Category: Column

Zoe Keenan is the Library Media Specialist at Frontier Regional School in South Deerfield.

My school has struggled with summer reading for many years now. It’s been a pull and push from both the English Department, the Library and the Administration on expectations of what students should read, how they should be assessed on it, and what culminating event should we do to wrap up the program?!?!

When I started at my school three years ago, all three departments had separate ideas about what makes a successful summer reading program. The Administration wanted results and proof of assessment, the English department wanted students to read a wide variety of eclectic books and, as the new Librarian, I wanted students to enjoy reading again. I remember getting to know the students during my first year and asking them how they liked the summer reading book. Many hadn’t read it, since they knew from past years that there was no assessment to be passed in or graded. Of the handful who read it, mistakenly thinking they would be tested on it, only a few enjoyed it. I remember thinking that it was going to take some time and lots of effort to change this program around.

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Tech Column: Back-to-School Hacks

10/2/2018

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

Welcome back to a new school year! Lately my Instagram feed has been filled with “life-hacks” - little tips and tricks to help you complete tasks more easily. That got me thinking about my daily computer life - what are the tools I rely on? In this column, I’ll share with you some of my favorite Chrome extensions - small plug-in applications that you install into your Chrome browser to do one or two small -- but powerful -- tasks. Whether it’s something I use every day, or every once in a while, there are a few that I just can’t do without.

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Elementary Column: All Are Welcome: Welcoming in a New School Year

10/2/2018

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

Back to school - I have always loved this time of year with it’s fresh starts and dreams of possibility. I loved this time of year as a child and continue to relish the excitement. This is our library’s back-to-school story, where I confronted the challenges of years past, asked hard questions, and framed our year of learning around the concept of “welcoming” all students in and “inviting” them into our space and our books. Do I have big hopes and expectations? Absolutely. Big changes? Not really. This is about the small, subtle ways I am choosing to build a positive library culture and grow learners. I consider this just the beginning of our journey.

The inspiration for change came from two books I read over the summer - one being a powerful picture book, and the other being a dynamic professional book about reading. There is something beautiful about summer reading, soaking in the sun and ideas without the pressure of lesson planning and deadlines looming. I read, wrote and thought about Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst well beyond the time it took me to “read” the book. It planted seeds and I spent much of my summer cultivating them. What surprised me was I “thought” I was reading about reading. What I ended up thinking about was change.

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President's Address: Stepping Outside our School Libraries

5/1/2018

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

This spring, as the inevitable senioritis infection takes hold, I’m tempted to join in. The year has been an extraordinary one. My school survived its NEASC decennial accreditation visit last month, and I am ready for kayak time.

Those of us in elementary schools or non-member secondary schools may appreciate a brief background. Every ten years a 16-person team of educators recruited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) descends upon each member school for an intense four-day visit. The team observes instruction; meets with parents, teachers, students, and administrators; reviews curriculum; examines student work; assesses core values; and more. It’s akin to being formally observed as a first-year teacher--for four days straight.

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Elementary Column: Evolution of a Relationship with Twitter

5/1/2018

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

As librarians many of us find ourselves operating in a vacuum. I am the sole librarian in my building. Our teacher colleagues have each other for support, but my colleagues are across town. Twitter has granted me the opportunity to connect with others, observe what they are doing, ask questions to the larger school librarian community, and grow as a professional. I attribute the growth in my teaching in large part to Twitter and the innumerable individuals that have influenced my journey.

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Tech Column: How to Technify Your Reading Challenge

5/1/2018

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

A Reading Challenge can be a great way to encourage independent or free reading in your school. At our school, we often tie our challenges to our House Cup contest, where homerooms compete to win points for one of the four houses in our school. We’ve tried several versions at our school: March Madness tournament of books, and a “shelfie” challenge where students submitted photos of themselves reading.

These contests have all been great ways to encourage reading and boost school spirit. When meeting with the House Cup team, I always try to see how we can use technology to spice up the contest (and make it easier to track and total our entries!).

This year, we wanted to encourage students to stretch their reading to new genres. We also wanted a way for the faculty to compete. We ended up with a category challenge: the library staff came up with 23 different categories of books (books set in the past, short story collections, memoirs, etc), and challenged the homerooms to see who could check off the most categories.

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Secondary Column: Always Consider the Source, Teaching Critical Thinking Skills

5/1/2018

Zoe Keenan is the Library Media Specialist at Frontier Regional School in South Deerfield.

I can’t tell you enough how important critical thinking skills are in this day and age. These skills apply to all aspects of life from reading the newspaper or watching TV to having a conversation. In this day and age, we need to evaluate the information in front of us and ask questions to find its relevance, reliability and to understand the deeper meaning behind the resource. Teaching these skills, though, can be challenging in a world where classes are measured by assessments and data driven. How do we assess critical thinking skills when the whole process is about thought patterns and analyzing how people think? How do we teach these skills when we only have 45 minutes with a class?

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President's Address

2/27/2018

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

It was February 16, the Friday before vacation, and I had an ambitious to-do list to knock off before embracing nine glorious days of freedom. Freedom to read, freedom to sleep past 5 o’clock, freedom to enjoy my family and catch up with friends.

I was single minded in my drive to get it done. So when my independent study student, Alyssa, asked if I thought teachers should be armed, I did not miss a beat. The very idea of working with students in an armed or militarized environment horrifies me. My response went something like this: “I am against arming teachers. My opinion is one of many, I know, but a society that addresses its problems by adding more guns just saddens me.”

I left it at that and continued working. But since I got home, I have been bothered by the exchange. At the very least, my library science professors would say I conducted a crappy reference interview. Alyssa needed me to ask--

Do you think teachers should be armed?
Do you feel safe in our school?
What do your friends and classmates think?

She, like many of us, needed to process her thoughts in the wake of such violence. She needed the ear of an adult who would listen. She did not get that from me, and this has pricked my conscience all vacation, especially as I watch Parkland students find their voices and begin to actively participate in democracy.

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Picture Book Column: Celebrating Chinese New Year

2/27/2018

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Char Sidell retired from her elementary school library in Needham,
but continues to work as a librarian at the Codman Academy Public Charter School in Dorcherster.

Editor’s Note: It is with great sadness we share that Char Sidell passed away suddenly on February 24th. Even in retirement, she continued to contribute to our community with this column. Over the years, she served the MSLA in countless capacities including membership on the Executive Board and Conference Committee. Her definition of retirement also included volunteering three days a week as a librarian at Codman Academy. Please enjoy her final column and comply with Char’s request to share your ideas in the comments below.

I am looking forward to spending this winter break in Penang, Malaysia, where they will be celebrating Chinese New Year, beginning February 16 through March 2. In Malaysia and other countries outside of China, this holiday is also called the Spring Festival, or Lunar New Year. The holiday is based on the lunar calendar and its beginning is different every year, unlike our New Year celebration on January 1, which is based on the Gregorian calendar.

I have a few favorite picture books that I feel have withstood the test of time and are still relevant today. Many of the picture books on Chinese New Year in this country deal with stories around family preparations, celebrations, red bao envelopes, and the lion/dragon dance, all stories that are comfortable and understandable to the Chinese children of Chinese backgrounds that live here. I have also found some new books that I feel will add to your teaching experience that I would like to share with you. My goal is that each of you will find at least one new picture book to share with your students!

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Ask a Library Legend

2/27/2018

Valerie Diggs is the Librarian at Lowell Catholic High School, an Adjunct Professor at Salem State University,
and a former President of MSLA

How important is a yearly report? What sort of things would you put in it besides circulation stats, collection development and classroom visits? It seems like the sort of thing that I ought to have, but I need to motivate myself!

Ahh, the quintessential annual report! The document most dreaded in May/June when we know we should be creating and delivering this to our principals and other administrators or boards. It doesn’t have to be this way. Think of an annual report as the recording of a year-long journey that both you and the students in your school embarked on in September. Does an annual report garner any attention? Is it even read by anyone, you might ask? Well, if it is in Word, with bullet points and some pictures thrown in, you can guarantee that it will most likely be “filed away” with just a cursory glance.
So why bother? An annual report is one of the best advocacy tools you can create. Done right, it should be a chronicle of your school year, and as interactive as possible. Your library program deserves to be noticed. As Deb Kachel so aptly states: “A well-crafted annual report ... can be an effective advocacy tool not just for school administrators, but also as a vehicle to showcase the unique contributions of the school library program to parents, community members, teachers, and students.” Use the annual report to not only showcase your library program, but also as a self-evaluation tool. Have I accomplished my goals this school year? If not, then why not, and what could I have done better? Share the report widely, include statistics, but more importantly, include students, parents, teachers and other school community members learning, creating and sharing exciting new milestones.

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Tech Column: New Partnerships in the Library

2/27/2018

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

Earlier this year, our library team was approached by some teachers with a typical request: students were beginning a new project, and would need to do some research in the library and possibly get some help producing a product to show their learning. But what made this an unusual project for us was the subject teachers who had come to us: the Physical Education department was trying a new idea, project based learning. PBL was new for them, and working with the PE staff was new for us.

The project centered on functional exercise: design a workout program to support a specific goal, such as rehabbing an injured muscle, or developing skills needed for a sport like increasing flexibility or core strength. Students worked in groups to choose their goal and then came down to the library to begin their project.

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Elementary Column: Cooking up a Literary Lunch

2/27/2018

Wendy Garland is the Librarian at Avery Elementary School, in Dedham, MA,
and received a 2017 Super Librarian Award

Recipe for a Lunch Bunch
(Wherein I change the culture of the library, gain support from my principal and read a book or two)

Below follows my recipe for Lunch Bunch. It is a basic, easily sustainable program that does not break any new ground. What it does do is reflect the changing culture of our library and the growing support for our program. Lunch Bunch continues to be the most highly-attended library program and children vie for “their turn” for a literary lunch.

Lunch Bunch
Ingredients:
1 theme
2 read alouds
30 minute lunch
20ish students
Pinch of laughter
Splash of relaxation
Handful of Principal support
Well-stocked bins of condiments and silverware

Optional (but a great help):
Student helpers that stock the condiments & silverware
Wipes for cleaning surfaces (donated by parents)
Vacuum for under-the-table messes

Prep time: 5-10 minutes for book selection
Active time: 30 minutes
Serves up to 25

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Academic Column: What's Next? Educational Futurism and the School Library

2/27/2018

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

School librarians are already among the busiest people in the school. Teaching classes, prepping lessons, providing reader’s advisory services for their students and oftentimes faculty, reading review journals, ordering books, supplies and materials, and keeping the library up and running every single day. Many work without library aides and parent volunteers just aren’t the same. It’s a lot.

We have a research-based understanding of what good library programs look like; deep integration into the curriculum, collaborative planning to deliver instruction in inquiry-based learning, information and media literacy skills, technology integration, digital citizenship, fostering a love for reading and reading incentive programs, participation in school leadership activities, and many other aspects of teaching and learning. It’s a lot.

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Tech Column: Evaluating Your Ebooks, Why More Tech Isn’t Always the Answer

10/17/2017

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Margaret Schoen is a Library Teacher at Newton South High School
and received a 2017 Web Seal of Excellence.

Over the past few years, our team has been evaluating ebook platforms, readership, and purchasing as part of our professional goal. We’ve conducted surveys, run promotions, tested multiple platforms and compared costs. And we’ve come to what might be considered an unexpected conclusion: for our school, and our readers, more tech was not the answer. After all that analysis, we decided to cut back on our ebook platforms to get the most bang for our buck.

There were many steps on our journey. First up was simply to measure awareness. We had ebooks, but did students and faculty know it? For students who were using ebooks, what platforms were they using, what technology? We needed this data to decide how to move forward.

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Elementary Column: Summer Reading with our Public Library

10/17/2017

Wendy Garland is the Librarian at Avery Elementary School, in Dedham, MA,
and received a 2017 Super Librarian Award

My district’s Summer Reading took on a new, refreshing feel this year. The Reading Specialists and Librarians were given the freedom to develop our own Summer Reading program and we abandoned reading levels, book lists and logs, and reading minutes. Instead, we partnered with the Public Library and gave our students permission to read far and wide.

At my school we planned and launched the program at an assembly at the end of the school year which was hosted by the Student Council. One third grader shared with us some of her writing, why it was important to her and the story behind it. Next, members of the Public Library staff came to explain what Summer Reading looked like.

They shared with us how to "sign up" for Summer Reading.

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Academic Column: The Library of Congress: Primary Sources to Spark Inquiry

10/17/2017

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

Last summer I was able to tick something off my librarian bucket list by attending the Teaching with Primary Sources Program at the Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/teachers/tps/). The short version of the experience is that I loved it!

Our district Director of Teaching and Learning forwarded a promotional email she had received and we noticed that there was a new STEM program. She was supportive of my recruiting a team which was surprisingly easy. I attended a week for generalists and librarians, along with a physics teacher. The STEM week was attending by a biology and a chemistry teacher. This was truly a unique opportunity to work with disciplines that don’t typically have a lot of overlap at the high school level.

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Picture Book Column: Looking at Picture Books with Surprise Endings!

10/17/2017

Char Sidell is the K-4 Librarian at Codman Academy in Dorcheste.r
.

I am sure many of you are familiar with books with surprise endings. In this column, I’d like to try to introduce you to a few more - new books, and some older favorites of mine that may not be so familiar. I have used as one of my criteria for selection over my many years of experience presenting surprise-ending books with children, the books that once shared, never stay on the shelf!

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Ask a Library Legend

10/17/2017

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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

Given the adversity in our country this summer, what are some good ways to communicate unity and inclusion without appearing political? It can be subtle signs, big displays, or activities. (High school level)

This is a great question considering the events of the past few months and even in the very recent few weeks. How do we address unity and inclusion without being political? This is often a difficult task to accomplish, but I will attempt to answer this question under the umbrella of four actions or interventions.

Care
look after and provide for the needs of:
"he has numerous animals to care for"
synonyms: look after · take care of · tend (to) · attend to ·
(Oxford online)
How do we begin to “care” about those who we might see as not “included” or who are on the fringes?

Consciousness
the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world:
"consciousness emerges from the operations of the brain" (Oxford online)
What actions do we take to create awareness and “consciousness” of what is happening in our country and in the world?

Agency
Actions or interventions, especially such as to produce a particular effect: (Oxford online)
What actions can we take, as educators, to increase awareness while keeping politics at bay?

Dialog
Take part in a conversation or discussion to resolve a problem: (Oxford online)
What conversations should we be having in our schools and libraries to bring forward the practice of unity and inclusion?

Under the umbrella of the four actions (care, consciousness, agency and dialog) here are some of my thoughts:

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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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Elementary Column: Reading and Thinking with our Community

5/23/2017

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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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

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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Tech Column: Information Literacy in the Library Classroom

2/16/2017

Margaret Schoen is a librarian at Newton South High School.

You can hardly open a newspaper or look online these days without being confronted with the phenomenon of fake news. Politicians, media critics, librarians, educators - we’re all discussing the topic and wondering, how do we educate our children to deal with a world where much of the information they’re being bombarded with is designed to trick them?

In this month’s column I’m addressing how the library team at Newton South is working on this topic, but we’re also interested in hearing from you. What has your school been doing? Are there programs or practices you’ve found effective? Respond in the comments and share your stories.

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Elementary Column: Avery Elementary School’s Reading Without Walls Challenge

2/15/2017