Forum Newsletter - Massachusetts School Library Association

President's Column: Interview with MBLC President James Lonergan

2/12/2019

MSLA President Carrie Tucker is the Librarian at East Bridgewater Jr/Sr High School.

During his nearly two years so far with the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, Director James Lonergan has distinguished himself as an advocate of Massachusetts school library programs and school librarians. MSLA is fortunate to have him as an ally. I recently had the opportunity to interview Mr. Lonergan about the legislative agenda, the state of library funding in Massachusetts, and what drew him to a career in librarianship.

About your work with libraries and MBLC

What (or who) led you to a career in libraries?
In the early 90s, I was a research assistant at a think tank in Washington, DC, having
recently finished grad school in public policy and administration in NYC. I was regularly
doing research at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and some presidential
libraries, and I started thinking about working in the library field, particularly with public
libraries. I decided to go to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s graduate
library and information science program, received a fellowship, and was able to complete
the program in one calendar year. I started out working as an adult/reference librarian at
the New York Public Library at the Mott Haven branch in the South Bronx and I’ve been
very happy to be in the library field ever since then—it’s rewarding work that I strongly
believe in and a great fit for me.

What do you like best about your work at the MBLC?
I like knowing that we are supporting—through leadership, funding, advisory services,
and partnerships—equal access to key core and innovative library programs and services
that improve the lives of all the Commonwealth’s residents. I also like working with the
enthusiastic and dedicated folks in the Massachusetts library community.

What are the greatest challenges?
Funding and organizational capacity for us and for our affiliates and partners: the
Massachusetts Library System, the Library for the Commonwealth at the Boston Public
Library, the Perkins and Worcester Talking Book Libraries, the Massachusetts Center for
the Book, and the nine automated library networks.

Do you have a vision for library service in Massachusetts?
I share the MBLC’s vision of the Commonwealth’s libraries being successful by
providing equitable and universal access to services, information, collections, and
programs; meeting a broad multitude of needs in their communities; and being essential
to a functioning democracy.

Escape from Routine: Using BreakoutEDU to Redesign Freshman Library Orientation

2/12/2019

Sarah Forfa is the School Librarian at West Springfield High School. She also serves on the MSLA Executive Board as Co-Director for the Western region and was the recipient of a 2018 President's Award.

How many times have you stood in front of a group of students at the beginning of a school year, and watched their eyes glaze over as soon as you begin your tried and true “Welcome to the Library” presentation? Orientations are an essential part of our work as school librarians. How can we expect students and faculty to take advantage of all our great resources if they aren’t properly introduced to the library? Although necessary, we all need to face the fact that traditional orientations aren’t always the most engaging of activities for us or our students. A poorly planned, boring, or overly detailed orientation has the potential to turn students off from the library in one fell swoop. In turn, we may come away from the experience feeling disheartened and disconnected from our students - which is the opposite of our goal. So the question becomes…. how can we make orientations more interesting and successful for everyone involved?

Tech Column: Tidying Up Your Digital Reading Piles

2/12/2019

Margaret Kane Schoen is a Library Teacher at Newton South High School.

If you’re like me, you have an ongoing “to be read” problem. The magazines that just keep coming to the house, stacked on an end table because I’m totally going to look at that article my mom mentioned; the books piled up on my nightstand waiting for me at bed-time; today’s newspaper guilting me from its spot in the front hall (where it replaced the one from yesterday that just went into the recycling.)

And for most of us, the problem isn’t just physical. We’ve all got digital TBR piles as well: that blog that always has useful tips and tricks, the digital version of today’s paper, the article your colleague sent over that’s waiting in one of a hundred browser tabs. And that’s not to mention all the places you marked down once as an awesome resource and promptly forgot about.

For the online pile at least, I may have a solution: RSS readers, an old-school application in the online world, but for me, a life-saver. These apps gather updates from all over and store them in one place - news articles, blog posts, etc. Then they’re ready and waiting for you whenever you have a minute, just like that pile of magazines sitting on the coffee table.

The Ups and Downs of Student Volunteers

2/12/2019

Paige Rowse is the Teacher Librarian at Needham High School
and a recipient of a 2018 Web Seal of Excellence.

Are you thinking about adding student volunteers to your library program? Are you concerned about how you will find these students or how much work it will take to train them? Are you worried about trusting them with real responsibility? These are honest concerns and with thorough preparation, these challenges can be minimized and overcome. Ironically, while understaffed libraries may have a greater need for student volunteers, it is more difficult to manage them without the staff to do so. The number of volunteers you feel comfortable managing may depend on the size of the library staff. I am a full time teacher librarian serving over 1700 high school students with two full time assistants who are completely integral to the success of the library program. Training and managing our twelve volunteers falls largely to the library assistants since students volunteer before and after school.

Academic Column: Virtual School Days and Academic Research

2/12/2019

Dr. Robin Cicchetti is the Librarian at Concord-Carlisle Regional High School.

In May 2018 I wrote about the work of Jennifer Jones (St. John’s Preparatory School, Danvers) and her 2018 MSLA Conference presentation titled "Strategies and Tools for future-ready researchers". I adapted Jennifer’s work and proposed a series of web-based tutorials as an alternative to substitute plans for my school. Because of the many snow days last winter, my district decided to adopt virtual school days (VSD) and this is our pilot year. After a great deal of feedback, our superintendent decided to focus on school-wide content and, based on the sub plans developed last spring, asked for the information literacy content to be adapted for our pilot year. What a great opportunity!

Working with our IT Specialist, we are now adapting that work to serve a new need to provide an alternate digital curriculum in case of multiple snow days or other forced school closures, referred to as “virtual school days” or VSD. This article will not explain the details of our VSD plan but will instead focus on how we are conducting action research to guide the development of the pilot. The information shared here is solely from my perspective as a researcher.

Advocacy? Me? Yes! Simple Ways to Promote Your Library

2/12/2019

Patsy Divver is the School Librarian at Millis Middle/High School

Whenever I ask school librarians about programs, ideas, students, or plans, I am overwhelmed by their creative and innovative undertakings. Yet, in further discussion, it’s also one of the greatest challenges we have, promoting what we do. Advocating for our school libraries is an important facet for our professional survival. So the question has become: what’s an easy way to do this?

Picture Book Column: Social-Emotional Learning

2/12/2019

Kelly Depin is the Head Librarian at Derby Academy in Hingham.

When you’ve been around education for any length of time, you become aware that even the education field is not immune from trends. Instead of hemlines or lapel sizes, ours tend to focus on subject matter or techniques. Project Based Learning anyone? STEM? STEAM? Who remembers when we used to teach civics? Guess what - we’re teaching it again. Phonics or whole reading is now phonics AND whole reading despite the factions that fight on. Let’s just hope that open classrooms don’t come back, or did they already in the concept of the learning commons? Lately, social-emotional learning (SEL) seems to be making the rounds. Social-emotional learning is defined by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning as the “process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions" (CASEL). Whether we look at it as ‘one more thing to do’ or a tool for classroom management, the fact is that school librarians have been teaching SEL since we’ve had librarians in school!

Culture of Reading

2/12/2019

Bonnie McBride is the Teacher-Librarian at Fenway High School in Boston
and received a 2018 President's Award.

When was the last time you saw a group of teen boys arguing over who gets to check out the latest Jason Reynolds book? How about the last time you saw an entire class beg their English teacher for more time to read? This was not always the case at Fenway High, but it has become commonplace in our school because of the effort we have put in to take the work out of reading and put the joy back in. Our goal, over the past four years, has been to move towards creating a culture of reading, one that is so strong it permeates every part of our school structure and culture.

Flash back to four years ago - in my first year at Fenway High as the teacher-librarian, I was so excited because I was at a school with a brand new library, and DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) built into the schedule twice a week for twenty-five minutes. What more could a new librarian want?! As the months went on, I discovered that while reading was something the school touted as important, it was not held to the same standard throughout the building. Students would spent the entire DEAR time in the library “looking” for books. In some classrooms DEAR was nap time, in others it was study hall.

Elementary Column: Celebrating our Heritage

2/12/2019

Wendy Garland is the School Librarian at Avery School in Dedham.

In the fall, several events and ideas crossed my path and contemplating their beauty, I found a way to weave them together. What follows is the story of how a journey with a librarian and a Lego inspired a celebration of my students’ heritage.

Shortly after Dreamers by Yuyi Morales was published I read it and fell in love. I knew this was a book I HAD to share with my students. The powerful story and exquisite drawings would work for all grades. I definitely saw this as a book for our Mock Caldecott. This would be a book that all could enjoy and many could relate to. I have a very diverse school and our students come from many different countries. I read it and put it aside while I contemplated how I would use this book in our library.

Gamify Your Library Orientation!

2/12/2019

Kim Young is a Social Studies teacher who collaborates with Librarian Alida Hanson at Weston High School.

As a Grade 9 World History teacher, I believe that research projects are often more about skill building and process than content. But, let’s face it - skill building isn’t always the most exciting part of class and it can take a lot of practice to get things right. I was introduced to the idea of adding gamification principles into my classroom this November at the National Council of Social Studies conference. Never being afraid to experiment, I decided to gamify a lesson plan on finding traditional print sources in the library to prepare students for the completion of a long-term research project. While most of my students are aware that using an online catalog is the best way to find books in the library, many struggle with identifying relevant keywords. The database and internet searching skills students intuitively have are transferable to developing catalog keywords to a certain extent, but students are less resilient when initial keyword searches result in what they perceive as “failure.” The game focused on the following goals:

Give students extended time in-class to experiment and develop confidence with using keyword searches to identify relevant print sources in the school library.
Use gamification principles to engage students in a positive way through research roadblocks that make them feel frustrated.
Create an authentic experience for students to become oriented with the library and the library staff that is directly tied to classroom curriculum.

Book Bloopers, Nonfictional Flubs, and Library Laughs: Those Memorable ‘Mishaps’ We’d Like to Delete!

2/12/2019

Patsy Divver is the library teacher at Millis Middle/High School

This idea began over conversations with “Library Coffee Talk”... except no one was in the library and it wasn’t coffee! We were sharing those memorable moments with that totally misinterpreted book or truly mind-expanding media. And, as so many school librarians are ‘singletons’ in their buildings or districts, who else could appreciate this awkwardness?

From the newly-licensed to the almost-retired, this column hopes to provide the humor, insight, wisdom and guidance for all librarians. Please share your stories-and we’ll look for positive feedback. No complaints about conditions or situations that are beyond our control -- just those “OOPS!” times where we can laugh at ourselves!

Global Read Aloud

2/12/2019

Laura Gardner is the Library Teacher at Dartmouth Middle School
and received a 2018 Service Award from MSLA.

This year, for the second year in a row, my students and I participated in the Global Read Aloud by reading aloud Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed with 6th graders and Refugee by Alan Gratz with 7th graders. The opportunity to read aloud to middle schoolers is rare so it was wonderful to have a set time when we could come together as a community of readers to read together. In this article, I’ll share the history of the Global Read Aloud, our own experience participating in GRA and what surprised me about reading aloud to middle schoolers.

The Global Read Aloud was created by educator Pernille Ripp in 2010 with the goal of connecting to others through books. Book recommendations are crowd-sourced throughout the spring and Ripp chooses the final selections. There are books for every grade and interest level: a picture book author study, an early reader selection, a middle grade selection, a middle school/junior high selection and a high school selection. Librarians and teachers around the world sign up to read the books aloud in October/November. Ripp stresses that it’s okay to be behind the reading schedule, but to try not to get ahead. Educators are encouraged to connect with each other via social media to plan collaborative experiences with their students such as Skypes, co-created Padlets, Flipgrid conversations and more. The goal is to enhance the reading experience with connections to others reading the same book.

MSLA Flipgrid: A New Tool to Share Ideas and Inspiration

2/12/2019

Suggestions for Staying Up To Date in the Library/Technology World

2/12/2019

Kim Brown is the Library Media Specialist at North Reading High School.
She was a 2018 Super Librarian award recipient.

Let’s face it...There is a TON of information out there and things in the library/technology world change regularly. How can a librarian possibly keep up with everything going on and still establish positive relationships with students, teach, collaborate with other educators, plan lessons, curate resources, order new materials, plan programs, and participate in professional development opportunities? The reality is that it’s not possible to do it all. The purpose of this article is to provide some suggestions for juggling the demands of the job of librarian with the need to keep informed of emerging trends in the library/technology field.

Students as Collaborative Partners: Come On, Come On, Let’s Work Together

2/12/2019

Michelle Hanna Raszl is the Librarian at Mt Everett Regional School (7-12) in Sheffield, MA (Berkshire County)

In the fall of 2017 a student approached me and asked if we could host a TEDxYouth event and I immediately agreed to help facilitate this goal. The process was longer and more involved than I initially thought. My student and I took turns in roles of leadership and support. When TED rejected her application for the event, I reapplied. Upon approval, we faced numerous challenges and opportunities. We co-wrote a grant. We formed an after school TED-Ed club for students in which we implemented a curriculum that led to the creation of their own TED talks. We skyped with TEDx members and other teachers from around the world who were hosting events. We recruited faculty, alumni and community members to speak. We connected with the local television station to train students to record and edit the event. We found community sponsors, created the stage set, programs, posters, and promotional materials. We recruited a culinary student to cater the event and student and faculty volunteers to help run the event. The event was billed as student-run and it got off without a hitch (that is until intermission when we had a temporary, if not anxiety inducing Powerpoint issue!), and we are very proud of all of the work that we put in and how it turned out. I write ‘we’ because the event was very much the collaborative effort of my student Marya and I.

A link to our TEDxYouth@MountEverettRS event

A link to our TEDxYouth@MountEverettRS talks

Out Of The Library, But Not Out To Pasture: Retirees Share How They Stay Plugged into MSLA

2/12/2019

Leslie Lomasson retired in 2018 from Amherst Regional High School
and was a 2018 recipient of the Peggy Hallisey Lifetime Achievement award.

Retirement opens the door of time – for family, travel, hobbies, new interests, and sleep! Retirement does NOT, however, mean losing connections to your profession. MSLA welcomes retirees and needs their many years of experience and offers opportunities to volunteer, in both small and large ways.

Being newly retired myself, I decided to find out how and why folks still connect to MSLA and school libraries when retired. I reached out to Ann Perham, Valerie Diggs, and Kathy Lowe. All three of these women were extremely active in MSLA before retirement: all served as MSLA President at one point; their activities collectively included serving as area directors, secretary, chairs of committees (conference, standards, awards), Forum editor, and more.

The Massachusetts School Library Association works to ensure every school has a school library program that is fully integrated at all grade levels across the curriculum and has a significant and measurable impact on student achievement….Read more…..and Learn more about MSLA

Contact MSLA:
Emily Kristofek, Office Manager/Event Planner
P.O. Box 336. Wayland, MA 01778
ekristofek@maschoolibraries.org
508-276-1697

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