Unfortunately that tendency can cause people to tune us out when we are discussing the importance of the school library program.  Our listener’s eyes glaze over and they furtively look for an escape, desperate to end the flow of information.  OK—that may be hyperbole.  It isn’t quite that bad, but our core message gets lost in flood of words we spill forth.

To make your point, start creating “elevator talks”. Many of you have heard about them and possibly how to craft them.  It began, as so much does, in the business world where the idea was to sell yourself as a job candidate in one minute—the time it takes an elevator to get from the lobby to an upper floor.

Every day you meet people, whether they are in the supermarket, the mall, or guests in your library. While it’s not always appropriate to launch into an elevator talk about the value of the library program while at the checkout counter, sometimes you can perceive an opening.  When you do, you should be ready.

The basic components of an elevator talk are: a bold, attention-grabbing statement, a corroborating follow up (sometimes from the research, but not necessarily), a strong conclusion that may suggest where the listener can verify what you have said.  For example, you might open with “because of the extreme cuts to school library programs our kids are graduating high school lacking the skills to be successful in college and the global economy.”  Your follow-up can refer to the many research studies connecting quality library programs with student learning and scores on high stakes test.  Or you can explain while students are digital natives, studies have shown they are woefully incapable of conducting academic level research and distinguishing between facts and misinformation online.

If you are working in a good library program, you can close by inviting the person to see your library in action or refer them to your website if you show students projects as a result of their work in the library.  When you don’t have that option, direct them to someplace they can learn more such as ilovelibraries.org. You can ask their opinion about libraries or encourage them to support school and public libraries at the ballot box.  Just keep it brief.   Have different elevator talks for casual meetings, talking with parents or speaking with a board member.  In the last case, be careful.  You don’t want to be seen as taking advantage of a chance meeting or doing so while the board member is accompanied by the principal.

Recognize you need to tweak your talk depending on your audience.  You speak differently with people you know and those you don’t.  A parent’s interest will be different from a business owner’s. And you don’t want to sound rehearsed or like you’re giving a prepared speech.

Once you’ve “mastered” brevity, use it in your communication with administrators.  Too often librarians send long emails (always a bad idea) or attach memos to them running well over a page.  You try to explain all your reasoning and provide background information for your request.  Invariably your principal tunes you out.

Get to the point quickly.  Do you want to have an author visit?  Say so immediately. Don’t lead with justification and why it will promote reading.  State your core message.  Add one or two supporting statements, and end with saying you will set up an appointment to review details and answer any questions.

By using elevator talks as a model, your communication will improve and your message will be heard – and remembered.

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Yes… another keep calm meme!

Most of you deal with SGOs (Student Growth Outcomes) or SLOs (Student Learning Outcomes) as a way to measure your effectiveness. These are specific performance measures relating to how you do your job.  By their nature, they are about one or two specific areas usually focused on your instructional role.  Your success as a school librarian depends on a far broader scale.  As a model for lifelong learning, make regular self-assessment a habit and discover how it will improve how you are perceived in the educational community.

The fourth strand of the AASL Standards for the 21^st-Century Learner is Self-Assessment. The indicators for the fourth standard, “Pursue personal and aesthetic growth” provide guidelines for you to cultivate your own ability to self-assess. Consider the following:

• 4.4.2 Recognize the limits of own personal knowledge.
• 4.4.3 Recognize how to focus efforts in personal learning.
• 4.45 Develop personal criteria for gauging how effectively own ideas are expressed.
• 4.4.6 Evaluate own ability to select resources that are engaging and appropriate for personal interests and needs.

These indicators are excellent for all areas of your life but are particularly apt for assessing where you are in promoting your program, how you are viewed by colleagues and administrators, and in determining where you need to go next.  For example, look at 4.4.2. How up-to-date are your tech skills?  Do you need to improve them? (See 4.4.3).  Expand the concept of personal knowledge to include the skill sets you need to be a leader.  I have written many blog posts about leadership. Which of the qualities come naturally to you? Which do you need to develop?  How can you do that?

One important element in leadership is communication which is addressed in 4.4.5.  Assessing your Emotional Intelligence is key to improving your skill in this area.  I will go further into this topic next week, but for now think about whether you are good at perceiving the emotions of others.  How good are you at managing your own emotions?  You will probably be stronger in some areas of Emotional Intelligence than others, and once you have fully assessed your strengths and weaknesses you can begin to determine how to become more attuned to those around you and communicate more effectively.

You all want to be valued by the educational community.  Some of you are, but others feel their colleagues are unaware of the scope of what they do.  You have the power to change that.

I recently learned of a school librarian who is doing a very good job, but she doesn’t view herself as a leader.  If she self-assessed what she does to have a successful program, she would be more aware of her contributions to the school and see how what she brings is the first step to being a leader.  In other words, she is already showing leadership but because she is unaware of it she has not communicated the value of her program to others.

If you are intimidated by the idea of being a leader, you tend to overlook what you already are doing.  Don’t think you need to make a giant leap into leadership.  You gain confidence and improve you skills by taking small steps.  The first is to become self-aware.  The AASL Standards for the 21^st-Century Learner is not just for students. It is for all learners – and you, too, are a learner.  Start self-assessing.

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While organizations, corporations, and sometimes school districts bring together key members and a facilitator for one or more days to develop their strategic plan, you can do one on your own, although if you can get others to join you it’s likely to be even better.  The reason why strategic planning is considered important is that you set a direction for the next three years, understanding where, why, and how to concentrate your efforts.  Adjustments are made as you go along, and at the end of each year you can see how close you get to attaining your goals.

Speaking of goals—they are the first thing you need to write now that you have your Mission and Vision.  What are two or three goals you would like to achieve over the next three years?  Perhaps you want to develop stronger collaborations with teachers.  Or maybe, you want to increase your student’s recreational reading. These goals are yours.  They should further your Mission and/or Vision, and they should take time to accomplish.

Once you have your goals set, you are ready to determine how to realize them one year at a time.  For each goal, determine one or more Action Plans.  For example, if you want to develop stronger collaborations with teachers you might have an action plan to connect with three of them on an inquiry-based project, or zero in on a specific department or grade level.  Choose carefully.  Which are most likely to be open to your approach.  If you want to increase recreational reading, what program would best fit your school to get interest started?  One school, one book?  Battle of the Books?  A skyped author visit?

How will you accomplish each of your Action Plans?  Set up a spread sheet with your Mission and Vision on top, and then the first goal.  Identify the Action Plan(s) for the goal, and list who will be involved.  Obviously you would, but who else?  Which teachers?  Will you need something from an administrator or the tech department? When will each piece begin and end?

Most important of all is a column for assessment.  How will you evaluate each of the pieces?  Note what worked and what didn’t.  Perhaps a teacher you planned to work with had to leave mid-year.  Things beyond your control always come up.  Also you may have not factored in something important.  Don’t despair.  It’s all a learning experience.  Congratulate yourself on the parts you got right.  Even if you have only achieved one small step forward, at least you were able to move your program in a direction you set.

Now you are ready for year two of your Strategic Plan.  Your goals stay the same, but you need new Action Plans.  Based on how your first year went, you have a better idea of what is possible. By the end of year three, your program will have moved forward appreciably, and you will have had a sense of accomplishment as each year draws to a close.

Get started over the summer in developing your Strategic Plan.  Schedule a visit with your principal or supervisor—they are much more accessible in summer—and share your plan. You might even get an early buy-in. v

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The presentation I gave at NYLA/SSL draws heavily from the business world.  I often said to people, while I am a school librarian, I am also in sales.  I sold my program every day to everyone who came into my library whether it was a student, teacher, or someone picking up a piece of equipment going out for repair. I am not saying we can or should run our libraries like a business.  We are not in it for a profit, and we are limited in bringing in new “customers.” But we can adapt many sales principles to sell our program to our various customers and stakeholders.

Someone I worked with had sales training and she noted how important it is to always remember no one wants to be sold—but everyone wants to buy.  What she meant was, we resist any sales pressure, which is one more reason we don’t get anywhere when we lead with research findings showing the value of school libraries and librarians.  It’s obvious to whomever we are speaking that we are “selling” our program.

The idea is to make the program something they want to have.  This is where marketing comes in. Marketing identifies a problem the customer has and shows how your product (your program) can solve it. You can see it easily with your students.  You introduce a research project and the students’ problem is find relevant, accurate information in the most efficient way, know how to organize it, and use the finding to create something of value.  If you are doing your job, they know you are the best person to help them get on track and stay there even when research gets messy.  Look at the image to the right – can you see how these words apply to your program and getting it noticed? 

Apply the same approach to your administrators.  What problems do they have that your program can solve or make easier?  How can you demonstrate that? Once you begin to think in these terms, you can tackle a bigger challenge—figuring out what problems board members have and your ability to help them.  What about parents?  Parents of elementary students have different wants and issues than parents of high school students.  What can you do to assist them?

The first step is to alter your mind set.  It used to seem as though everyone took for granted that what we did was important and valuable. But in reality, people were just accepting it because it was there. Once money became an issue and everything was on the table, if the library program was not of high value to the stakeholders with power, it was cut or eliminated.  It’s time to show them, your program is one they definitely want to buy.  Remember – you’re indispensable.

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What does this mean? Leadership is not an option; it’s a job requirement.

By being a leader you prove you are essential—and indispensable.  Those of you who read this blog along with the School Librarian’s Workshop tend to be leaders.  In order make the most lasting impact, you need all the librarians in your district to be leaders.  One single pro-active librarian surrounded by those passively doing their job is not enough.  I urge you to reach out to these librarians.  Learn what’s holding them back. Provide encouragement, advice, and support.  A month ago I blogged about mentoring.  Offer to be a mentor.

Believe it or not, I wasn’t a leader when I began my career, but I soon learned and saw the importance of continuing to develop as a leader.

In 1973, I became the elementary librarian in a new school modeled on the British infant school concept. Grades 1 and 2 were together as were 3 and 4, and 5 and 6.  Teachers at each double grade level worked in large rooms with dividers separating them from the others.  They planned their units together.  This highly collaborative model, overseen by a principal who was open to new ideas, led me to finding different ways for students to learn, mostly on their own and guided by me and their teachers.  My role became vital for the success of what happened in the classroom.

Energized by what was happening, I began taking on new challenges.  I became an active member—rather than just a dues-paying member- of my state association and then AASL.  Although the term didn’t exist, I developed an extensive PLN.  When the time came to automate my library, I was an early adapter and I knew qualified librarians in other states who guided me through the process and made me look good. I took on more leadership roles in my state association and wrote a book.  My confidence kept growing and my ability to explain the importance of librarians and what we do grew with every experience.

Assure those who have not taken the plunge into leadership, that all they need to do is to take one small step. Focus at first on what is easy and natural to you.  Go to leadership institutes if your state association offers them.  Read what others are doing and try doing it on a smaller scale if necessary. Anyone can become a leader. All that is necessary is the will, and all of us must be leaders if our profession is to thrive.

Who among your colleagues needs to hear this?  How can you help?

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When the recession hit in 2008, many businesses panicked.  They tried to minimize all expenses and for the most part circled the wagons hoping to ride out the crisis.  Most of those who took that approach failed. The more successful looked around and identified what made them or their product unique.  They looked to see who besides their current customers could benefit from it and what changes in marketing would be needed to attract these potential customers.

If your library looks the way it did in the 1990’s with the addition of more computers and a Smartboard, you have not changed.  Having a website and adding e-books doesn’t make you a 21^st century librarian. And certainly it isn’t having a quiet library with kids polishing their Dewey Decimal skills. 

Have you taken stock of what makes you unique? At the end of February, I blogged on how librarians transform student learning.  That’s about change. Do you do those things?  Have you let your administrators know?  How?  Emailing memos and reports is not 21^st century.  Videoing students exhibiting these transformative behaviors and sending those out is 21^st century.

Is your library a place where students find things or is it one in which they create things?  Do you provide opportunities for them to go beyond your walls?  Across the globe? Who are you following on Twitter?  What’s the best idea you got from these outstanding school librarians—and have you adapted it for your library program? 

What do you know about Learning Commons?  Find out how other librarians have transformed their facility, often on a shoestring budget.  Share with your administrator the excitement of the possibilities a Learning Commons creates.

Life is about change.  You are either changing or you are dying.  We have lost too many libraries and librarians.  If you haven’t done so, decide it’s time for a change, and if you need help… I, and many other librarians, are here for you. Reach out!

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Nearly a year ago (January 6, 2014) I blogged on

 Too often we present a lesson because it’s one we have always taught.  We might tweak the way we do it with new apps or web resources to capture students’ interest in either exploring the topic or in sharing their results.  However, we have not asked ourselves the fundamental question of why we are teaching it.  What benefit does it give students to learn it?

 Those two questions are at the core of what Essential Questions are (also called Guiding Questions in some locations).  Every lesson plan should have one or more Essential Questions. These shape how the plan is presented and what students are expected to learn, remembering, of  course, that you cannot guarantee what answers they will have for some Essential Questions, for often these vary from person to person.

 In School Librarian’s Workshop, the “Research to Go,” “Teaching Together,” and “Information Literacy Units” all include Essential Questions. You can add to them or delete one or two depending on the grade level involved or the teacher with whom you are working. If you look over these learning experiences you can see the connection between the Essential Question and what students are to do.

 I have had some colleagues ask for help in writing Essential Questions, and I admit it takes thinking.  There are two types of Essential Questions.  One type deals with concepts which are core to the discipline but not necessarily obvious to those not in it.  The other looks at a broader ideas designed to open minds to the real-world implications of what they are studying.  For the first type, you do know what answers to expect.  The second can be wide open.

 Suppose your elementary students were having difficulty locating books on the shelf.  In the past you would be teaching the Dewey Decimal System and have as an objective that students would be able to differentiate between major categories and be able to find a given book.  An Essential Question is “How do libraries arrange material to help users find what they need?”  The answer is by subject. In your library and the public library it is most likely by Dewey.  In genre-fied library it is alphabetically by subject.  In colleges and universities it is by the Library of Congress Classification.  The concept is the same no matter which system is in use.  You use the Essential Question to address the key idea.  Once there, you can ask for the larger implication—if the book you are seeking is not on the shelf, how can you find the information you want in print? And that leads to realizing all books with same classification are on the same topic.

 It takes time at first to write Essential Questions.  Even now, I spend a great deal of thought analyzing why a topic is worth the time and effort for students to learn.  Read School Librarian’s Workshop to build your own understanding.  Eventually you need to teach students to craft them as the core of the research papers in place of the old thesis statements. How do you craft your Essential Questions?  What concerns do you have around this process?

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The bottom line is in order to be relevant in todays’ world, our resources must always be accessible, and we as librarians are responsible for making that happen. Students and faculty should be able to access your online catalog, databases, and e-reference from whatever is their preferred device. You are always “open” when you are involved in online collaboration with teachers via Google Drive, participate in blended learning with stations for making audio and/or video presentions, Your website and the content you put on it is still another way you are available 24/7. 

But all this won’t make you an intrinsic part of the 21^st century learning landscape unless you recognize the importance of being a leader in your building.  According to Ann Martin and Kathleen Roberts you need to be able to self-assess, manage people and technology, develop leadership dispositions (attitudes, behaviors, habits of mind, — see the Disposition strand in the AASL Standards for the 21^st-Century Learner for examples), communicate effectively (across all types of platforms), and accept responsibility.

Communication is a huge piece of being Anywhere/Anytime. According to keynoter David Warlick, “every 5 seconds there are 417 tweets, 50 new Facebook members, and 120,370 Google searches.”  YouTube is the second largest website and the #2 search engine. Outside the classroom, our students are constantly learning by asking questions and exchanging knowledge and skills.  They learn complex games without instructions by asking questions and learn to success by getting it wrong.  We need to translate this quest for knowledge and the acceptance of “failure” as part of the process into what happens within the library and classroom.

I urge you to check #aasl14 for the conversations that occurred and some of the great links included, one of them being a 15 minute YouTube video covering 15 of the AASL’s Best Websites for Teaching and Learning and Best Apps for Teaching and Learning.  The Genius Hour was also mentioned by several participants.

Some questions we were asked to consider: How can I make this learning environment talk back to the learner?  How can it require learners to exchange knowledge?  How can I add value for the learner?  And some final words from David Warlick as to what our business is,”…it is not just what you you can be trained to achieve, but it’s what you can resourcefully accomplish, and “It is not a ‘Race to the Top’ but it is a joyful exploring, discovering, and inventing The Future!”

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