I'm going to apologize in advance for the length of this post. I know it violates every rule on web copy, but I had such an incredible experience at the School Library Journal Public Library Leadership Think Tank that I want to include everything I took away from it so that those of you who weren't there can also benefit.
The School Library Journal Public Library
Leadership Think Tank program was a day filled with inspirational speakers,
in-depth discussion, and collaboration amongst some of the leaders in the field
of youth librarianship. As I passed between Patience and Fortitude and stepped
into the New York Public Library's Bartos Forum, I was awed by the beauty and
history of the building in which we were meeting. Decades of innovation,
collaboration, and advocacy have gone into creating the institution of public
libraries, and I was about to become a part of that history.
As people
were checking in and chatting with colleagues, we were asked to move around the
room and contribute ideas and questions to the poster boards that were posted
with discussion topics for the break-out think tank sessions. These included:
•
Common
Core in the Public Library
•
Apps,
Digital Literacy, and Incorporating Technology into Programs & Services
•
Building
Vibrant Library Partnerships & Strong Collaborations
•
The First
5 Years: Storytimes, "New Storytimes", & Early Literacy/Learning
Initiatives
•
Igniting
the School-Public Library Relationship
•
Serving
& Engaging Children with Special Needs
•
Librarians
in the Wild: Taking Services Outside the Library
•
Readers,
Thinkers, Makers: Innovative Programs for Kids & Teens
•
Rethinking
the Physical: Makerspaces, Playspaces, STEM labs, & more
•
Looking
Ahead 5-10-15 Years: What Will Youth Services Look Like (and what should we be
doing now to prepare)
Rebecca T.
Miller, Editor-in-Chief of School Library
Journal welcomed us and spoke about how the room was intentionally filled
with representatives at many levels - children's librarians, teen librarians,
middle managers, and top administrators - because leadership happens at every
level of the organization and is most effective when supported from the top.
This program is intended to parallel the School
Library Journal Leadership Summit and she will be passing ideas back and
forth between these two programs. She noted that many of the best institutional
leaders started out in youth services because it is such a wonderful training
ground for effective leadership. Youth librarians are often expected to manage
their own budgets at very early stages in their careers, and "If you know
toddlers, you know the pressure to innovate".
Next to
take the stage was our keynote speaker, Pam Sandlian Smith, Director of
Anythink Libraries in Colorado. The nexus of Smith's presentation was that
Children's services professionals have the opportunity to expand this sense of
curiosity, innovation, and entrepreneurialism beyond the traditional borders.
What if the entire library was a learning laboratory? What if the library were
the center for community participation and engagement? Discovery and open
access are central to the Anythink philosophy and libraries should all strive
to be what Nina K. Simon termed participatory libraries - "places where
visitors can create, share, and connect with each other around content."
To this end, Anythink has eliminated fines and "dumped Dewey" (which
was met with a rousing round of applause). Their goal was to break down
barriers for their patrons and give them a "metaphorical hug when they
enter the library". She encouraged us to have goals, visions, and dreams
so as not to get stuck in the drudgery of daily responsibilities and to create
small transformations for the public - interactions with content and ideas that
enrich their lives. She shared examples of things as simple as their Community
Valentine where patrons are encouraged to add heart-shaped sticky notes to a
board declaring what they love to more involved Experience Zones including the
embryology zone which is both mesmerizing and educational for kids and adults
and urban gardens on the property of the library which are more than just
vegetables; they're about growing the community. She stressed the importance of
"bringing play into the workplace" because play is our brain's way of
learning.
Creativity
and innovation are important elements of success, and they inspire this in all
members of their staff (from pages to board members) through their annual Tech
Fest. We viewed videos that the staff created during Tech Fest, and you could
feel the excitement and fun they had in working with technology that many
people might feel intimidated or overwhelmed by. She showed pictures of their
various media labs but stressed that they should NOT be about the equipment.
They are a natural extension of traditional youth services and environments
where kids, teens, and adults can build relationships with mentors. During the
Q&A, a participant asked Smith how she created this culture of creativity.
Smith answered that you have to "focus your energy and attention on the
creative, thoughtful problem-solving early adopters and inventors in your
organization. The 6-9% of the grumpy naysayers do not get to drive the
bus." Anythink also relies on "barn raising" to solve problems.
Bring everyone together, do the dirty work, and then celebrate the
accomplishment. She closed by saying that all children's librarians should
consider becoming directors because we have the skill sets already, and we could
then be in charge of allocating more resources to youth services because
"our future depends on the children's room."
I had the opportunity to chat one-on-one with Pam Sandlian Smith about the roadblock of staff resistance, and she shared with me a wonderful example from Anythink. They offered multiple trainings over the course of many years on how to download e-books to e-readers because staff members were constantly being asked by patrons to assist with this issue. For many of their staff, the training just was not sinking in, so she asked her Foundation to provide $50 rebates to staff that purchased their own e-readers. What they found is that when staff had a personal investment in the technology, they were so much more willing to retain the information they were learning, and it solved the problem they were having with staff training.
Next we
turned to a panel discussion Silo Free:
Creating Collaborations that Make Stronger Libraries. The panelists gave
examples from each of their organizations on how they utilized collaborations
to break down silos and reinvent library services, spur innovation, and better
serve their patrons.
Rachel Payne, Coordinator of Early Childhood Services at Brooklyn Public Library
Brooklyn
Public Library began a "Saturday Stories" program when they realized
that they were only seeing child care groups, not parents, during their weekly
programs. They incorporated parenting tips, modeled positive literacy-based
interactions, STEM activities, and collaborated with the Department of
Education which resulted in evidence reflecting that kids showed early literacy
indicators after participating in the program. The biggest take-away for me was
that by rebranding the program "Ready, Set, Kindergarten",
participation increased 30% because parents are looking for school readiness
programs. It changed their mindset from "it would be nice to go to
Saturday Stories if we have time" to "We have to go to Ready, Set,
Kindergarten."
Susan Modak, Librarian, Montgomery County Public Libraries,
MD
Susan
developed a weekly program for teen parents that modeled literacy behaviors,
included larger cultural experience, and offered take home books and crafts.
What really struck me most about Susan's library is that they have a separate
building just for children that they call the "noise library" where
children are not only allowed to be themselves and create noise but are in fact
encouraged to do so.
Nick Higgins, Associate Director of Community Outreach, NYPL
Nick
Higgins is in charge of a program that provides services to families affectedby incarceration on Rikers Island including literacy programs based on Every
Child Ready to Read, parenting classes, and services for mothers who give birth
while incarcerated. One example is the Daddy and Me podcast where dads get to
record themselves reading a story to their child. He underscored the necessity
of these programs with the following staggering statistics: 2.7 million
children nationwide have incarcerated parents. 100,000 of those are in NY state
and 50,000 are in NY City. The total daily population of teen inmates is
14,000. Aside from the initial ambivalence of the inmates, one of the biggest
challenges this program faces is the hostility of the Riker's Island staff who
believe inmates have forfeited their rights to information.
Kathy Bennet, Library Lead Teacher, Metro Nashville Public
Schools
Through Limitless Libraries, the Nashville
public and school libraries have created a partnership that provides seamless
information access by sharing collections, combining resources, and allowing
school IDs to serve as public library cards. She emphasized that this was
"not a takeover but a partnership" and that "public and school
librarians speak different dialects of the same language." Creating a
shared library catalog allows students to reserve books from the public library
which are then delivered to the schools using the school transportation system.
The result is that 112,000 public library items have been delivered to the
schools so far this year, and it has actually resulted in an increase in the
school libraries' circulation statistics.
The
overarching theme of these programs is that collaboration breeds collaboration,
and it's not about the organizations
you want to work with but about the people
in those organizations. Start small and create strong personal relationships,
and they will grow into something more widespread. It is so important to not
develop preconceived ideas before you actually meet the people you will be
serving and to truly listen to what they need and want.
During
lunch, we were treated to a presentation from John Hunter, author of World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements.
Over 35 years ago, John Hunter developed the World Peace Game, an interactive
political science game that puts students into various roles as members of five
different countries in order to solve real-world issues. The impact that this
game has had on the problem-solving abilities of the players is so remarkable
that an independent film crew created a movie about it. The film has been
screened four times at the Pentagon because of the lessons learned. Students
learn and collaborate and solve high level problems without even knowing that
they are doing those things. Hunter spoke about how there is a moral stigma
attached to not being right and that the World Peace Game removes that stigma
and allows kids to try experientially with collaborative wisdom. Hunter's
presentation was awe-inspiring and humbling at the same time. Seeing these
children solve issues that confound our top political leaders with such joy and
humility is what 21st century learning is all about and what all educators
should strive to achieve. We received a copy of the book, and I will be routing
it to all the staff in my library.
Lynn
Lobash spoke next about MYLibraryNYC which is a program very similar to Limitless Libraries in Nashville. The
NYPL IT staff worked with Bibliocommons to build a connector between NYPL's
catalog, Milennium, and the schools' catalog, Destiny, to create a shared
catalog. Students receive NYPL Student Cards which offer fine free borrowing, 3
week loan periods, up to 15 holds, and 50 items checked out at a time. The
Educator Card also offers fine free borrowing but increases the loan period to
60 days and allows up to 50 holds and 100 items checked out at a time. NYPL
librarians also ran statistics to determine which non-fiction books had the
lowest circulation and used those books to create teacher sets based on
subjects as well as class sets which include 30 copies of a single book. The
success of this program, as with Limitless
Libraries, is that the items are delivered to the schools. NYPL does this
through a partnership with UPS. Lynn is more than willing to share the
marketing materials and lessons learned from this program with any library
system simply by emailing her at lynnlobash@nypl.org.
The small
group think tank portion allowed participants to choose the topic they were
most interested in pursuing for more in-depth discussion. At the end of the breakout
session, the takeaways were shared.
Common
Core in Public Libraries (the group I participated in)
•
Common Core (CC) are national standards developed by a
private group of educators adopted by 46 state governments that cover grades
K-12
•
CC shifts the mindset from teaching to the test and knowing
the right answer to teaching skills
•
CC testing will commence in the 2014-2015 school year
•
The timeline for when subjects will be taught is shifting
much younger (ie. instead of learning about the solar system in 5th grade,
they're not doing it in 2nd grade)
•
CC will help standardize education across states which will
assist military kids and foster kids who change schools on a regular basis and
move from state to state
•
"informational texts" in Common Corespeak =
non-fiction in libraryspeak
•
CC requires that students in middle school be reading 50%
"informational texts" and by high school that number increases to 80%
•
Roadblocks:
•
Teachers are not being well-trained and are as lost as the librarians
•
Teachers fixate on the "suggested titles" list
provided in the CC guidelines (which are now becoming quickly outdated) and
want only those specific titles instead of focusing on the subject and being
open to suggestions for additional titles
•
Teachers do not have time to meet/communicate with
librarians which creates a Catch-22 of "librarians can not help put
together subject resources if the teachers do not tell us what subjects they
are working on."
•
Solutions:
•
Teach teachers how to talk about the non-fiction books with
their students
•
To get around the roadblock of a lack of communication from
teachers, go directly to the Curriculum Director and ask for a timeline of
assignments
•
Do some digging yourself and check school websites for
summer reading lists or assignment announcements
•
Offer a workshop (and ask the school district/DOE to have it
count as Continuing Education to incentivize attendance) on Common Core
techniques
•
Join the local school librarians organization in your
community and attend their regular meetings
•
Check out the Information
Fluency Continuum for 3 benchmarked literacy skills
•
Read Mary Ann Cappiello's Teaching with Text Sets
•
Read your state's Common Core from cover to cover and
familiarize yourself with it
•
Booklist and School Library Journal both have special
articles and sidebars highlighting books that meet CC standards for help in
collection development
•
Be confident in the fact that librarians are children's
literature experts already. We can match our existing collection with CC
standards and student needs. Don't worry so much about what's behind CC.
Librians in
the Wild: Outreach
•
Do not reinvent the wheel - find out who is already doing
what you want to do and contact them for advice.
•
Let people say what makes them uncomfortable. Acknowledge
that and then brainstorm how to move forward.
•
Build relationships in groups for succession planning. That
way if/when the main contact leaves your institution, the relationships do not
languish.
Apps/Digital
Literacy
•
There should be a librarian competency for using apps
•
Technology often forces us to rethink the physical space and
how it is used
•
Level It
Books app allows users to scan book ISBNs to learn their Lexile
& Guided Reading, and Grade Level Equivalents.
•
Technology should be part of the program not the whole
program. When all else fails (like your wifi) go to the original app - the
book!
Makerspaces
•
Makerspaces are "designated spaces for collaborative
learning from community experts filled with equipment not typically found in
libraries that results in the creation of content."
•
STEM programs are not something new that you have to add to
the mix. You are probably already doing them - planting trees, building with
LEGOs, Minecraft, etc
Serving
Kids with Special Needs
•
Staff training is vital in understanding the challenges that
kids with special needs face
First
5 Years
•
Seek out grants from community organizations like Rotary
& Junior League which have literacy mandates
•
Storytimes need less rules. Do not turn people away if they
show up late.
•
When storytimes become stale, mix it up with things like New
Years Eve countdown to noon, Dads & Donuts to engage male caregivers, bring
in outside Arts performers, etc.
Public/School
Collaboration
•
How do you ignite the relationship when there is no school
librarian?
•
When starting a new relationship/collaboration, be specific.
What do you need? What can you give? Be ready with stories and details.
•
Put a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in place to
formalize roles in inter-organizational partnerships
Matt de la Pena closed out the event with a sweetly self-deprecating story about his
journey to books and becoming an author. Despite moving to America to give his
family a better life, de la Pena's Mexican father was only able to speak
Spanish at home. However, the children were punished for speaking Spanish
because in de la Pena's father's opinion, the children would only succeed if
they were perceived as being "white Americans" like their mother. This
confusion over language led to de la Pena struggling as a reader and defining
himself as a non-reader. His takeaway is that we all have to overcome
definitions in our lives, but the hardest to overcome are those we place upon
ourselves. This has implications within libraries because of the institutional
walls we create by limiting ourselves to the definitions of our department or
job title. It was not until a college professor specifically told him to read The Color Purple, and it moved him to
tears, that he considered himself a reader. Now as an adult he speaks to high
school kids about vulnerability, guilt, working class shame, and the journey
books can take you on. One young man was so inspiring to him that he became the
real life Miguel from de la Pena's We
Were Here.
Overall,
this was a thought-provoking and inspiring day. We were given time at the end
to network, and I have come away with a new fellowship of youth services
librarians (including a fellow Eurekan from the very first class) who I may
never have connected with had I not attended this event. I know that we will
keep the conversations that were started at this event going and help spread
them to our colleagues. It has also expanded the network through which to
promote the wonderful things that we are doing in California. The one thing I
was disappointed about was the fact that there were so few school librarians in
attendance. I feel that in order to truly address some of these roadblocks that
we have identified, we need to bring those stakeholders to the table. Despite
that, I have a renewed sense of excitement and possibility, as well as a long
list of "to do"s that I will be taking back to my library.
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