assessment. This will require trust between students and educators and student self-awareness and honesty. (I have found that many students are harder on themselves in self-assessment because they think educators are looking for perfection rather than for progress.)

“Ideally, educators will guide students to notice how they are applying dispositions throughout the inquiry and involve them in self-assessment throughout the process—not just at the end of the unit” (Moreillon 2019, 46). Polling can be used to “take the temperature” of the class regarding their feelings about the topic, task at hand, or progress toward learning targets. Exit tickets, journaling, and reflection logs are some of the most frequently used assessment tools than can help students drill down deeper to find their areas of strength, improvement, and challenge.

Modeling Dispositions
“Collaborating school librarians play a key role in helping students develop these dispositions in authentic contexts. When educators coteach, they model dispositions associated with team work—flexibility and open-mindedness. When they coteach technology-supported learning experiences, educators model on-going digital learning and dispositions, including perseverance and risk-taking. When educators guide students in real-world online learning, they model curiosity and grit” (Moreillon 2018, 95).

It is also important for coteachers to acknowledge when they make missteps in terms of dispositions. They can share their own negotiations during planning and implementing lessons so that students see how adult use various dispositions to work effectively with other people. If they are especially open and trusting, educators can invite students to observe and comment on how educators are demonstrating dispositions during coteaching.

Educator Assessment
If developing dispositions is one goal for students during an inquiry learning process, then assessing dispositions must be part of the process evaluation. Ideally, educators will name the dispositions students may be utilizing during inquiry. Educators will point out students’ developing dispositions and where they might be challenged in terms of social-emotional learning (SEL). This should be done individually and confidentially for individual students. It can also be done when noting a trending disposition for the whole class.

Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) offers an Assessment Guide that “provides several resources for practitioners to select and use measures of student SEL, including guidance on how to select an assessment and use student SEL data, a catalog of SEL assessments equipped with filters and bookmarking, and real-world accounts of how practitioners are using SEL assessments.”

As Christina Torres, an English teacher in Honolulu, Hawaii, wrote: educators “must get content- and skill-based data and socioemotional information to best support our students. Discovering and supporting your students’ needs, allowing students to share their strengths, and asking them about their emotional state shows we care about what they think and how they feel. Data doesn’t have to reduce students to a number, but the way we treat students can” (Torres 2019, 2).

Side note: When classroom teachers and school librarians coteach, it seems natural that they would also engage in shared assessment in terms of the development of dispositions they practiced as they coplanned, coimplemented, and coassessed student learning outcomes and their instructional interventions.

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

  1. What has been students’ and classroom teachers’ responses to assessing students’ dispositions, especially if this strategy is new to them?
  2. How do you self-assess your own dispositions in terms of your growth as an instructional partner or leader?

Works Cited

Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. “CASEL: Educating Hearts. Inspiring Minds.” http://www.casel.org

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

­­­_____. 2019. “Co-Planning and Co-Implementing Assessment and Evaluation Strategies for Inquiry Learning.” Knowledge Quest 47 (3): 40-47.

Torres, Christina. 2019. “Assessment as an Act of Love.” ASCD Education Update 61 (2): 1-2.

Sharing the Power of Assessment with Students

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Sharing the power of assessment with students is a natural segue from the digital learning chapter in Maximizing School Librarian Leadership. Power sharing with students became a central feature of effective instructional practices when technology tools and digital information first entered our classrooms and libraries. Educators literally “handed over the keys” to learning when multiple resources, perspectives, and devices supplanted textbooks as go-to information sources. In this context, educators who could best share power in the classroom were the most effective at technology integration.

Perhaps the same can or will be said about educators sharing the power of assessments with students. If “research shows that less teaching plus more feedback is the key to achieving greater learning” (Wiggins 2012, 16), then making a regular practice of both educators and students assessing students’ progress can also lead to transferrable learning. Students who have the authority to monitor their learning process and progress can apply self-assessment strategies throughout their lives.

Self-regulating Learners
“Students must be given opportunities to self-assess their progress if they are to become self-regulating independent learners” (Moreillon 2019, 42). Self-regulating students know how to focus their attention on classroom activities, ignore distractions, and direct their actions. They also know how and when to apply skills and strategies and marshal their dispositions. Self-regulating learners are more effective at carrying out a task and without external interventions. These behaviors help them succeed in school… and in life.

Ensuring that students have agency is a trending topic in education. Self-regulation is an aspect of agency. “Agency can help motivate students as they develop positive dispositions, such as perseverance and the ability to tolerate ambiguity. Agency also supports students as they personalize, self-regulate, and own their learning, including negotiating unequal access to tools and resources” (Moreillon 2018, 95). As Eric Sheninger and Thomas Murray note: “Our students will enter a world where their ideas—their genius—will only matter if they have the agency to develop and share them. Helping students become their own biggest advocates is key” (2017, 77).

Inquiry Learning and Self-Assessment
Inquiry learning supports students as self-regulating learners by connecting them to their own background knowledge and asking personally meaningful questions. When student take responsibility for assessing, analyzing, and evaluating information to answer questions and using reliable information to take action, they practice and demonstrate their ability as agents of their own learning.

Self-assessing their learning process, solutions, and final products is the next level of self-regulation and agency. Educators guide students in using various self-assessment tools throughout the inquiry process to help learners monitor, track, and evaluate their process and products. When students self-assess their inquiry process, they analyze the information sources, they use during their investigation. One key commitment of school librarians within the AASL Shared Foundation of “Curate” is defined as “making meaning for oneself and others by collecting, organizing, and sharing resources of personal relevance” (AASL, 2018, p. 94).

Educators provide students or create along with students graphic organizers, exit slips, journal prompts, rubrics and other assessment instruments to help students assess their progress. Students can complete these assessments as individuals or in partners or groups depending on the organization of instruction.

Evaluating Solutions and Final Products
Students can use checklists, rubrics, and other assessment tools to evaluate their solutions and final products. Again, students can conduct these self-evaluations as individuals or in teams, and can also provide assessments or evaluations of other students’ work. Student-led conferences in which they share their learning with educators and family members are a way for students to take ownership of their process and final products. Students can also reflect and identify how they will take the next steps in their learning as part of their self-evaluation.

As Rick Stiggins and Jan Chappuis (2012) have noted, assessment should be for learning rather than of learning. Assessment must be a path to improvement for students and for educators. Educators whose ultimate goal is to help students become independent lifelong learners who apply critical thinking and take action in the world will want to guide students in becoming self-regulating learners. They will want to share the power of self-assessment and self-evaluation with students.

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

  1. How do you prepare students to share in assessment?
  2. What has been students’ and classroom teachers’ responses to student self-assessment, especially if this strategy is new to them?

Works Cited

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

_____. 2019. “Co-Planning and Co-Implementing Assessment and Evaluation Strategies for Inquiry Learning.” Knowledge Quest 47 (3): 40-47.

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.

Stiggins, Rick J., and Jan Chappuis. 2012. An Introduction to Student-Involved Assessment for Learning, 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Wiggins, Grant. 2012. “7 Keys to Effective Feedback.” Educational Leadership 70 (1): 11–16.

 

 

Differentiated Digital Professional Development

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There is no doubt in my mind that when classroom teachers, specialists, and school librarians coteach they offer each other reciprocal mentorship; they learn with and from one another. In the context of digital learning, this results in differentiated digital professional development for all educators and improved outcomes for students.

Rose Else-Mitchell, who is currently the Chief Learning Officer at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, conducted a study in 2017 in which she found that 2/3rds of classroom teachers are using technology in instruction but feel they need more support and training (cited in Wolf 2018, 182). When educators are coplanning and coteaching as equal partners, their combined digital teaching and learning expertise enhances experiences and ensures that instructional innovations, including students’ use and mastery of technology resources and tools, are diffused throughout the learning environment.

Research Related to Adult Learning
Andragogy comprises principles of adult learning. As mentioned in the “Professional Development is Key” blog post last September, these principles should be adhered to in formal professional development as well as in informal coteaching/reciprocal mentoring. Adults learners:

  1. are self-directed and take responsibility for their own learning;
  2. have prior experiences that can be a positive or negative influence on learning;
  3. are motivated by an internal need to know;
  4. and have a problem-solving orientation to learning (Knowles 1990).

School librarians are wise to approach collaboration from the perspective of helping a colleague solve her/his instructional challenge. With regard to school librarians’ role as technology mentors, this can come from a place of sharing what we know, learning from what the other educator(s) knows, or taking a risk together to attempt something new in order to engage, motivate, or challenge students.

In my experience as a school librarian educator, I found many graduate students who were learning new technology tools felt supported by taking a risk with a university classmate or building-level colleague. Educators found that identifying resources and tools, troubleshooting tools with students in mind, and providing students with choices and a menu of resource and tool options can be more successful with two or more designer-facilitators of learning.

Exemplary Practice from the Field
Laura Long is the school library media specialist at Highland School of Technology in Gastonia, North Carolina. In her January 10, 2019 Knowledge Quest blog post “The School Library, Makey, Makey, and Learning,” Laura shared an exemplary example.

Laura’s colleague Jamee P. Webb teaches English III (11th grade). This is how Laura describes Jamee, “She is a frequent collaborator with me in the school library, and she is a lifelong learner. It is fun to watch her discover new strategies, apps, and products that she can use with her students.” (This description says as much about Laura who wrote it as it does about Jamee.)

When Jamee earned a grant for “Makey, Makey STEM kits,” Laura, Jamee, and instructional technology facilitator Katherine Leatherman explored the Makey kits with Jamee’s classes. The two-day project culminated with student-created poetry using the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights as background information. (Please read Laura’s entire post.)

Also, on March 6, 2019, school librarian Harry Oslund from William J. Brennan High School in Northside ISD (Texas) and the school’s academic technology instructional support specialist Ryan Fontanella are offering a webinar titled “Using Makerspaces to Build Teacher/Librarian Collaboration” via AASL’s eCollab. I am excited to hear their presentation and learn how they are collaborating to maximize the impact of their school’s makerspace on students’ classroom-based learning. You can sign up here: http://www.ala.org/aasl/ecollab/makerspaces

Embracing Tasks Before Apps Mindset
When I read Laura’s post, I was reminded of an article that was written by Monica Burns (ClassTechTips.com) that appeared last September in the Association for Curriculum and Development’s Education Update. Dr. Burns offered four tips for keeping the focus on tasks rather than on the technology tools themselves. These tips support classroom-library coplanning and coteaching in the context of digital learning.

  1. Review curriculum goals.
  2. Reflect on creation opportunities.
  3. Take stock of student interest.
  4. Find your partner in technology (Burns 2018, 4-5).

Unfortunately, Dr. Burns didn’t mention school librarians as natural partners for classroom teachers when it comes to curating and integrating apps and other technology tools and devices into classroom instruction.

As Laura Long’s experience shows, when classroom teachers, school librarians, and technology instructional coaches pool their expertise and resources exciting, successful, and digitally rich learning experiences happen for students.

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

  1. How do you currently practice technology-focused differentiated professional development with and for your colleagues?
  2. What ideas do you have for improving technology-focused differentiated professional development with and for your colleagues?

Works Cited

Burns, Monica. 2018. “Embracing a Tasks Before Apps Mindset.” ASCD: Education Update: 1, 4-5.

Knowles, Malcolm. 1990. The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species. 4th ed. Houston: Gulf.

Long, Laura. 2019. “The School Library, Makey, Makey, and Learning.” Knowledge Quest Blog. https://knowledgequest.aasl.org/the-school-library-makey-makey-and-learning

Wolf, Maryanne. 2018. Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. New York: Harper.

Digital Learning Dispositions

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In Maximizing School Librarian Leadership, I argue that educators modeling and students practicing dispositions is a key aspect of future ready learning. In our technology-enabled world where answers to straight-forward questions are nearly instantaneous, it is essential that students learn to invest in deeper digital learning. This requires them to learn and practice dispositions such as openness, flexibility, persistence, and more. Another way to refer to these attributes and behaviors is social and emotional learning skills or SELs.

“When schools recognize that emotions drive much of how and what we learn, students and educators will flourish” (Bracket 2018, 14).

Survey of  Students
The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) conducted a national survey of current and recent high school graduates; 1,300 participated. 77% of the survey participants said they were not as prepared socially and emotionally for life after K-12 as they are academically prepared. In short, they weren’t fully college, career, or community ready. School librarians can be leaders on their campuses when SEL curriculum is rolled out. They can also be leaders in highlighting the importance of SEL in schools and districts where this movement has not yet arrived.

“Students who are in schools where the integration of social, emotional and academic development is strong report doing much better academically, getting along better with others, feeling safer, being much better prepared for life, and having higher rates of volunteering than those students who do not attend such schools. Their experiences are borne out by research demonstrating that high-quality social and emotional learning boosts many of the outcomes we already measure – such as attendance, academic achievement, behavior, graduation, college attainment, employment, and participation in community” (DePaoli, Atwell, Bridgeland, and Shriver 2018, 1).

For a brief summary of the survey, see the link below for an EdSurge article by Emily Tate. In her article, Tate quotes Timothy Shriver, CASEL’s board chair: “There has been a long and divisive conversation about whether we should be educating the head or the heart. That either/or conversation needs to be over.”

Digital Dispositions
I agree with Shriver; there should be no question. Educators must attend to the needs of students’ hearts as well as their minds. Noticing the role dispositions play in (inquiry) learning is one way to bridge hearts and minds.

Grit and persistence (discussed in previous blog posts) often come into play during digital learning and in life. (The author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance Angela Duckworth is developing a website called “Character Lab” to provide SEL resources. Check it out!) Other dispositions such as confidence which can result from having choice and voice in choosing and using digital resources and tools, and optimism, which comes with successful learning experiences are other SEL dispositions that educators guide students in reflecting upon as they wrap up inquiry learning experiences.

Edsurge includes the 4Cs (Partnership for 21st Century Skills) as dispositions: communication, collaboration, critical thinking (and problem solving), and creativity (and innovation) as future ready dispositions. Karen Cator, CEO of Digital Promise, participated in an EdSurge on the Air podcast interview: “How Do You Prepare Students for Jobs That Don’t Exist Yet?”  In the interview, Cator, a former director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology, talks about transitioning workforce development to the skills that are “uniquely human.” She suggests coteaching and coaching for classrooms teachers in order to learn to facilitate new kinds of learning experiences. She notes that inclusive innovation means problem solving with the people who are affected by the solutions to these challenges; for educators this means innovating along with students. She also notes that educators have a responsibility to make sure all educators and students can benefit from innovations in teaching and learning.

Executive Functions
Some dispositions are also known as “executive functions.” These include self-awareness, self-control, self-direction, good study habits, and more. When students take the responsibility for self-monitoring inquiry learning, educators can help learners understand that they are practicing dispositions that will be useful when they enter the workforce, enter higher education, or raise a family. Educators can help students design strategies for increasing their success in developing executive functions such as creating learning plans, learning logs, checklists, and other tools. Inquiry learning is an ideal context for practicing these dispositions.

Lived Experiences
Educating the whole student means attending to the heart as well as the mind. Planning a relevant curriculum means that school-based learning connects to students’ outside-of-school lives. “Learning happens best when the full, often complicated nature of our lived experiences are recognized celebrated, and serve as the basis upon which we experience school” (DePaoli, Atwell, Bridgeland, and Shriver 2018, vi).

Through coplanning and curation, school librarians can ensure that empowered students are prepared for learning and life with SEL experiences. They can ensure that students are given opportunities to tap into their imaginations and curiosity and are encouraged to take the initiative as knowledge creators who share their learning with personally meaningful, authentic audiences. Working together classroom teachers, specialists, and school librarians codesign and coimplement digitally powered instruction that includes SEL and leads to improved student learning outcomes as well as increased student engagement and motivation.

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

  1. Which dispositions do you believe are most closely tied to and practiced during digital learning experiences?
  2. How do you assess students’ development of digital learning dispositions?

Works Cited

Bracket, Marc A. 2018. “The Emotional Intelligence We Owe Students and Educators.” Educational Leadership 75 (2): 13-18.

DePaoli, Jennifer L., Matthew N. Atwell, John M. Bridgeland, and Timothy P. Shriver. 2018. “Perspectives of Youth on High School Social and Emotional Learning.” CASEL. https://casel.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Respected.pdf

Tate, Emily. 2018. “Students Say Poor Social and Emotional Skills Are Leaving Them Unprepared.”  EdSurge Blog. https://tinyurl.com/edsurgetate18

Digital Learning Instructional Partnerships

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Podcast Episode 6: Digital Learning Interview with Amy Soma and Louis Lauer

Initiating, developing, and sustaining instructional partnerships for digital learning is a win-win-win proposition for future ready learning. School librarians can be leaders in developing shared digital learning values, vocabulary, instructional practices, and expectations.

Collaborating educators have knowledge of students’ home and school access to digital resources and technology tools. This may be particularly important for school librarians who are well-aware of students’ school-based access but may lack knowledge of students’ home and community access. However, access alone is not enough to ensure that students are able to maximize the promised benefits digital information, devices, and tools.

In a 2016 survey, Victoria Rideout and Vikki Katz found that “the quality of families’ Internet connections, and the kinds and capabilities of devices they can access, have considerable consequences for parents and children” (7). Through collaboration, educators must deepen their knowledge and understanding of students’ opportunities to learn digitally. They must create a school- and community-based context in which digital learning can achieve its promise.

Shared Values
While access to technology resources is a prerequisite for digital learning, shared values are just as important. Educators who have similar teaching experiences working with students in their neighborhood schools are perfectly positioned to think, plan, and teach together to meet students’ needs. During collaborative planning, astute school librarians will be mindful of how their colleagues’ values and their own align and when those values are misaligned. During the coplanning process, collaborators may nudge each other to expand students’ choice and voice when it comes to digital tools.

When educators read and share research and practitioner articles focused on technology tools integration, they can collectively strategize the most effective approaches to engaging students in digital learning. Wrestling with questions such as the ones that follow posed by Dr. Maryanne Wolf can lead instructional partners or whole school teaching teams to think and rethink how to successfully frame digital learning.

“Will the early-developing cognitive components of the reading circuit be altered by digital media before, while, and after children learn to read? In particular, what will happen to the development of their attention, memory, and background knowledge—processes known to be affected in adults by multitasking, rapidity, and distraction?” (Wolf 2018, 107).

“What are the specific developmental relationships among continuous partial attention, working memory, and the formation and the deployment of deep-reading processes in children?” (Wolf 2018, 117).

Shared Vocabulary
When educators have shared vocabulary for instruction in any content area or for use in any process, such as inquiry learning, students benefit. The glossary in Maximizing School Librarian Leadership is an important aspect of the book. While all readers may not agree 100% with my definitions, they offer a starting place for discussion and clarification.

The International Literacy Association (ILA) offers an online literacy glossary. “New literacies” is one important term related to digital learning that educators may discuss and tweak.

New literacies. A term used to signal a shift from literacy to literacies, especially in relation to how people view texts as being situated in different contexts that in turn support different kinds of reading and writing. New, not in the sense of a replacement metaphor, but new in the sense that social, economic, cultural, intellectual, and institutional changes are continually at work. This term is preferred over 21st-century literacies. (See also 21st-century literacy(ies)) [Rev., 10/2018]

Collaborating for digital learning does require an understanding of how students view, read, learn with, and write digital texts.  For me, ILA’s definition is especially useful because it notes the term “new” relates to  contexts for literacy learning rather than a replacement for traditional literacies.

Shared Contexts
Students and adults today have become habituated to ever faster access to information and multitasking. We also communicate more frequently in briefer units of thought; Twitter and email are examples. “90% of youth say they are multitasking when they are reading online; only 1% multitask when reading in print” (Wolf 2018, 114).

Faster access to information does not necessarily result in faster knowledge acquisition. Modeling slower and deeper engagement with texts helps students see the benefits of taking time. In addition, relevant learning experiences can help students remain engaged, develop intrinsic motivation, and persist when learning is challenging. With two or more coteachers monitoring student learning, educators can more easily identify students who have lost their momentum or lost their way and need guidance to get back on track.

Instructional Practices
What school librarians have traditionally termed information literacy are what Dr. Wolf calls “pragmatic tools” for online reading. School librarians are adept and experienced at teaching students how to select and use search engines and databases. We help students be deliberate when choosing search terms and evaluating search results. We model and give them repeated opportunities to practice determining perspective and bias and to dig deep in order to recognize misinformation, propaganda, and lies. Taking these strategies to media sources, further expands students’ ability to be astute users of data, ideas, and information.

Separating truth from fiction takes time for both youth and adults. Applying information and media literacy strategies and approaching texts with alternately open and skeptical minds will require practice. The International Society for Technology in Education has published a number of resources to support school librarians in teaching information/media literacy, most recently Fact versus Fiction: Teaching Thinking Skills in the Age of Fake News (LaGarde and Hudgins 2018).

The Challenge
School librarians must focus on access first and address the gaps. The future ready librarian also “invests strategically in digital resources,” “cultivates community partnerships,” and “leads beyond the library” (Future Ready Librarians).  School librarians can take a leadership role in writing grants to obtain funding for technologies that address equity of access. Building digital age capacity through forming partnerships with public librarians and other community-based organizations is important in order to provide digital networks that are essential to students’ success. School librarians must join with others in advocating for students’ access to tools and devices in their homes and communities as well as in their schools.

Through leadership, we can help our schools develop shared values, vocabulary, instructional practices, and expectations for student learning with digital information and tools in order to address this challenge: “technology increasingly provides easy access to answers, but if we focus only on the answers and not on the thinking, questioning, and solving, we deny students powerful learning experiences. Perhaps even more significant, we fail to develop the new literacies that will empower them to solve complex problems and be lifelong learners” (Martin 2018, 22).

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

  1. How would you describe the technology environment, including equity of access, in your school, district, or community?
  2. In what kinds of conversations have you engaged with colleagues related to shared values, practices, and challenges with technology tools use and integration?

Works Cited

Future Ready Librarians Framework: Empowering Leadership for School Librarians through Innovative Professional Practice. https://tinyurl.com/frlflyer

LaGarde, Jennifer, and Darren Hudgins. 2018. Fact versus Fiction: Teaching Thinking Skills in the Age of Fake News. Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.

Martin, Katie. 2018. “Learning in a Changing World: What It Means to be a Literacy Learning—and Teacher—in the 21st Century.” Literacy Today 36 (3): 21-23.

Rideout, Victoria, and Vikki S. Katz. 2016. “Opportunity for All? Technology and Learning in Lower-Income Families.” Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. ERIC ED574416.

Wolf, Maryanne. 2018. Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. New York: Harper.