Jen Varney is the President elect of MSLA and the Librarian at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School in Cambridge.
The beginning of the school year is stressful enough, even without the changes that a pandemic brings! Over the summer, many members were looking for resources and best practices for running and maintaining a school library within Covid-19 safety guidelines (and how to convince their administrations!). Therefore, during the week of August 10th, MSLA hosted a “Reopening Plan PLC.”
Participants were placed into small groups by grade level with volunteer facilitators. All participants met by Zoom on August 10th and received their group assignments and a plan template. To create the template, members of MSLA’s Professional Learning committee brainstormed a list of questions / issues that librarians may need to consider when planning for the year. Questions included topics such as who to talk to, how to handle materials, and what changes need to be made to the space. Then Professional Learning Chair Alida Hanson put all the questions and resources into an easy-to-use Google Slides template.
The groups met for a week - some groups met informally for an exchange of ideas, while others met daily and worked on every question in the template. These small groups allowed participants to really delve into the minutiae of a reopening plan with like-minded educators.
We know that “reopening” is a work in progress, and the template is still available for anyone to use! It is linked on the MSLA website: https://www.maschoolibraries.org/reopening-plan.html. There is also a “Reopening Plan Repository” if you’d like to see some examples or reopening plans - thank you to members who agreed to share their plans!
Wherever you are in your reopening process, good luck in this strangest of years!
The groups met for a week - some groups met informally for an exchange of ideas, while others met daily and worked on every question in the template. These small groups allowed participants to really delve into the minutiae of a reopening plan with like-minded educators.
We know that “reopening” is a work in progress, and the template is still available for anyone to use! It is linked on the MSLA website: https://www.maschoolibraries.org/reopening-plan.html. There is also a “Reopening Plan Repository” if you’d like to see some examples or reopening plans - thank you to members who agreed to share their plans!
Wherever you are in your reopening process, good luck in this strangest of years!