Blog Archives

President's Message: Final Thoughts

5/23/2017

MSLA President Anita Cellucci is the Library Teacher at Westborough High School

As the MSLA president for the past 2 years, I have learned a lot about other librarians, the challenges that we face as a profession and ways to impact those issues in a positive light. I have enjoyed meeting many of you and working together on larger issues that affect education.

For my final post, I'd like to share more about one way that we can focus on student voice to impact the growth of our students and bring to light the issues that they care about in a way that offers them.

As librarians we talk a lot about “safe space” - equity for all students and their individual needs. Providing opportunities for student voice has always been an important mission in my library. This year it manifested in a group slam poem - I coach the slam team with an English teacher. The team competes in the Louder than a Bomb Youth Poetry Festival sponsored by MassLEAP.

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Highlights of the 2017 MSLA Conference: Beyond the Binding

5/23/2017

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Laura Beals D’Elia is the Library Teacher at the Armstrong Elementary School in Westborough.
Laura Luker is the Library Teacher at the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School in Hadley.
Together they are MSLA Co-Directors for Professional Learning.

From Saturday evening, May 6 to Monday evening, May 8, we could not tell you what the weather was like outside the Resort and Conference Center in Hyannis. We never once stepped foot outside for there was too much goodness going on at the 2017 MSLA Conference: Beyond the Binding. It felt like the whole world stopped while 300+ members of MSLA joined together to learn, share, and connect.

Explore this article if you were not able to attend the conference, or to just catch some highlights of events that you were not able to fit into your schedule.

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Roger Rosen's Speech to MSLA

5/23/2017

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Roger Rosen is the President and CEO of Rosen Publishing
and the 2017 recipient of the MSLA School Library Advocate Award.

Following is a copy of Mr. Rosen's speech to MSLA at the awards dinner for our annual conference on May 7, 2017 for which he received a standing ovation. We want to share this with all who missed it, or for those who want to ponder his passionate defense of school librarians. Thank you, Mr. Rosen, for all that you do for school libraries nationwide. We are very fortunate to have you as our advocate.

Thank you so much for this prestigious honor. It is a privilege to work with all of you as we advocate for school libraries. There has never been a more important time to do so. I believe your profession, and the certified skills with which you practice it so successfully, are bulwarks in the defense of our democracy. Is this perhaps the reason your jobs and your funding have been under constant pressure? If one were given to conspiracy theory—as I, in darker moments, find myself to be—I would say it is distinctly possible. Are there not forces in our country that would like to see citizens incapable of critical thinking, unable to discern distortions and outright lies in reporting, speeches, and data? Would these dark forces not like to see citizens become vulnerable to the reduction of complex issues to simple binaries because as students they did not go to schools with rich resources in their school libraries led by top professionals who could help them become media literate, adept at knowing “fake news” when they see it and not when someone tells them.

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School Librarian Identity Crisis

5/23/2017

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Editor's Note: This year's MSLA conference included an exciting new feature, four brief "Ignite Talks" by MSLA members each morning after the President's address and before the keynote speaker. Though brief, these talks were an exciting addition to the conference format and worth highlighting. We thought the Ignite Talk from Sam Musher, Library Technology Specialist at the Rindge Avenue Upper School in Cambridge, was a perfect example to share here in the Forum in order to highlight this new addition to our conference.

Sam Musher is the Library Technology Specialist at the Rindge Avenue Upper School in Cambridge

What is a school librarian? Why do we even need librarians; we have Google?
We’ve all had to answer some version of this question over and over, right?

When I went to library school 14 years ago, I was excited to be a buyer and recommender of books. I still love books, you guys -- giving kids their next favorite book is one of the best parts of my job. But a lot of people we meet, when asked “What is a school librarian?”, still think the answer is, “A school librarian is the keeper of the books.” We all know the problems with that mindset. For one thing, paying a person whose entire job is books is too limited for the 21st century school. “Keeper of the books” sounds low-tech and not sexy at all.

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Tech Column: Making the Switch to NoodleTools

5/23/2017

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Margaret Schoen is a Library Teacher at Newton South High School

Our school system signed up for a new citation tool this year, NoodleTools. It’s been an interesting year as we’ve tried to convince our teachers to climb on board with a new tool while discovering its features and surprises ourselves.

Switching over to a new system was not entirely a choice - the company we had previously been working with was purchased, and we needed to find a new solution fast. So when we signed on to NoodleTools we knew we were getting something that did the basics of citations, but we’ve also discovered some tools and tricks that have been especially useful to our students.

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Academic Column: Teaching AP Capstone - The good, the bad, and the ugly

5/23/2017

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Dr. Robin Cicchetti is the librarian at Concord-Carlisle Regional High Schoo

In a departure from the regular theme of research, this issue the column is a little more personal and addresses the experience of teaching research as a teacher-of-record.

In January 2014, during a weekly meeting of department chairs, our principal laid out some materials for College Board for anyone who was interested. There was a new initiative called AP Capstone that focused on inquiry and research skills. I was the only one interested. With the support of my principal I signed up for the pilot year and am now in the third year of this ambitious, exciting, exhausting program. Teaching AP Capstone changed my role in our high school from one of collaborator to teacher-of-record, and the impact of that shift has been profound. And it may have saved my job.

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Elementary Column: Reading and Thinking with our Community

5/23/2017

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Wendy Garland is the School Librarian at Avery School in Dedham

Our community read The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer as a One Book, One Community read.

The different formats enabled my elementary school students to participate. I was excited to have my students think about their community and work together within it to frame our thinking. I outline our project here and on my blog. Together with our cable station we created this video:

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Evaluating Sources with the SCRAP Test

5/23/2017

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Susan King and Paula Myers are Teacher-Librarians at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School
and recipients of a 2017 MSLA Web Seal of Excellence

We want to share a source evaluation tool that we developed along with two teachers from our school. Our moment of inspiration came during the excellent July 2015 workshop, Are You Research Ready? (facilitated by Pam Harland and Rachel Small). In discussing how the library taught evaluation, we explained to the teachers in the group that we did so as needed, sharing questions that students should consider or pointing them to websites that could help. But we librarians were interested in developing a more formalized system for teaching source evaluation at our school—one that teachers would be comfortable sharing in their classrooms.

We were aware of some tools and acronyms that other folks used and decided to build on that work to create another system. Our intent was not to reinvent the wheel; we were just being realistic about what our teachers would get on board with and be willing to share with students (much as students might like the CRAAP test acronym, we knew that some of our teachers would not go for that).

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Advice Column: Ask a Library Legend

5/23/2017

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Valerie Diggs is the Librarian at Lowell Catholic High School, an Adjunct Professor at Salem State University,
and a former President of MSLA.
Questions for this column may be submitted using the confidential link at the bottom of this post

1. What is the best way to deal with a paraprofessional who still talks about the way things were done by the previous librarian and questions you constantly?
This question really is about a power struggle around who is in charge and who knows more about how to run the library. The scenario usually goes something like this: the librarian who had been there for many years recently retired, and in her/his place comes a new professional. The paraprofessional had been working with the previous librarian for many years. And the refrain that is heard goes something like this “When [fill in the blank] was here, we did it this way” or “This is how we always did [xyz].”

So what is the new person supposed to do? Give in and do things “the way they have always been done?” In this situation, diplomacy and respect can go a long way towards smoothing ruffled feathers and perceived power struggles. Pat McAbee, in “Library Leadership IQ: what good managers know” tells us that “A library staff that works together to develop performance goals, identify areas of job responsibility, and devise methods of achieving objectives will be more committed.” There are bound to be differences of opinion on everything from how to perform the most basic managerial tasks to more upper-level decision-making. Going slow is key.

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Picture Book Column: Abstract Images in Picture Books

5/23/2017

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Char Sidell is a retired Library Teacher from Needham
and is currently working at The Codman Academy Public Charter School in Dorchester.

Writers write what they know and experience, and so for this Forum, I have decided I to write about something I have recently experienced in my librarian life at Codman Academy. I have had some unexpected reactions to the books I have been sharing with my students … abstract picture books that have proven to be real hits!

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Fostering a Love of Reading

5/23/2017

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Kim Keith is the Library Media Specialist at M. E. Small Elementary School in West Yarmouth
and a winner of a 2016 President's Award

As a library media specialist I have many jobs, all of which I love. When I started as a library assistant 24 years ago and to this day, I feel the most important part of my job is to instill a love of books in my students. Ninety percent of the time, I read to every single class I see, grades K-3. I share my reading experiences with my students. I stand my favorite books up on the top of the bookshelves to let them have a chance to enjoy them as well. We talk a lot about books. Did they enjoy the books they are returning? Would they recommend them to a friend and why? At our school we participate in Read Across America week which includes a Book Ball (dress like your favorite book character), Story Walk, school wide Drop Everything and Read, trivia contests using Dr. Seuss books and a family reading night. We take our second graders to the public library before summer break to get a library card and also to see the schedule for summer activities happening at the local library. This year I was able to host author Melissa Stewart in order to produce the book trailer, with one of our third grade classes, for her newest book with Steve Jenkins, Can An Aardvark Bark? With a high needs population that includes free and reduced lunch, special education and a high percentage of ELL students, the school tries to provide free books whenever possible. We order books from First Book (an organization whose mission is to provide disadvantaged children with new books) twice a year to distribute and we also received a generous donation from Houghton Mifflin that provided our students with free books.

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MSLA Twitter Chats

5/23/2017

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Our monthly MSLA Twitter chats continue. Twitter chats are a great way for members to share ideas without having to go to an actual meeting. It is a virtual meet-up which allows collaboration from the couch or even a chair in a beauty salon! The Twitter platform also makes it easy to share online resources and links.

If you weren't able to join the most recent chats, or want to revisit the resources shared, follow the links below to the archives of our chats:

March Twitter Chat: A joint chat with MassCUE that focused on edtech.
April Twitter Chat: Libraries and Social Media
May Twitter Chat: MSLA Conference Recap

Mark your calendars for our next Twitter chat -- Wednesday, June 14th at 7:30 PM. The topic is summer PD and fall plans.

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President's Message: Final Thoughts

Highlights of the 2017 MSLA Conference: Beyond the Binding

Roger Rosen's Speech to MSLA

School Librarian Identity Crisis

Tech Column: Making the Switch to NoodleTools

Academic Column: Teaching AP Capstone - The good, the bad, and the ugly

Elementary Column: Reading and Thinking with our Community

Evaluating Sources with the SCRAP Test

Advice Column: Ask a Library Legend

Picture Book Column: Abstract Images in Picture Books

Fostering a Love of Reading

MSLA Twitter Chats

Forum Newsletter

Co-Editors
Luke Steere and Michelle Fontaine

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Archives

Forum Newsletter

Co-Editors​Luke Steere and Michelle Fontaine

Categories

Archives

Co-Editors
Luke Steere and Michelle Fontaine