The Dog Days Are Over

It's starting to get dark a little earlier here in Maine, reminding us that the dog days of summer are almost over and the exciting breakneck pace of school is almost here! 

This summer has been incredibly busy with my two classes, School Library Media Programs and Instructional Design K-12 and I have learned so much about:

• learning commons
• makerspaces
• databases
• dispositions 
• budgets
• the power of the physical design of a learning commons
• the importance of understanding your demographic when crafting a mission statement
• personal learning environments
• knowledge based centers
• virtual learning communities 
• think models

I have had the opportunity to work with some fabulous collaborators too. Working with my emerging trends group was a highlight!  Kelly, Andrea, and  Kathlyn made middle school makerspaces really come alive for me; it was so great to work with you. Jessica and I created a KBC around a unit on Identity that we are both really proud of and plan to use.  Working on my vision project really helped clarify my role and mission for the next five years and I am really grateful to Andrea for her feedback. 

When I look back on my blogs I see a learner who was initially overwhelmed and scared gradually gain knowledge, confidence and maybe a little bit of expertise.  Thank you so much Professor Buchanan for inviting me reflect so much on the profession, my practice, my school. It's impossible to learn how to be a teacher librarian by taking two summer courses, but I feel like I know what the questions are where to go for answers now.  Your office hours, recorded messages and feedback were so positive and gave me the feeling that I could do this!

Thank you Professor Loertcher for making me think deeply about how students can maximize their learning through collaboration. I really enjoyed the workshops and the opportunity to lean about the KBCs. 

So goodbye for now! There are only fifteen days before school starts, I just handed in my final project and that beach isn't going to sit on itself!

Mission and Gratitude

As a result of looking at so many "ideal" libraries I have become obsessed with decoration. I have been canvassing Job Lot and Target looking for inexpensive ways to bring more kid friendly color to my blue/green library. I don't want to allocate any library funds to decorations, so I am trying to do this on my own and on the cheap, but I think that my recent obsession with color may have something to do with my fear of taking over the library and therefore I'm subconsciously looking for something easy and tangible to do --instant gratification! Although I now know how important color and furnishing are to the library, I also know they are the least of my problems right now and maybe I ought to be concentrating on more weighty matters. 

I am simultaneously working on a vision project for my Library Media Centers class which will include a mission statement, budget, assessment instrument, and library advisory plan and a presentation about my ideal school library; a virtual learning commons for my Instructional Design class; and I'm trying to get to know the space and collection I will be inheriting. I am a little overwhelmed, so decorating seems like a pretty easy and light way to distract myself from all of the other important work. I'm also incredibly grateful. 

The work that I have been doing in my classes and the conversations that I have been having with other students, most of whom have library experience, are making me so grateful to be in a community that supports our schools and our library. I am so fortunate to be following someone who has built such a strong program and collection, although she left so little room for improvement that it's intimating.  

In thinking about the mission of the CRMS school library I considered our demographics and our community. I emailed the superintendent and principal. I looked at the vision statement and core values of the school and I also reread (for the 1 millionth time) the American Association of School Librarians Standards for the 21st Century Learner. I tried to capture the spirit of joy that we work so hard to create in our school, but also keep it short and easy to remember and post. This is where I am right now with my draft:

Mission Statement:

The Camden Rockport Middle School Library is a collaborative learning commons where:

• inquiry provides a framework for academic and personal pursuit.

• resources enrich the curriculum empowering students and teachers.

• students and teachers work together to test multiple solutions to authentic problems.

• imagination, creativity, and joy live.

I am still working on how to wedge the word "inspire" in there.  Maybe "inquiry inspires academic and personal pursuit", or "Resources enrich the curriculum inspiring students and teachers" or "imagination, inspiration, and joy live".... 

I'll keep at it, but I'll also keep thinking of ways to decorate on the cheap!

References

Camden-Rockport Middle School - School Profile. (2017). Fivetowns.net. Retrieved 21 July 2017, from http://www.fivetowns.net/crms/crmsprofile.cfm

Standards for the 21st Century Learner. (2017). Chicago. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/aasl/standards.

All hands on deck

In thinking about community input I have been trying to identify my stakeholders and the best ways to not only gather their feedback and act on it in meaningful ways, but also how to use their feedback to engage stakeholders and keep them excited about the library.

Students have to be the most important group to be heard from in the mission to get community input, but the difficulty may lie in getting good feedback. I never knew how many things were possible and what was going on in school libraries across the country until I took this course, so I can’t expect that students would fathom the possibilities either.. I would need some carefully worded surveys that allow students to push their thinking beyond the services and furniture that we currently have available. Beyond surveys, getting to know students and listening to them would also be a really important, if not THE most important way to get student input. In addition, our recently retired librarian kept a notebook of student suggestions called, “Please order more…..” for students to write book and genre suggestions in.

Another important group of stakeholders are the teachers and staff. If teachers are excited about the library and see that it can meaningfully support their curricula, there will be more opportunities for collaboration and students will be able to use the library as a part of their learning not solely as the place to check out books. Again, carefully worded surveys coupled with building and maintaining strong relationships and collaborations would be a good way to get that input.

Administrators are another important part of the equation. In anticipation of our vision project I have been in touch with my principal, Jaime Stone,  and superintendent, Maria Libby,  to make sure that I understand all of the plans (space, budget, furniture) for the library in the new middle school my district is planning for 2020. I was really excited when I got this response from my superintendent, “There is no specific vision laid out other than what you and Jaime have likely discussed. Yes, there is a vision for a maker space, either in the library or in the adjacent room. No discussion yet about furniture. Let us know your dreams when the time comes!!!” It sounds like she is on board all ready, so keeping admin in the loop providing feedback and keeping them excited will be key.

Parents are another group whose input is important. As Liz Deskins points out in “Parents, reading partners, library advocates” parents are “powerful partners” in “inspiring life-long readers”. (Deskins, 2011) Keeping parents interested and involved and soliciting their feedback will not only increase student readership but also serves as advocacy for the library program. Deskins mentions several strategies for building partnerships like, family literacy nights and family book clubs (Deskins, 2011). Those suggestions got me thinking of family maker nights.

The school board and our local public library also seem like a good places to ask for input and drum up support.

How do I plan for ongoing input? One thing that I had not heard of or considered before reading “Library advisory councils” by Natalie Teske was involving members of each department on a library advisory council (Teske,2010).  I imagined myself building relationships with and surveying staff and students, but I didn’t envision a group to help make a strategic plan for the library. If done well, the library advisory council could become not only help “increase buy-in from stakeholders” it could also be a powerful advocacy tool (Teske,2010). Maybe inviting a student, a PTO member, an administrator and a board member and/or person from the public library would be a way to achieve that. Since it would be near impossible for a group like that to find dedicated meeting times, I wonder if it could be achieved through one in-person meeting (like a breakfast) per year and then continue to work in a collaborative website.

Resources

Deskins, Liz. (2011)“Parents, reading partners, library advocates”. LMC 30(3), 34-35

Teske, Natalie. (2010). Library advisory councils. LMC,28(4), 40-41

Co-teaching or Access: if you can't have both, which is better?

My school has a strong culture of collaboration. Our teams are collaborative. We are transforming into a project based learning school, so frequently throughout the year grade-level teams collaborate on planning and executing cross-curricular projects with challenging real-world questions and authentic student learning (Lergan & Mergendoller, 2015). The librarian is a part of the planning and teaching of these units and the library acts as over-flow and presentation space. 

When not engaged in PBL, teachers love to come to the library for a week or more at a time to do co-taught unit, often with stations. In my tenure as a fifth-grade teacher at CRMS my students and I sailed through the library in our explorers unit. As a seventh-grade teacher the librarian and I took my students "Back to the Future of Maine" in plutonium-powered lobsterboats. We have had them collecting electoral votes in our presidents unit, researching the late 20th early 21st century with Research-O-Rama, and traveling the world as rock bands in our World Tour geography unit. The eight-grade language arts teachers do a podcasting unit in the library, and sixth grade does Boom or Bust, Civil War, World War II in the library (there is even a boot camp). There have been science units on geology and invertebrates, and many more that I can't even remember or never knew about. 

This is what I thought co-teaching in the library was and it's why I wanted to be the CRMS librarian. This week I listened to and read the transcript of the Cult of Pedagogy podcast "How this school library increased student use by 1000 percent" and it really made me think about what collaboration is and question what is more valuable to students, co-teaching or access to the library (Gonzalez,2016). 

I read Gonzalez because I was reading about library design and I did get a big design takeaway from the podcast (flexibility is more valuable than technology). The "learning center" at the Big Walnut Middle School that principal Penny Sturtevant and tech teacher Ed Kitchen created is based on the model of personalized learning. Students come to the learning center with a specific "prescription", they pass their student ids through a bar code scanner which places them on a spreadsheet that teachers can access. They present their prescription to Mr. Kitchen and set off on their work with Mr. Kitchen facilitating many students from many classes doing various projects. Kids were excited to go to the learning center and it was used as a motivator. 

One skepticism I had about this arrangement was although kids were "making" it wasn't a true "maker" mentality, kids were working solely on school projects and there wasn't a genius hour or passion project type time (although there was a half hour hang time that kids could maybe use for that). 

My bigger skepticism was is this collaboration? It didn't seem to me like it was. The teacher was a former math and technology person, not a teacher librarian and seemed like less of a resource and planning partner than a library monitor. His planning with teachers seemed to be on the fly and consisted of teachers asking him how to make projects a little flashier.

Here is the question that I am wrestling with, what is most valuable to students? I would argue that both models, the students and teacher come down to the library for a co-taught unit model and the send kids down when they have valuable work to do model have kids using the library when they need it most. Both models have students working in the library in the context of their content work not theoretical "library skills" but research authentic to what they are doing in classes. 

The "send the kids down" model allows more teachers more flexibly to send kids to the library when needed without it being a scheduling ordeal, and hence theoretically gives students more access but what is lost? Is this co-teaching? 

To me it doesn't seem like co-teaching it seems more like instructional babysitting. Perhaps I am being too hard. Certainly learning center teachers can help kids find resources and point them in the right direction, but they give up the two heads are better than one planning that co-teaching provides. 

Does it matter? Maybe what is good for their school wouldn't work at mine. Big Walnut had an underused library, ours is thriving. But what keeps coming back to me is - is it better for kids to have almost constant access to the library, or is it better to continue to have the librarian be a partner with teachers and students in intensive units? Where I stand now is that it needs to be a little of both. Maybe the Big Walnut model would work when a team is doing PBL, but co-taught units work when they aren't, the problem is trying to schedule for both!

REFERENCES

Gonzalez, Jennifer. (2016). How this school library increased student use by 1000 percent.  Cult of Pedagogy, transcript retrieved from: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/episode-38/   

Lergan & Mergendoller (2015) "Gold Standard PLB: Essential Project Design Elements". PBL Blog. Buck Institute for Education. https://www.bie.org/blog/gold_standard_pbl_essential_project_design_elements 

Image #1 retrieved from: https://blog.tradeshift.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/collaboration-illustration.jpg

Image #2  retrieved from: https://x78251kcpll2l2t9e46kf96a-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/BWMS-1.jpg 

Spinnin' Right Round

"You spin me right round baby right round......"

So today my head is spinning with possibilities about ideal libraries set in stark contrast to the real library that I have to work with. One of my classmates, Mary Fobbsguillory in her blog post "The School Library of My Dreams" says that her ideal library "would look like a 50/50 mixture of Disneyland and academic library" (Fobbsguillory, 2017). Another of my classmates, Anne Tignanelli's thematic library sends students on thematic journey reminiscent of Mr. Lemoncello's (Tignanelli, 2017) (Grabenstein, 2013).

Yesterday it rained, and I try so hard not to go into school in the summer unless it is raining. In the midst of my reading and thinking for my ideal library, I walked into the library that will become mine. Blue-green carpet, heavy blue-green chairs, giant blue-green tables, walls covered with old fading posters-- you know you are not in Disneyland. In a word, blah! 

One thing I have been so proud of as I have read about different libraries is how progressive ours seems. We have a lot of collaboration, teachers are sometimes frustrated by not being able to make it on to the schedule, our collection is strong, and all in all if something had to be lacking, the beauty of our space would be preferable to having an under-used space. But reading Sue Stidham's "If Kids Designed School Libraries: The Top 10 List + Wild Things" made me realize that it IS important. 

What can I do? 

One thing I did today was to text the art teacher and ask her if I can display student art work. That's a step, but it doesn't address the lack of flexibility my furniture gives. 

Another thing I did was read Diana Redina's "How to Transform your Library Space on a Budget" (Redina, 2015) Some takes aways from that are to get rid of things you don't need to make room for those you want, befriend the person in your district who is in charge where the furniture is warehoused and keep dreaming! 

The library that I am inheriting is in good shape. There is a strong collection and a school culture of collaboration. In 2020 we will be in a new school with a new library. In the meantime, I can make small inexpensive hopefully high-impact changes to our space. 

References 

Fobbsguillory, Mary.(2017.) The school library of my dreams. Discussion. Retrieved from https://sjsu.instructure.com/courses/1237629/discussion_topics/3237567

Grabenstein, C. (2013). Escape from Mr. Lemoncellos library. New York: Yearling Books. 

Redina, Diana. (2015). "How to Transform your Library Space on a Budget". Knowledge Quest Journal of the American Association of School Librarians. Retrieved from: http://knowledgequest.aasl.org/transform-library-space-budget/ 

Stidham, Sue. (2010). If Kids Designed School Libraries: The Top 10 List + Wild Things. LMC, 29(1), 22

Tignanelli, Anne.(2017) Ideal Library. Discussion. Retrieved from: https://sjsu.instructure.com/courses/1237629/discussion_topics/3237567

image 1 retrieved from: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/cd/95/50/cd955054ba0c68e7b294f0681c50c13c--cool-school-new-school-year.jpg

image 2 retrieved from: https://www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/0915-designJ.jpg

Rules, Rules, Rules

I come from a small island with no law enforcement which loves its reputation as a place that doesn't play by the rules, so I was intrigued by my classmate Kathlyn Delang's blog post about rules in the library:  https://ischoolblogs.sjsu.edu/info/kdelang/2017/06/18/learning-journal-musings-1/. Her post was inspired by her reading of Anne Ruefle's article Rules of Reading. Kathlyn wonders "why do we encourage reading at a young age, but then put limits on it? " 

That seemed pretty reasonable to me, so I picked up our library guide to see how many books students in the CRMS library were allowed. 

Circulation:

Students may check out as many books as they “need” for fifteen school days. These may be renewed if the student brings the book to me to do so, unless the book has been reserved by another student or staff member. Students are expected to treat books, the library, staff, and other students with respect. Staff have unlimited borrowing privileges, so come on down! (Foss, 2017)

Phew, that looks pretty welcoming!

I am taking over for someone who grew "the library from 3,000 volumes, 8 chairs, 2 tables, and no computers in a basement room in the MET building to a much more comfortable and welcoming space and book collection located in the middle of the school. Currently we have about 53 seats at 18 tables and nearly 19,000 volumes. " (Foss, 2017) 

I am so scared of ruining what she has created, so when I read Kathlyn's post I thought, "I want to throw out the rules too, but what will happen? Will I ruin what Kathy has created?" Luckily for me as in so many other instances, Kathy was way ahead of me - Library saved! Limits be damned!

References 

Delang, Kathlyn. (2017). Learning Journal Musings #1. Blog. https://ischoolblogs.sjsu.edu/info/kdelang/2017/06/18/learning-journal-musings-1/

Foss, Kathy (2017). For New Teachers and Staff in Running the Library. https://docs.google.com/document/d/15DuW4JQrmLBPpGzOGO8lw8tXhxatoXmxynIDyQ9UXpk/edit

Ruefle, Anne E. (2011). Rules or reading? LMC, 29(6), 34-35.

International Makerspaces of Mystery

I've been digging down with makerspaces lately and it was a surprise to me to find out that it was an international trend. This week I did a little reading about the Fryslan Netherlands mobile fab lab or Frysklab for primary and secondary students. It is a particularly interesting project because one of its goals is to bring 21st century skills "to find solutions for local socio-economic challenges".

Obviously in the United States we can use "solutions for local socio-economic challenges" and I am beginning to hope that makerspaces could provide some leveling of the playing field among the haves and the have nots..... or could it? In this political environment where the gaps between the haves and the have nots continues to be in our faces and public money threatens to be diverted to private and even for profit schools, what chance to we have the that the divide wont become greater? 

Student empowerment is at the heart of the educational maker movement and equitable access is part of what we in libraries provide. But we know that equitable access is aspirational. We know some schools are better equipped than others, how do we keep the maker movement alive and thriving despite socio-economic challenges? The mobile makerspace like the Frysklab could be the answer. Makerspace mobile  on the Gulf Coast seems to be trying to provide opportunities to a range of people. A school district in Knoxville, TN with the help of a $50,000. grant seems to have figured out a system of mobile carts which rotate among schools and docking stations which stay at the schools.

I hope that the maker movement will continue to empower students of all socio-economic groups. 

Resources

Sargrad, Scott (2017). An Attack on America's Schools:Trump's Budget Lays Bare His administrations Total Disregard for Public Education. Editorial US News and World Report. https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2017-05-23/donald-trump-and-betsy-devos-budget-would-destroy-public-schools 

New Media Consortium (2015) New Media Consortium Horizon Report k-12 “http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2015-nmc-horizon-report-k12-EN.pdf 

Johnson M, Witte B, Randolph, J, Smith, R &  Cragwall K (2016) Mobile Makerspaces. School Library Journal. http://www.slj.com/2016/05/technology/mobile-maker-spaces/