When I first submitted this proposal for presentation, we had just finished compiling our documentation for the NSLPY award. We had no idea if we were going to win.

A picture says 1,000 words?

We think, but Gayle can correct us, that we were invited to come tonight because our program won the National School Library Program of the Year Award this year. What follows is our acceptance video. It was featured at the AASL awards luncheon at the ALA annual conference last June in DC

A word on vision and mission. Have one. You can do it a bunch of different ways. We chose this because it best resembled the AASL guidelines, but frankly, I prefer less narrative and more bullets.

When we first designed this slide, it looked like this (click), but then we heard Sarah Kelley Johns speak at a leadership conference right here on campus. At the time, she was running for ALA President – a bold move for a school librarian (she didn’t win). After hearing Sarah speak, we reconfigured our role in the slide.

What is instructional partnership? Professional development – watch blogs. Focus on quality, not quantity! If you pick the right blogs, you should only follow a half dozen. But pay attention! Go to conferences, join listservs & PLCs. I am telling you now. You won’t have time for this. No one does, but it is essential because it is the first step in all that follows Collaborate – share your knowledge Design curriculum with colleagues. Show your smarts, but don’t be a showoff, just be helpful. Co-teach – teach with teachers in your building. This may be easier said than done. If it didn’t exist before, it can take time to build a collaborative culture between the library and the faculty. Don’t give up. Try everything! If all else fails, food and coffee work wonders! Model – You know that Nike motto “Just Do it?” That’s the idea. If you tell someone else how to do something, it just feels like work to the other person, but if you show them what it looks like in an instructional setting (particularly if you demonstrate mastery), they might see the practicality of it and turn to you the next time they feel inspired to try something new. Help kids. We all know that all teachers don’t teach the same way. If you know your school culture, the library program can work as a leveling agent to bridge the gap between student experiences from class to class. This makes you indispensible to kids AND to administrators. Help teachers. Period. Make their lives easier. If you are entering this field as a certified teacher, you already know how tough it is to be a classroom teacher. If you’ve never taught before, trust me. It is hard! The last thing a classroom teacher needs is additional responsibility.

Take 3-5 minutes to pair up with a “neighbor” and discuss an answer to this question. Then we will share your responses.

You can look at being a school librarian a little like the proverbial glass of water– Either don’t have scheduled time with kids, or that you have access to all kids + the faculty at all times – it just depends on your perspective. If you look at all these photos, you can see that you have so many opportunities to reach kids if you use them, particularly, if you employ emerging technologies to complement your face-time opportunities. Music tech Writing center English class Booktalking Online book discussion Author visits Movie premiere Book signing Book groups Special collections

In the last slide, I highlighted information literacy and reading as the primary academic objectives for school librarians. When I was in library school, I was told we had two fundamental objectives as a a school librarian: RESEARCH and READING. I would venture to say that our field has evolved to such an extent that we MUST now embed 21st century learning in everything we do. Last October, Tom Friedman of the NY Times wrote a column called The New Untouchables. Basically, it was about lay offs in the new economy. He said that “Those with the imagination make themselves untouchables — to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies — will thrive.” Then he talks about the role of education in creating “new untouchables” – we don’t need to reform schools, we need to change them because they have a doubly hard task now — not just improving reading, writing and arithmetic but entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity. Chris and I have been pondering which of the 19 P21 skills, which are most important? Accountability Adaptability Collaboration Communication Creativity Critical thinking Cross-cultural skills Flexibility Information literacy Initiative Innovation Leadership Media literacy Problem solving Productivity Responsibility Self-direction Social Technology literacy

Take 3-5 minutes to pair up with a “neighbor” and discuss an answer to this question. Then we will share your responses.

This is tough. How do you teach creativity across the curriculum? How do you measure creativity? It is so subjective. I think I mentioned this way back in July, but we had a PhD candidate visit our school. Her dissertation was about how schools are embedding 21st century learning in their curriculum. And after doing all the research and writing and interviews, the one thing she walked away with the teachers do not see creativity as something that can be taught. it is part of our mission today to prove them wrong.

Teachers value collaboration. How many of you worked with classes that were working in collaborative groups this week? Assigning students to work in collaborative groups does not ensure that collaboration is happening, nor is it necessarily Helping students develop collaborative skills. Times all it means is that one kid is carrying the weight of the other students in the group. Assigning specific group roles helps. Following protocols helps. But that doesn’t necessarily engender a collaborative spirit. And that, I think, is what we need to foster among our students. The irony of course, and I have I said this before is that they have the collaborative spirit. It is a part of who they are, socially. Our job, is to have them apply their collaboration skills to academic productivity. They practice Collaboration almost religiously at home, just not in school. He more about that on the next C.

Our kids communicate. We know this.

So creativity is tough to measure and teach, collaboration is happening, but not necessarily as a strategy towards productivity. Communication is exploding, but not necessarily in a way that is going to help students be Effective communicators in college, in the workplace and as citizens. So what of critical thinking? Critical thinking has been an educational priority for nearly 30 years now. Are we teaching it any better than we did 30 years ago? About 20 years ago? About 10 years ago? What are we doing differently, as educators, to help our students become critical thinkers in the 21st century-which, by the way, is vastly different than being a critical thinker in the 20th century..

So, that’s the four C’s. I think I’ve mentioned it in every one of these webinars.

What can you do to promote reading? Destiny BookShare VoiceThread Town library Physical collection LibraryThing Bibliographies TAG Book group Booktalking These are real numbers. How did this happen? Circ, David, Budget, VoiceThread, Library, Tell the story.

Think, pair, share Your thoughts? Those are all great ideas. We use emerging technologies to engage kids. Social Networks Web 2.0 Facebook VoiceThread Twitter Youtube Collaborative toolsMoodle Google Apps

Evidence-based practice refers to the application of the best available scholarly research, information or data to inform decisions for the improvement of student learning. Data analysis is crucial to instructional design. Objective measurements and empirical evidence in learning outcomes provide librarians with essential documentation to advocate for their program and collaboration. An example of research-based practice at NCHS is My Personal Wellness. This project is a comprehensive 21st century approach to learning, preparing students to be independent learners and critical thinkers. This assured experience is collaboration among 9th grade students, health teachers, librarians, technology integrators, special education teachers, and New Canaan Library. Librarians not only co-teach, but assess-we grade. Michelle and I work closely with all students to ensure success. Remarkably, 99% of all students graded last year met goal on the rubric for the research component. We assess students on their research questions, keywords, selection of health article(s), MLA bibliography format and annotated bibliographies. Because of diagnostic assessment, feedback, and data analysis student achievement on MPW improved 51% in five years. Accountability and relevance are essential to the success of a school library program. As we all know test scores are important to the communities we work in. We analyzed the data from the Connecticut Achievement and Performance Test (CAPT) Reading for Information from 2006-2009. It showed a correlation between the improvement in the information literacy skills from My Personal Wellness (research, reading, evaluation, and synthesize) scores and district improvement on the CAPT Reading for Information scores. Each year there was an increase in results in MPW, there was, also, an improvement on the CAPT test. This is powerful! It is important to demonstrate the importance of your program and its added value.

This was the first acronym I learned in library school. It works. Even now, it describes everything we do. It is the “invisible” part of being a librarian, but it is still at the core of your role, even though it is in fourth position on this matrix

It is our job as librarians to make everyone's job easier. Students Teachers Parents Administrators Community

While it is your job to make everyone else’s life easier, it is also important to market your instructional program as inconspicuously as possible. If that sounds like an oxymoron, it kind of is. Let’s think about this for a mintue What do all these portals have in common? They are online – accessible 24/7 The provide a service/purpose – helpful! They are social – incite engagement/participatory This is inconspicuous promotion at its best

You can’t keep up. You can’t even try. What you can do is take snippets as they come and try stuff, take risks, and be fearless. That’s it

Just in case you aren’t completely spent and you want more information, I am facilitating a 12 part FREE webinar series on edWeb.net called Using emerging Tech to Improve Your School Library Program. I will present session 4 in two weeks, on October 13th at 4PM ET. You can catch up on the first three sessions and earn CEUs by watching them online and taking the “quiz” for each one. Session 4 is all about building a hybrid online/IRL program – something we are pretty convinced helped us win the NSLPY Award. Gayle and I were just accepted as co-presenters with Lisa Schmucki, the founder and president of EdWeb.net to present a session at CoSN in New Orleans in March on online professional development. Our program earned honorable mention for the CoSN TEAM Collaborative Award there this year, and Chris and I attended the March 2010 conferernce in D.C. to present roundtables, and poster sessions there.

Just in case you aren’t completely spent and you want more information, I am facilitating a 12 part FREE webinar series on edWeb.net called Using emerging Tech to Improve Your School Library Program. I will present session 4 in two weeks, on October 13th at 4PM ET. You can catch up on the first three sessions and earn CEUs by watching them online and taking the “quiz” for each one. Session 4 is all about building a hybrid online/IRL program – something we are pretty convinced helped us win the NSLPY Award. Gayle and I were just accepted as co-presenters with Lisa Schmucki, the founder and president of EdWeb.net to present a session at CoSN in New Orleans in March on online professional development. Our program earned honorable mention for the CoSN TEAM Collaborative Award there this year, and Chris and I attended the March 2010 conferernce in D.C. to present roundtables, and poster sessions there.