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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Now is the time to prepare for next year and to start, take the time to craft a mission statement.  The mission defines your purpose—what you and your library program do.  It should highlight what makes you unique and vital to the educational community and expressed in words laymen can understand.  You can start with the mission AASL gives in Empower Learners: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs (ALA, 2009).

The mission of the school library media program is to ensure that students and staff are effective users of ideas and information.  The school library media specialist empowers to be critical thinkers, enthusiastic readers, skilled researchers, and ethical users of information (p. 8).

How it is done is included, but that’s not part of a mission statement which needs to be succinct, between 25 and 50 words. AASL’s statement is 32 words beginning with the word “to.” The reason for the brevity is so that it is easily remembered and can be framed and hung on the wall of the library for all to see.

That mission was written six years ago. Today we recognize an important part of what we do is ensure that students are also empowered to be producers of information.  Despite that important addition, the mission statement should be recognized for its use of strong words. Ensure and empower carry much more weight than “support and enrich” or even “foster and nurture” which frequently appear in school library mission statements. Avoid “can” as in “so students can…”  It will be stronger if you go directly to the next word.

You can borrow wording from the AASL statement and add other ideas important to presenting what you do and how it adds value to the school community.  In lower grade levels, love of reading leading to lifetime readers is a prime focus. While it is equally necessary at middle and high school grades, those you want to see why you are vital do not usually consider it as significant as student interaction with information.  You want to promote what you do but do it in such a way that your stakeholders recognize they need your contribution to the educational program.

Play around with the words you think are important.  Search under “school library mission statements” to find examples others have written.   Are there phrases you want to use in your statement?  Make sure you keep it in the present tense.  Review it.  Are the words powerful?  Does it show how you are unique? Once you get it within the length requirements, start memorizing it.  Print it and find a frame for it.  Proudly hang your Mission Statement on your wall for all who come into your library to see it.  And if you want help… send me an email at hilda@slworkshop.net

Next week – Vision Statements.

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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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Obviously, the second model is the better one for transforming student learning, but for most elementary school librarians and many middle school ones, the constraints of a fixed schedule make collaboration challenging.  That doesn’t mean it can’t happen.  You just need to choose your partners in a different way.  A post on the AASLForum electronic discussion list reminded me of how collaboration can be achieved within a fixed schedule day.

Many years ago, I worked in an elementary school modeled on the British infant school. All first and second graders were in one large room with 5 feet high dividers separating six classrooms for five teachers with the last being used for group gatherings.  Each teacher had a class composed of first and second graders, allowing for a more ungraded environment.  Third and fourth graders also had a large room with pairs of team teachers – one for math and science and the other for social studies and language arts. Fifth and sixth graders were “departmentalized” and moved as a homeroom to the different subject areas. With a principal open to innovation, all the teachers had room to experiment.

One of the great concepts we created were school-wide events occurring several times a year.  I along with the art, music, and gym teacher would develop a theme designed to culminate in an evening showcase to which parents were invited. Among the memorable ones was the one entitled “Under the Sea.”  In music, the students learned sea chanties and other relevant songs.  In art they designed murals.  In gym, the teacher created games simulating underwater environments, and in the library I worked with students researching marine animals and plants so their murals and oral presentations were accurate. We had a dress rehearsal by day and a grand presentation in the evening.  The halls were decorated with student murals. In the gym they cavorted in “underwater games.” At various locations in the corridors, students sang songs or talked about marine life.

Many years later, when I moved to the high school of the same school district, those who had been my students would talk to me about those presentations. It was what they remembered most of their elementary days. Where fixed schedules are present, all the special teachers have the common challenge of making their weekly (or less) meeting with students meaningful.  When you collaborate on a project of this scope you can make a huge difference in student learning and spotlight the value of what each of you bring to the educational community.

Those with a flex schedule often have their own difficulties in getting teachers to collaborate.  Instead of focusing on the English, History, Math, and Science, consider making connections with art, music, and computer teachers.  Also look for possibilities working with world language teachers.  If you can develop a large, visible culminating activity, preferably one which the parents can see, you will lay the foundation for many more collaborative projects – including some with the more difficult-to-reach teachers.

Have you had any success working with those teaching special subjects?  Share your projects here or on the School Librarian’s Workshop Facebook group.

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Cognition, Affect, and Learning – click image to see article

Setting high standards and basing lessons on Essential Questions are a big part of what constitutes good teaching, but there is a far more significant element. To truly connect students with learning, you must deal with the role played by emotions. Earlier this week I had a TTK (Things to Know) blog post citing Annie Murphy Paul’s Brilliant Report on Emotions and Learning.  What wasn’t discussed in it was how uniquely positioned school librarians are in addressing the key emotions of curiosity, delight, flow, engagement, confusion, frustration and boredom.

The first three are inherent in inquiry based learning which uses student’s interests as a jumping off point for exploring a topic. Confusion is a natural part of research.  Unlike so much of what goes on in the classroom, research is not linear. It takes unexpected twists and turns and hits into dead ends.  By letting students know it is an expected step in the process, you can convert confusion into curiosity.  And boredom?  Boredom comes from being channeled into what is too difficult, too easy, or far outside a kid’s interest.  The library is the one place students should never be bored.

An oft-repeated phase about the school library is that it should be a welcoming student-centered environment. It is that when we design learning experiences with our students in mind. When students always are treated with respect and not judged, we encourage them to be their best and discover just what that means for them.

Expectation is an emotion.  What students expect when they walk into a classroom – or the library – affects everything that happens after.  If they are anticipating a subject where they will do poorly, they have already set the bar low and won’t rise above it without some hard work by the teacher to change that mind set.  When they expect to be bullied or humiliated, they shut down or become hostile. Neither reaction makes them open to learning.

Which comes down to the most important emotion for learning and life. Those who are in high self-esteem are not disheartened by challenging material.  They embrace it as a step in a self-discovery process.  In general those in high self-esteem are kind and generous with others, improving the environment around them.

Look for ways to build your students’ self-esteem. You don’t do it with empty compliments. It’s not “you did a great job.”  It’s specific.  “You found some great resources, I didn’t know about it.  I am so glad you shared it with us.”  You don’t praise only achievement.  You commend the process.  Saying “I am impressed by how persistent you are, even when you don’t get it at first,” is what helps them build self-esteem.  Working one-on-one with students, you, more than a classroom, teacher create the best environment for lifelong learning.

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Cathy Evans, Dorcas Hand, Robyn Martin, and David Wee wrote this highly informative article for Independent Schools the journal of the National Association of Independent Schools, describing curating as Trailblazing. It’s worth paying attention to their distinction between curating and collecting.  Save their ” Curation Assessment Criteria”  for your own use. It’s succinct and not only will it help focus your curations, it also is available and suggested for you to share with students when they do their own curation project.

The value of having students do these projects is explained in the section on “Curation, Learning, and Citizenship.”   I think you will find this to be an excellent resource.  Check out the article at   http://www.nais.org/Magazines-Newsletters/ISMagazine/Pages/The-Trailblazers.aspx

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You don’t need a 3-D printer. They are great, but the odds are most of you don’t have the budget—although you could write a grant with your local education foundation.  You don’t need a table saw.  (Which would probably be a scary proposition with young elementary kids).  What you do need is a bunch of supplies: scissors, Legos, fabric, yarn, duct tape, origami paper, popsicle sticks, perhaps Arduino, LittleBits, and Minecraft—and whatever else you have on hand or get people to contribute. You also need bins to store everything when not in use.

Makerspace at Detroit Public Library

From a presentation at NYLA, one of many I have seen recently on Makerspaces, given by Rebecca Buerkett, Ana Canino-Fluit, and Gail Brisson, I discovered you can start your program on a shoestring. One had a grant, the others funded the project from their own pockets and the aforesaid donations.  To be specific, they have Maker Clubs rather than Makerspaces.  Kids get to make stuff only at set times rather than having continuous access.  What you need most is a bit of daring, and a willingness to learn as you go. Kids who have a level of expertise in one area will teach others and you.

Why should you commit time and effort to a Maker Club or Makerspace? Unlike a craft activity, kids aren’t following a specific set of directions to create a set product.  They are experimenting, imagining, making mistakes and adjustments to plans, and discovering where their imagination can take them.  They develop resiliency, do out-of the-box thinking, engage in authentic learning, do problem solving, work in collaboration, exhibit leadership, and in the process become lifelong learners.  These are goals for you library program. They are what Common Core is seeking to achieve. Makerspaces are a natural connection to STEM programs and help produce innovators, and producers of new knowledge.  And all the while the kids are having fun.

You do need to publicize your Maker club and which activity is scheduled for an upcoming meeting. Look for teacher volunteers or older students to help out. You want at least one other person with you if possible. Set up rules and guidelines, but have the kids come up with them. How will they deal with conflict? Most likely you will need to show them how to be economical in the use of supplies (don’t cut a square from the middle of a piece of fabric), and to recognize the leftover from their project can be recycled into someone else’s work.

Among the Maker activities to consider are: Garage Band, Robolox, photography, robotics, origami, Minecraft, knitting and/or sewing, and whatever else the kids are interested in.  Ask them for suggestions, and then plunge in.  Have fun.

Click the image to the left to find out more about how the Detroit Public Library created their Makerspace. Do you have a Makerspace or Maker Club in your library?  Let us know know what you have learned and what you do.

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Librarians talk of informational literacy and digital literacy.  Educators and parents are concerned about financial literacy.  With the emphasis on STEM, there is increased reference to numeric or quantitative literacy.

Another important concerns is Transliteracy. It’s defined as “the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks.”  (www.transliteracy.com). In an age of multiple devices and means of connecting with people and sharing information it is certainly a critical skill.

Those dealing with adults also discuss legal literacy and health literacy.  If you have ever tried reading a legal document or dealt with health care policies, the importance of these literacies cannot be denied.  Even college graduates find themselves unable to comprehend all the subtleties of how language is used in those areas.

I recognize the importance of all these literacies and support all that is being done to improve the ability of student and adults to master them.  However, as a member of ALA Committee on Literacy, I am ever mindful of what was once said at a committee meeting, “The house of literacy has many rooms, but the entrance is through text literacy.”

So we return to where we were in the mid-20^th century.  First and foremost, we need to be able to read text.   And the rate of adult illiteracy is shocking.

In the U.S., 14% of adults over 16 read at or below the 5^th grade level, and 29% read at the 8^th grade level. The implications are huge.  Among those with the lowest literacy rate, 49% live below the poverty level. A substantial portion of our prison population is composed of illiterates or low literates. (ProLiteracy)

Although school librarians are highly trained to teach the other literacies mentioned, they also are committed to creating lifelong learners and readers by instilling a love of reading.  The first Common Belief of the AASL Standards for the 21^st-Century Learner is Reading is a window to the world.  It then explains, “Reading is a foundational skill for learning, personal growth, and enjoyment.”

Students are taught to read in class.  For some, the skill is difficult and they are turned off.  This is the route to illiteracy and low literacy.  In the school library, surrounded by books at all levels, guided by a school librarian, adept at connecting a student with just the right book, students discover that reading can be fun.  We need more, not fewer school librarians.  The wealth of our nation depends on it.

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Technology brought us the classic tale of a company unable to see beyond its paradigm when Xerox, the premier copier of the day, foresightedly set up the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) staffed and funded it well, basically asking the “geeks” to create the future.  They did.  They came up bitmap displays, desktop publishing, laser printing, Ethernet, peer-to-peer and client server computers, and a graphic user interface (which Steve Jobs saw in 1979 and brought back to Apple).  Xerox could have dominated computers, but they failed to see the uses for what was being invented. It was living in a paradigm that was coming to an end, but they couldn’t see it.  More recently, Kodak failed to see how digital cameras would affect their market.

It is very hard to see the future from where we stand today.  We only extrapolate from what is and hope we are guessing correctly. Even the aforementioned Steve Jobs, who brought the iPod to the world, had no idea what would spring from it.  There is a huge “i-Industry” not only with Apple products but from those who make things for those products (docking stations, speakers, skins, etc.).  Those looking at the first personal computers couldn’t see what people would really do with it.

Which brings me to predictions.  I love reading them.  They open my mind to possibilities. I just posted on the School Librarian’s Workshop Facebook page, an article entitled “21 Things that Will Become Obsolete in Education in 2020.” The ideas Shelley Blake-Plock puts forth are exciting.  I like thinking classes will become ungraded and based on student interests and that school desks will disappear. I know students will cheer at the thought of AP exams and the SATs vanishing. I believe some of her ideas will happen.  I am sure not all of them will.

Two push-pulls will be at work.  The resistance of the education institutions to change is one.  I am appalled that the individual student desk still exists and too many classrooms are still arranged in rows.  Smartboards are often just fancy blackboards and students create products with tech glitz that have no more substance than the dioramas and posters of the 20^th century.  On the other hand there are the kids who infiltrate the latest tech into schools.  After much resistance, district after district is accepting BYOD (bring your own device).

My question is, how will this all play out?  Can we even pretend to see what the future holds? Yet isn’t there a huge risk if we don’t attempt to envision it?  What is “the next thing” and how will it change everything?  And what are you looking forward to?

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We seem to fluctuate between telling non-educators too much or incorporating too many terms such as “information literacy” and “deeper reading” which border on jargon (if it sounds like it needs quotes around it – it’s probably jargon), making us sound knowledgeable but imparting little information or worse, making our community feel ignorant.  When I explain what 21^st century skills are, I say they can be reduced to three words: Connect, Collaborate, and Create, all of which must be present in a 21^st century lesson. 

“Collaborate” is obvious. Students need to work with each other.  We are in a participatory culture and working alone (or writing a paper for one reader) is not how the world now operates. “Create” is a reminder that students are not supposed to be reproducing what is already known.  Innovation and growth—which is vital to the future of our country—does not come from repeating what has been done before.  We expect students to turn the information they have gathered into something new.  School Library leaders and professors refer to the importance of making meaning and content creation.   It’s a big challenge.

“Connect” is an aspect that can be the most exciting.  On the simplest level, it refers to students connecting with multi-type resources across a range of platforms, known as “transliteracy.”  But on a larger scale, “Connect” has them reaching out beyond the walls of the library and school and, at its best, extending across borders.

In the upcoming August/ September 2014 issue of School Librarian’s Workshop, Shannon McClintock Miller reports on a project with her 3^rd grade students that started with their own interest in Rainbow Loom bracelets. Using a variety of online resources they shared their project, connecting with children in an orphanage in Mangalore, India.  Her young students have learned what it is to be a member of the global community.  That’s 21^st century learning!

Look for ways to have your students reach out and connect with the world.  Libraries are so much larger than their walls.  How are you explaining and showing this to your community?  Do you need support?

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