School Librarian Leadership

Felix Davila III
IL
ROOTS LEWIS, ,KATHRYN. (2016). The school librarian and leadership what can be learned? (cover story). Teacher Librarian, 43(4), 18-21. Retrieved from http://libaccess.sjlibrary.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lih&AN=114825283&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Roots Lewis discusses key methods of positioning oneself in the best way to achieve success within the school environment through harnessing leadership traits and practices. She focuses on three major steps that can shift librarians into a positive direction. She highlights consistent research as a major key, noting that understanding trends, changes, resources and advancements informs and prepares practice. She acknowledges that relationships with the principal are crucial. Knowing that librarian goals are in line with the principals mindset can do wonders for progress. She is also a proponent for “highlighting” one’s program, not being afraid to sort of brag or at least showcase what the library does. This all combines to show the library can be important and a difference maker.

I appreciated Roots Lewis’ take mainly because I have seen it first hand. At my job, the principal is incredibly supportive of our efforts and enjoys that the library staff is passionate about work. In addition, our work is constantly displayed or highlighted in faculty emails and newsletters, to not only show what work is done, but to show that the principal fully backs what is done as well. This article was very important to me, as it reminds us to consider how much librarians can positively impact their own situations.

A great resource for school (and all) librarians

We Need Diverse Books is an organization that is dedicated to supporting diverse authors and promoting diverse books. The group started with a hashtag and has grown by leaps and bounds to become a force in the publishing and children's books world. The website includes TONS of resources and links to websites by and about diverse authors, their books, and the world of diversity in schools and school libraries.

http://weneeddiversebooks.org

Check out the blog, and follow them on Instagram, too.

New Media Literacy Education (NMLE): A Developmental Approach

Amy Unger

Media Literacy Ed.

Graber, D. (2012) New Media Literacy Education (NMLE): A developmental approach. The National Association for Media Literacy Education's Journal of Media Literacy Education, 4(1), 82-92.

Summary:

In response to computer-technology usage by digital natives, the author of this article, Diana Graber, has developed and implemented a media-literacy curriculum called Cyberwise.  Her basis for its development was in response to a growing awareness of the immensity of internet and social media usage by digital natives, and scholars such as Prensky (2010), pointing towards a justified need for meeting young people "in whatever way they [educators, mentors] meet them" (this, increasingly meaning through technology) with opportunities that "best configure students' brains so that they can constantly learn, create, program, adopt, adapt, and relate positively to whatever and whomever they meet ...", along with James, et al., (2008) stating that, "... the responsibility lies with the adults (educators, policymakers, parents, etc.) to provide young people with optimal supports for good play and citizenship."

Furthermore, Graber's Cyberwise curriculum responds to the long-revered developmental theories of Piaget and Kohlberg, summed up as sharing the belief that

" ... children spend the first 12 years of life developing the cognitive structures that enable them to grasp the abstract, metaphoric, and symbolic types of information that lead to ethical thinking.  This understanding of cognitive and moral development requires us to at least consider how and when the youngest members of our society should be turned loose in a digital environment" (Graber, 2012).

Moreover, it is this capacity for ethical thinking that drives the Cyberwise curriculum.  Graber calls for our teaching of students to be wise users of the tools at their disposal, as a prerequisite to teaching media literacy.  Citing Ohler (2010), she notes the suggestion of a "whole school approach to behavior that sets the entirety of being digitally active within an overall ethical and behavioral context --- character education for the Digital Age."  Monke (2004) refers to this challenge with this:

"It seems that we are faced with a remarkable irony: that in an age of increasing artificiality, children first need to sink their hands deeply into what is real; that in an age of light-speed communication, it is crucial that children take the time to develop their own inner voice; that in an age of incredibly powerful machines we must first teach our children how to use the incredible powers that lie deep within themselves."

In searching for evidence of schooling that is currently meeting any portions of this demand, Graber found one approach to be notably successful at developing moral reasoning, i.e., the Waldorf® school approach.  In a cited dissertation (Hether, 2001), about high school seniors from diverse educational settings, the Waldorf® school approach was found--through a quantitative survey tool about moral reasoning, known as the DIT (Defining Issues Test)--to result in graduates scoring significantly higher in moral reasoning than students from religiously affiliated or public high schools.  Waldorf educated students scored in a range more commonly associated with college graduates (Graber, 2012, p. 87).

Perhaps even more importantly, the second phase of that same dissertation identified five aspects of Waldorf® education that might contribute to higher moral reasoning:

1. an emphasis on educating the whole person
2. sensitivity to developmental appropriateness
3. the practice of storytelling
4. the integral place of the arts in the curriculum
5. preservation of a sense of wonder towards the natural world

Sometime later, Jenkins, et al. (2006), (as in the Jenkins, et al.: Henry Jenkins of USC, and his team) identified "the media literacies", which have significant overlap with the aspects of Waldorf® education:

1.  networking, negotiation, collective intelligence and distributed cognition, such as occurs while students are working together to build a small structure (one of the many hands-on, collaborative projects in the Waldorf® curriculum)
2. visualization, judgement, and appropriation, such as the proficiencies cultivated through the Waldorf® empahasis on art
3. performance and simulation skills, such as developed by the dramatic storytelling practiced in Waldorf®, and 
4. play, considered a hallmark of Waldorf® education (Graber, 2012, p. 88).

While the article goes further to explain the middle school years as the right time for ethical media literacy instruction, through Harvard University's GoodPlay Project that identifies what ethical issues young people encounter in the digital world, it also makes mention of a three-year case study, through classroom action study, using Cyberwise (this being a Waldorf-inspired charter school in Orange County, CA) (Graber, 2012).

In conclusion, this article helps us stop and think about what we are doing while immersed in the beginnings of the digital age, with its "world full of both possibility and peril - rules of engagement being hashed out as we go" (Graber, 2012, p. 89).

Evaluation

I find this article to be indispensable, unique, and on the list of "why is this not required reading"?  Thank you for (hopefully) bearing with its length.

Citations referred to in the Graber Article (found to be in citation other than APA):

Hether, C.A. 2001. "The Moral Reasoning of High School Seniors from  Diverse Educational  Settings." Ph.D. dissertation, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center. Retrieved from Dissertations & Theses: Full Text (Publication No. AAT 3044032).

James, C., K. Davis, A. Flores, J.M. Francis, L. Pettinghill, M. Rundel, and H. Gardner. 2008. "Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media: A Synthesis from the Good Play Project." GoodWork® Project Report Series, Number 54. Project Zero, Harvard School of Education.

Jenkins, H., R. Purushotma, K. Clinton, M. Weigel and A.J. Robinson, 2006. Confronting the  Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. http://newmedialiteracies.org/.

Monke, L. 2004. "The Human Touch." Education Next 4(4). http://educationnext.org/thehumantouch/

Ohler, J.B. 2009. "Orchestrating the Media Collage." Educational Leadership 66(6): 8-13.  http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar09/vol66/Orchestrating-the-Media- Collage.aspx

New Technologies and 21st Century Skills

Boyer, Allison

IL

New technologies and21st century skills. (2016). Retreived from http://newtech.coe.uh.edu/

Summary: This website is part of an ongoing project by the Laboratory for Innovative Technology in Education.  This site provides an explanation of what it means to be literate in the 21st Century, what skills are considered 21st Century, as well as an ongoing lists of resources to help teachers understand 21st Century skills and ways to incorporate these skills in the classroom for student development.

Review: I found this website to be quite helpful in understanding 21st Century skills.  Not only does it provide an in-depth explanation of these skills, especially in relation to the education field, but the list of resources is extensive and ever-growing. It’s this aspect that I found most interesting.  This website is part of a project organized and maintained by LITE, and the list of resources will only continue to grow.  Resource include links to outside website, videos, Google Docs, etc.  This website is definitely one to remember.  

Integrating Reading & Programs for ESL

Roys, Kelly

ET

American Library Association. (2008). How to Serve the World @ your library. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/offices/sites/ala.org.offices/files/content/olos/toolkits/servetheworld/LI_toolkit.pdf

Summary: This article from ALA describes the importance of providing collections and resources for ESL (English Second Language) learners to promote life long love of reading and learning. There are programs demonstrated as an informational resource to promote other programs in your local libraries and other resources to read to discover more about differentiation. 

Review: As an educator for the elementary age group, instruction serving this population should be relevant and applicable for information to be retained and acceptance/understanding to ensue. Students need a safe place for learning and by providing articles and information to highlight this need is important. Librarians have a duty to increase this as they are a hub for resources, programs, and types of books/materials for the students to access and teachers to utilize in their classrooms. 

A Couple of Articles about Co-teaching

A Couple of Articles about Co-teaching.
Caitlin Wallingford


Enhancing the information literacy classroom experience: A cataloger and a reference librarian team up to deliver library instruction.

Overview:

        McCallum and Collins examine the ways in which librarians working in different capacities within a library (in this case an academic library, though  their findings are transferable) can effectively aid in co-teaching.   Believing that playing off the strengths of individuals rather that attempting to fit each librarian into an instructional role, the authors looked at the unique collaboration opportunities with a reference librarian and a cataloger.  In looking at this partnership, they also posed the question, "what is the relationship between IL, collection management, and cataloging?"  McCallum and Collins review the historically spotty (though by no means non-existent) relationship between librarians and instruction (inadequate learning opportunities in library school, too little on-the-job training) in an effort to understand the current environment surrounding co-teaching. The results of their study found that teachers and students were overwhelmingly positively impacted by co-teaching experiences, citing greater engagement and an appreciation for in-depth, specific knowledge.  The overall take-away was that librarians must embrace the opportunity to reach out to faculty as well as other librarians, despite any initial discomfort/lack of confidence in teaching skills.  The authors also highlighted how partnerships among reference and cataloging librarians in an instructional format with faculty can greatly enhance collection development success.

  

Citation:

McCallum, C. J., & Collins, B. L. (2011). Enhancing the information literacy classroom experience: A cataloger and a reference librarian team up to deliver library instruction. Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services, 35(1), 10–18. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcats.2010.12.008

 Co-Teaching Relationships among Librarians and Other Information Professionals

 Overview:
        Shannon and Medaille, like the authors in the previous article, begin by offering a look at the history of librarians and instruction, citing the inadequacy of time given to this topic in library school, and the logistical difficulties of training a staff on the job.  The author differentiate between collaboration and co-teaching, calling teaching a "form of collaboration...[which] allows instructors with different skill sets, knowledge, and perspectives to optomize both learning experience for students and the teaching experience for themselves" (134).  The authors set up and observed a number of workshops where librarians and other IT professionals (most with little to no teaching experience) were asked to co-teach.  Teachers and informational professionals experimented with division of duties, using technology, etc.  Afterwards, students, teachers and the information professionals were asked to rate the experience.  The major benefits described were using different skill sets, teaching to different levels of students in the classroom, and adding energy to the classroom.  A few drawbacks were mentioned, the most significant being that it could get "messy" with more than one person attempting to teach.  Students were overwhelmingly positive about the experience (helping individual students, more information, nice pace), with only one student finding it "sort of distracting" (140).

        

Citation:

Medaille, A., & Shannon, A. W. (2012). Co-Teaching Relationships among Librarians and Other Information Professionals. Collaborative Librarianship, 4(4), 132–148.

The information-seeking behavior of grade-three elementary school

Kari Nelson

IL

REFERENCE

Nesset, V. (2009). The information‐seeking behavior of grade‐three elementary school students. Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 46(1), 1-3.

SUMMARY

Nesset discuss the importance of introducing and experiencing print and electronic sources from a young age. From this study, information seeking in the elementary school is represented in a three phase model: preparing, searching and using.  The preparing stage being the direct instruction of needed vocabulary and steps to complete the process.  The searching stage being the physical action of searching and the using stage is applying what the students learned.  Information seekers in elementary schools need exposure to the three phases early so they can build upon them in upper grades.

EVALUATION

I liked how this article shows that young students are ready to be educated in information seeking. As an educator, I see that children such as kindergarten and 1^st grade don’t complete research because it is “too difficult”. This article shows that we are in a time where they have been prepared for technology and just need the opportunity to have experience with it.

Free Technology for Teachers: 100 Practical Ed Tech Tips Videos

Beverly Rupe
IL

Byrne, R. (2015, April 21). Free technology for teachers: 100 practical Ed Tech tips videos [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2015/04/100-practical-ed-tech-tips-videos.html?m=1

Free Technology for Teachers: 100 Practical Ed Tech Tips Videos

Richard Byrne's blog (http://www.freetech4teachers.com/) is a great resource for teachers and librarians. I seem to always find something personally useful, or useful to someone else at work. This is a link to just one very practical example, but every visit to this blog is always worthwhile. A must-add to any PLN.

Anytime, Anywhere Learning

Porter, Lea

Ray, M. (2014). Anytime, anywhere learning. School Library Journal, 60(3), 20. 

Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=llf&AN=94674420&site=ehost-live

This brief article discusses why online teaching and learning are important skill sets for all 21st-century information professionals in the age of blended learning.  This is not only important for university level professionals but K-12 level teacher librarians as well. By utilizing platforms like Edmodo, Canvas, and Blackboard while at the same time curating high-quality digital resource collections, teacher librarians can become “online learning engineers and blended learning baristas”. The author of this article points out that teacher librarians are exactly the person to help teachers implement blended learning environments while instructing students how to be effective digital citizens and successful online collaborators.

As a K-12 teacher librarian, I see this article being used as an advocacy piece to share with district administrators in regards to 21st-century learning opportunities. While the article is brief, the author points to a needed growth area in the K-12 arena.