Learning for Life (L4L)

AASL has a group of representatives from each of its affiliated state school library organizations who are responsible for helping their members implement Standards for the 21st Century Learner and Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Programs.  This initiative is called Learning for Life, or L4L. The group meets at each ALA Annual Conference and Midwinter Meeting to share the work they are doing in their states, along with achievements and challenges to their school library programs. MSLA's L4L Coordinator is Amy Short, Director of Library Media for the Boston Public Schools and also our Boston Area Co-Director on the MSLA Executive Board.

At the meeting at ALA Annual this year, we learned that we are not alone in our struggles to find qualified candidates for open positions and maintain school library programs, and that terrific work is being done in many states to promote the AASL Standards and Guidelines among affiliate members. L4L Coordinators have their own area on ALA Connect, an virtual meeting place where those involved in ALA and AASL initiatives, task forces and committees can collect and share information and support. L4L Coordinators use Connect to share the resources they have developed with their colleagues across the country.

Here is the report Amy submitted for today's meeting:

Successes in our state: We held the following L4L session at our Annual Conference. There were approximately 60 attendees at the session:  Learning4Life: Think, Create, Share, and Grow! What is ALA's "School Libraries @ the Core of Education"? Learn about this new initiative as well as how to navigate the American Association of School Librarians free tools, including the Learning 4 Life (L4L) Lesson Plan Database and the Common Core Crosswalk. Find out how you can use these tools to align your library program with the Common Core standards, collaborate for teacher and student success, and develop/implement SMART goals. Think, create, share, andgrow with L4L!

Bill S.1906 has been introduced on MSLA’s behalf by state legislators. Bill S.1906 establishes a commission to evaluate the status of school library programs in each school district in the Commonwealth in terms of staffing, materials, and program requirements or guidelines. The bill has been passed as an amendment to the MA House budget and prior to that, the MA Senate also passed it as a separate bill, so as soon as the Governor signs the budget, it will become official. Once that happens, the Guidelines will be referenced in developing long range goals for school library programs. 

MSLA has been working the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to develop a school librarian-specific performance evaluation tool. The committee working on this is creating an overlay document that adapts the teacher evaluation tool to make it more effective and specific and aligned with the Guidelines.

District-determined Measures (DDM’s) to be used for performance evaluationsare a hot topic in Massachusetts. The Tool for Real-time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (TRAILS) (http://www.trails-9.org/) is a MA DESE-approved DDM. MSLA holds monthly Twitter chats (#MSLA). One of our recent chats was about DDM’s. It was evident that from the number of chat participants and the even larger number of people who accessed the Twitter chat archive afterwards that our MSLA members are very interested in learning more aboutDDM’s. Therefore, we are planning a day-long professional development session around DDM’s for late summer/early fall, in time for school librarians to plan their SMART goals and measures for evaluation.

L4L Resources: Resources can be found on the MSLA website http://www.maschoolibraries.org/

Major problems facing our state: We are facing a major shortage of licensed school librarians to fill openings in Massachusetts; we have many openings and a very small pool of qualified applicants.

Next steps: One thing we might want to consider for the future is to recommend that librarians have one SMART Goal related to implementing the Standards or using the Guidelines. 

AASL Awards

AASL presented national awards Saturday morning and it was both a proud morning for Massachusetts and an inspiring morning for all attending.   MSLA members went early to cheer on Cathy Collins, librarian from Sharon HS, who was awarded AASL's Intellectual Freedom award.  However, we were stunned to hear about a second Massachusetts recipient from our state.  Rowe elementary school received a $50,000 grant from the More Than Words fund to rebuild its school library, which was destroyed by fire in 2012.

There were several other awards that were truly inspirational.
The Superintendent of Schools of Harlington County TX won administrator of the year for his remarkable support of libraries in his district where more than 90% of students live in poverty.  He told us that his mom was a library aide, and her commitment to seeing that her 6 kids were library users led to 3 of them receiving PhDs and becoming school superintendents in Texas.

The first Roald Dahl "Miss Honey" award for social justice award went to a remarkable librarian from Kansas who used "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" as a jumping off point to discuss child poverty with her elementary students.   Their culminating project was to sew blankets for babies born to female prisoners in Ecuador.  Kleenex were passed.

To read more about these people, as well as the bike mobile librarian, the school library program of the year and the amazing collaborators of Kutztown PA, look here: "AASL announces 2014 award recipients", American Library Association, April 22, 2014.

http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2014/04/aasl-announces-2014-award-recipients (Accessed June 29, 2014)

And....figure out what awards you ( or your library hero) is eligible for!  There IS fame and fortune for great school libraries.

what happens in Vegas

Today is the opening day of ALA Annual meeting.  Our first day was a busy one.

This afternoon, Anita Cellucci and I attended a meeting of library consortia group discussing the various national projects, including the Massachusetts e-book pilot project.  It was clear from listening to Greg Pronevitz of MLS that Massachusetts is a leader in this area.  Greg provided an update on the pilot project, describing how Massachusetts used a hybrid model including public, school and academic libraries to provide a statewide e-book collection, including materials from Baker & Taylor purchased with a perpetual license, Biblioboard for Open Source and locally created materials, and EBL for short-term loans.   Greg mentioned that that state budget support will be required for successful statewide rollout of the e-book collection.  He is waiting to hear shortly about funding from the state legislature.

The opening keynote speech is now being presented by Jane McGonigle, who is talking about the benefits of online gaming to engage students, solve world problems, and building collaborative communities.   She talked about the many positive attributes of gamers.

Games are now being used to solve real problems

Whale FM helps scientists translate whale noises into

Fold it is a game that helps scientists figure out how proteins can be folded to cure diseases and create medications

Block by block uses mine raft to design real public spaces, such as a playground in Nigeria

Tonight...our first AASL meeting to discuss national concerns of school librarians

Connecting struggling readers with accessible resources

One in 10 students has a recognized disability under Americans with Disabilities Act--physical, emotional, reading,etc.  This is 2 kids per class in most schools.

How do you keep these kids up to grade level with reading.

Resources available for struggling readers

• large print books are very useful (also can be great for struggling readers as they look easier)
• not as many for teens because they are not published in quantity
• e-readers can blow up fonts --make these available for kids to read; ipods and phones can also be made available
• audios with books
• databases--blow up page using CTRL+  many of the state databases have a text to speech icon and you can click that to have article read to you

Perkins focuses on general reading; Learning Ally focuses mostly on textbooks, but also has a collection of novels

learningally.org/massachusetts--you need to log in as a teacher and you can set up pages for your students--

Librarians can set up accounts for teachers and they can add students, indicate their students' disabilities and then see what is available for students

Kids with print disabilities can get accounts to download books

In Learning Ally:

• Classic audio is what you'd think
• audio with H shows text with audio
• can work in ios and droid devices or you can download software on to a PC or mac; there is a free app in the itunes store; NOT compatible with kindle, nook or chrome books

Perkins School for Blind--you don't have to be legally blind to use their materials and services--just people who have any issues with seeing print (even if they can see) and people with learning disabilities, and people who have trouble physically holding a book

You can download applications for your organization

You receive books with an audioplayer in the mail

NO cost--including no postage

They have a ton of books, magazines, 

Perkins Newsline--accesses today's newspaper by telephone or computer; there are over 300 newspapers and 25 magazines.  To get into this 888-882-1629  you need an access code that you get through the Perkins Library

Lots of books for children and teens can be downloaded from a website--there is an app for this BARD mobile

Reading device from Perkins will allow you to change speed and tone of the reader (and app replicates this)

On a school account you can have up to 5 devices linked to Perkins that you can use to download

SMART Goals and Elementary Students

Elementary school librarians in the elementary Newton Public Schools presented on how they crafted and rolled out a group goal to set a uniform standard for their students and program.

Newton Director Chris Swerling said that power in SMART goals comes from collaboration with other teachers, using observable evidence and data to show that you are focused on something that matters, and it can help to align your goal with the school improvement plan or the Common Core Standards.

Librarians Rachel Lundquist, Patti Karem and Heather Leoleis described how the group goal was developed. The librarians had developed a 50 question survey for their grade 5 students to assess if they had mastered the skills that the librarians believed students should know before heading to middle school.  The survey was delivered to students in a google doc and the information was collected in a way to see if there were areas that needed attention.

The librarians reviewed the data from this survey and discovered that having students locate materials in the library after finding a call number in the computer catalog was a weakness in their district.  Based on this evidence, they decided that this was a skill they wanted to work on through their SMART goal.  The librarians decided to target grade 4 and decided to set it as a two-year goal, and developed 4 pre-assessments.  Their pre-assessment indicated that students did understand how to read the library records (students knew what the call number meant), but they could not located the book in the library once they had the record.

What surprised you about the data
What are the next steps

The librarians then developed a number of action steps--some were common among all the librarians, others were used used by specific librarians tweaked to meet the needs of specific schools and collections.  Students were asked for input in how to solve the problem--for example, they asked to have some of the signage changed to help them find books more easily.

The data informed instruction, and this process with preassessing students and seeing the results at the end really does help to ensure that you are making progress with your students.  Some real benefits of this process helps to show your administrators the teaching and learning happening in the school learning.

All teachers were required to do the work for the goal--but librarians were given leeway to accomplish the goal in different ways.  For instance, meetings were held for those librarians who wanted to discuss action steps in detail after school, but librarians who felt confident about how they were moving forward were not required to attend these.

Jarrett Krosozcka

Jarrett Krosozcka, creator of the Lunch Lady series, described a childhood where he was constantly reading comic books, but sure that this was not really reading.  Yet, he pointed out that he walked a three mile  round trip to buy comic books each week.  He pointed out that this commitment does indicate that he probably was  reader.  He told us that he values that librarians because they have championed the graphic novel.  He also said he does not like the idea of promoting comic books and graphic novels as "gateway books" that kids will eventually give up as they discover "real books."  He, instead, sees these as a parallel universe where something such as Art Spiegelman's Maus is the pinnacle you want kids to reach.

Krosozcka described the path that led to his success as a children's book author and illustrator.  He showed us that from an early age, he'd been an artist and an illustrator--producing books and comic strips throughout out elementary school and high school.  He received support and encouragement throughout, and it led him to RSDI, where he concentrated on developing picture books.  He told us how an author visit from Jack Gantos encouraged him, how his grandparents saved his work, and how a teacher led him to become a reader through (of all things) Anne of Green Gables.

Korsozcka described how he creates the Lunch Lady books.  We saw the genesis of this series, the process he uses to create the page, and described what happens when you create a series.  His newest series Platypus Police Squad, he describes as a cross between Frog and Toad are Friends and Lethal Weapon.  He told us that he does his research by visiting cafeterias, watching platypus videos and riding in police cars.

Olga Nesi--Transformative Power of Care

Applying painstaking attention to an issue can really transform a program in your school.  Olga Nesi described how using incredible care helped her transform the reading culture in her school.

Nesi described her school's well-intentioned reading program as a "dead horse" and described the process she used to carefully, slowly and intentionally to shift the culture so that the entire school bought in to transforming her middle school to become a school where reading is valued, participation is increased, and EVERYONE participates in a culture of reading.

Nesi's step (which she describes as useful for any big library shift) include:

Form allies--who can you approach to help you?  look for natural allies (e.g., new teachers, reading staff, parents); think about THEIR goals for the shift--what concerns do they have, what outcome do they want to see

Prepare for change--bring a team together and discuss HOW this will happen; use great care in explaining why the change needs to happen (what is the dead horse?) and talk about how you can carefully and intentionally change the culture--get buy-in

Step 3:  Roll out--Olga described a new reading program that her team developed that got rid of many of the elements that were not working (book reports, summer reading assignments, etc).  Some of the components of her program included:

• book hooks--instead of book reports, students used short forms to keep track of what they read and these were stored in ELA classrooms; included short "what is the hook?" and 3 words/phrases that described the book
• language to describe books--Nesi used a list of adjectives that she overtly taught to kids through ELA classes to help them acquire a vocabulary they could use to discuss the book's pacing, tone, characters.  Her book "Getting Beyond Interesting" discusses how this works.
• reading bulletin boards--as school began EVERY bulletin board in the building had a message that the school was a READING school; Olga provided classes with book hook forms to post on the boards as students reported on what they were reading at the beginning of the school year (no more summer book reports)
• stress free books--in a school with many SPED students, Olga encouraged the kids to also include "stress free" books on book hooks--those considered below grade level, such as picture books and a list of stress-free book hooks is available to everyone
• book pamphlets and reading lists--at different points during the year, pamphlets and online promotions are created using students' book hooks and these are shared widely
• All school read--Principal purchased Diary of a Wimpy Kid book for everyone in the middle school--teachers and kids
• teachers as readers--Olga encourages all teachers (apart from reading with students) to read current YA books to introduce great new literature to faculty
• promoting the program to feeder schools--Olga goes out to the elementary schools in the spring before kids come to her school to promote reading and the library