It does.  You have all the elements needed to be a leader but must accept the role and recognize how you are showing it in order to fully take on that challenge.  You self-perception affects how others see you.

To get past having to assume the somewhat daunting title of leader, start with Manager. Managing is one aspect of leadership and you are likely to feel more comfortable in developing and displaying that skill set first. Managing has to do with working with groups, building consensus, and working toward a common goal.

If you have volunteers, you definitely want to manage them.  While they may initially come to see their child, they will stick around and do a better job if they feel valued and know their time produces worthwhile results.  Share your Mission Statement (you should have one) with them and explain how their work contributes to it.  Acknowledge them on your website.  Where possible give them jobs to match their talents.  They can do displays, help with photos or videos of students in action, or even take on a section of the library collection tied to their personal interest.

Building relationships with teachers requires managing ability. All of them need to know you are there to work with them and help them achieve their objectives. Common Core gives you an easy unifying goal, but you can also focus on a smaller scale such as ensuring students develop Enduring Understandings as a learning out of a unit.

Serving on building or district committees is another opportunity for managing, even if you aren’t chairing it.  Using your Emotional Intelligence (see the blog from July 13), you can ease any tensions, help build consensus, and share your expertise without bringing any ego to the table. You probably would have done all these things but, being aware of what a manager does reminds you of this role you have in the educational community and makes it easier for you to recognize you are a leader.

I don’t want to suggest that Managing is the same as Leading.  It’s just easier to take on the title of Leader once you have accepted you are a Manager.  Leaders make decisions, take risks, and propose a vision for the future. When others develop respect for you as a manager, it simplifies the transition to full leader.

Building confidence as a manger helps ready you to take risks such as proposing a new program.  You have support from faculty members who trust you and have seen your expertise in action.  The administration knows you are a team player has confidence in your ability to get the job done.  Now you can create the exciting vision of where you want your library program to go, have a plan for getting it there, and know many are ready to help you achieve it.

Baby steps are all you need to do to get started.  Just put one foot in front of the other.  Trust and believe in yourself.

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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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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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For the past two weeks I have blogged about why you need to focus on emotions when you want to reach people and have them recognize the value of the school library program.  Go back to your childhood “show and tell” experiences and recall how effective you were when you communicate emotionally.  Some of the same principles will help you as you craft the best way to deliver your message to key stakeholders.

Buffy Hamilton

Many of you blog, and if you don’t you should consider it. Your blog is a vehicle for sharing the value of your program in a meaningful way.  Feature what students are doing in the library.  Include some individual explorations along with class projects. My favorite blog is Buffy Hamilton’s Unquiet Librarian. (I recommend you subscribe to it for her great ideas.) She often shows the process of how students are learning and enjoying their discoveries over several weeks.

I particularly liked her post on Markerboard Surfaces, Collaborative Conversations, Academic Literacies, and Libraries. The many pictures addressed two areas that resonate with administrators and boards of education: students engaged in active learning and how a new purchase is making an impact (money well-spent). In other posts students are interviewed and talk about their learning experiences.  The visuals are what is compelling.  Even if stakeholders don’t take time to read the post, they will see students in action and watch a video of them talking.

If you are not ready to take on the task of writing a blog on a regular basis, consider how you sent reports to your supervisor/administrator.  It’s imperative to keep them informed about what is happening in the library or you will be another librarian who says, “My principal doesn’t know what I do.”  Part of your job is to ensure your principal is aware of what you do. Which is another way of saying s/he knows how valuable you are.

Most of you don’t have time for monthly reports unless they are required, but you should at least send out a quarterly one. The format for the report is critical.  A text-based report listing what was accomplished, the number of classes and departments using the facility and books circulated and databases are worthwhile data but it won’t be retained without that emotional content.

 Students and visuals give you that content.  Deborah Gottsleben, a New Jersey librarian I know well, sends her reports using a variety of web resources.  She has done them with Animoto and Vimeo choosing a different method each time.  She reminded me she has also used Issu and most recently Piktochart to create an infographic for the report.

To get your message out and have stakeholders “buy” into the library program, lead with emotion. Students pack the emotional punch and are the vehicle for carrying the data in a meaningful way.

So one more lesson from kindergarten.  Learn once again to Show and Tell.

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The business writers focus on this aspect of the Pareto Principle, arguing it is important to focus 80% of your time on the 20% of your customers who are responsible for 80% of sales.  That doesn’t translate into the school librarian’s world.  You need to maintain continued contact with your core 20% but you can never minimize the other 80%.  Their students need your services and expertise, so you must keep trying to get them to connect more with your library program.

The Pareto principal can help out in another way. It turns out that 80% of our decisions are based on emotions and 20% are based on logic—and then we use logic to assign a reason to our emotional decision.  This is true from how we vote to which car we decide to buy. So the teachers who are not making use of your services can logically say they have too much to cover in the curriculum to “take time out” for a library project, but an emotional reaction is underneath it all.

Your challenge is to figure out what is at the root of their emotional antipathy so you can use emotions (not logic) to change their perspective. In some cases teachers are concerned about their lack of tech skills and knowledge.  Perhaps the concern is you will judge how they teach or that their class will not behave well in the library.  Sometimes it is more basic.  They don’t know you well, or there is something about what you project that turns them off.

If tech skills are the issue, find a way to bring the teacher in to show some new program (offer coffee and a snack).  Suggest you can teach to his or her class in conjunction with a class unit and offer to give a special “tutorial” to the teacher and the two of you can report on it to supervising administrator. If you suspect worry about behavior is the issue, discuss how you take responsibility for managing group work in the library, but work with whatever structure the teacher prefers.

The emotion vs logic percentage also impacts how administrators make decisions about the library.  We have justified the importance of school library programs based on research and statistics. All true – and all logical.  In general, people really love libraries.  We need to focus on the emotional connections to libraries without getting too warm and fuzzy which makes us seem like a frill.  It’s a challenge to figure out the right approach but you can work with taglines such as “Your library program – open for your thinking 24/7,” or “Bring your questions, we can help you find the RIGHT answers.” Brainstorm with your librarian colleagues to create the message that will reach your stakeholders.  And notice – that 20% of you probably will do 80% of the work.

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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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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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Image from the World Literacy Council

It once was simple in the days before apps and the Internet. When all information came by way of books, magazines, and newspapers. Literacy was easy to define. It meant you were able to read and understand printed matter.  Functional literacy was said to be the ability to read on the fourth grade level. Basic literacy as defined by the U.S. Department of Education 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy is using “print and written material to function in society and achieve one’s goals and to develop one’s knowledge and potential.”

However, most often today when someone refers to literacy, you need to know which type of literacy they mean.  Information literacy?  Digital literacy?  Transliteracy?  Visual Literacy? And there are more out there.  The bottom line is that all these types of literacy are important, but it’s important to recognize that all these literacies –even visual literacy to some extent—rely on being able to read and comprehend text.

As school librarians we are responsible for guiding our students to develop fluency in all literacies, but we can’t forget the basics.  We still must provide the print rich environment leading to a love of reading and learning. All else follows from that.

On June 13, 2013, ALA Council passed a resolution reaffirming ALA’s commitment to basic literacy, noting that the ALA Policy Manual “recognizes Literacy as a core service and responsibility of all libraries.” All types of libraries are charged with “making literacy a high priority in planning and budgeting.”  In schools where administrators are pushing for book-less libraries (when they are not replacing them with computers for taking PARCC and other high stakes tests), standing up for literacy in its most basic definition is not simple.

It’s not that ALA and AASL don’t recognize we are living in a digital age.  These organizations are also working at helping librarians improve their own mastery of multiple literacies to be able to share that with teachers and students. (Several years ago AASL held it biennial Fall Forum on Transliteracy.) What they realize, as noted earlier, these skills rest on basic literacy.

How can you support basic literacy in a culture focused on technology?  Do what many of the top school librarians in the country are doing.  Create programs using a variety of digital resources to coincide with and connect to reading.  An example of the simplest level is having students write online reviews of books. You can have a book club with another school or have pairs of students in different schools read the same book and have an online discussion which they then share with others.  You don’t have to come up with these yourself. Librarians on Twitter and TL Chat on Google+ are sharing what they are doing.  Respond to them with any questions. They’ll be glad to help—and get your students reading for the fun of it.

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However, our giving needs to go beyond this.  One of my life lessons is that first and foremost we need to always be mindful to give back to those who are closest to us—our primary partners, our children no matter their age, and the friends who enrich our lives. So many of us are workaholics. Staff cuts and increased job responsibilities, not to mention the demands of Common Core and its testing, are adding stress and often overwork.  Staying very late to complete tasks may be necessary one or two days a week, but not every day. Our jobs are not our lives.  Coming home frazzled, frustrated, and our-of-sorts inevitably means we are not fun to be around and are not “giving” to the relationships that count most. To give back to our family and friends, we need to use the commute home to clear our minds and put the job in a mental compartment not to be opened until tomorrow.

Giving back should also go beyond family.  How are you giving back to your communities?  We are entering the gift-giving season and the shopping it entails is a further drag on our time and energy, but it’s important not to forget we belong to several communities.  Serving on state and national library associations is an important way you give back to those who were there for you when you started out. It’s not enough to just pay your dues.  Even on the national level, the greatest part of the work is done by those librarians who give up their time (and often their money to get to conferences), helping all librarians be recognized for the work they do and giving them tools to do it even better.

You can give the gift of your time in other ways.  Those who serve in soup kitchens and pantries perform a vital service.  Doing free tutoring in the public library being a literacy volunteer uses your expertise to give those in need a chance at a better life.

Supporting favorite charities also gives back.  Money is tight for many of you, but the donation need not be large.  It’s just how you acknowledge there are always others in greater need.  I always find it amazing that those in the direst straights will reach out more quickly to those hit by a disaster than people who have so much more.

I hope you have the chance to spend this holiday with family and friends and take time to think of the ways you do and can give back.

Happy Thanksgiving from me to you.

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For as long as I have been in the profession, we have worked hard to prove our worth to the communities we serve (no, this is not a new issue – far from it). School librarians regularly point to the extensive research, replicated in many studies, showing that school libraries, staffed by certificated librarians significantly improve student achievement and their performance on high stakes tests.  And where has that gotten us? Libraries are being closed and school librarians eliminated. (Although there has been some indication that the pendulum is beginning to swing the other way.)

Repeating the same action in hopes of a different response is a definition of insanity.  Yet we seem to be locked into the loop. As librarians we are supremely logical—although maybe not as logical as Mr. Spock.  It is built into our DNA as researchers.

Time to recognize Spock’s wise words.  It’s not logic that convinces people.  It’s emotions.  Have you ever noticed automobile commercials?  Even while the screen is showing price or mpg, the video portion is selling the fun and exuberance of owning that car. You don’t bother reading the numbers until you are committed to the purchase—then you are ready to check the pricing and safety factors to prove you made the right decision.

Saatchi & Saatchi, the big advertising company, is reputed to have said 80% of our decisions are based on emotions (including voting).  That leaves little left in the decision making process for logic, which is why advertisers create their ads to reach the emotions of consumers.  Notice the words used in commercials the next time you watch television.

In one of the workshops I present, I discuss the importance of taglines to promote the school library program.  I point to those we all know – AllState, McDonald’s, Campbell Soup, and others.  They all have high emotional content.

When I became the owner/publisher of School Librarian’s Workshop, I knew I needed a tagline.  I came up with, “Your whole library program in every issue.”  Do you see where it misses the mark?  My Operations Manager who is excellent at marketing said it was good but not great. Asking and answering her own questions, she said, “What do School Librarian’s want?  They want to feel valued and validated.  What do they fear?  The fear their job will be eliminated.” Then she came up with our tagline and brand focus: Indispensible – Just Like YOU!

What do your stakeholders want? Can you figure out what they fear?  How can you send a message showing your program responds to that?  Don’t worry if your first attempts aren’t “perfect.”  Taglines can be changed.  The big companies do it regularly.  Start thinking about how to emotionally bring the message of the value of the school library program.  You care about your library program – let that feeling come through in all you do to present your program and you’ll find more people connecting with you.  Its not logical….

And remember if you need help – the Ask Hilda column in the School Librarians Workshop is available for you!

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