Standard 4: Advocacy and Leadership
4.1.1. Networking with the Library Community: Candidates demonstrate the ability to establish connections with other libraries and to strengthen cooperation among library colleagues for resource sharing, networking, and facilitating access to information.
Artifacts:
Flygirl Booktalk Video
Flygirl Booktalk Script
It is common practice among educators to grumble about curriculum in-service days. Two days a year, the office of curriculum and instruction takes away planning time from us teachers and makes us sit through meetings and professional development sessions. Blech.
I know that I should actually feel disgruntled. I am a teacher who needs every second to prepare for my students. And yet, I love curriculum in-service days! I get to see all of my friends from other schools; we share what is and isn’t working in our classrooms; we all go out to lunch; and, most of the meetings actually give me useful ideas. If the school library in-service days allow me to network the way I do with my county English colleagues, I cannot wait to join the profession! And, I am pretty positive that the librarians in Frederick County network constantly. Take, for example, last year’s Black-Eyed Susan (BES) initiative. The SLM curriculum office and the English curriculum office banded together to put on a literacy fair in May based around the BES titles. In order to support this, the school librarians (and I!) taped booktalks which were then combined and sent to the librarians and reading specialists in each school. All of them were uploaded to each library’s website thus facilitating access for students across all grade levels. The project truly demonstrated the connections between libraries in Frederick County and strengthened cooperation among all as the librarians resource shared, networked, and facilitated access as a cohesive whole.
The library curriculum specialist, Mary Jo Richmond, included me in the invitation email in June of 2010. She needed 10 high school librarians to tape booktalks of the 10 BES titles. As in any group of adults, there were a few who were unwilling to take on this project. After the initial go around of invitations and email replies-all, there were still two books left. My school librarian, Renate, took on another title, and I responded back to the Mary Jo that I would read and booktalk Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith. I read the novel and wrote my booktalk over the summer. I sent the coordinator of the project my video-taped booktalk in September. Within a few weeks, she had completed combining the booktalks using Moviemaker and had sent all of them to each library. As a group, the librarians decided to display the video on their webpages and share it with English and Language Arts teachers. Renate came around to all of the ninth-grade English classrooms to share the video and discuss the literacy fair in October and ran the video during parent conferences in November, thus facilitating access to a number of community groups.
I felt so special to have been included in with these professionals as they worked as a group to create such a widespread product. Emails flew back and forth before the project was complete as librarians shared how they were organizing their booktalks and afterwards congratulated each other on the creativity of the booktalks. Truly, this project was a cooperative effort. I did not play a huge role in the project. I stepped in because they needed someone to take on a book title. In taking on a portion of this project, however, I shared my resources and began networking with the group of individuals who will soon be my county-level colleagues.
I grew from my involvement, certainly, because I discussed and shared with people new to my professional acquaintance. At the literacy fair, I talked with some reading specialists about the success of the videos and how their school’s teachers appreciated the outreach. I also had the opportunity to see how Renate uploaded the video to her library website thus providing the students with access to all ten booktalks. Prior to this project, the only booktalking I had really experienced was the project we had to complete for my Young Adult Literature course. With last year’s BES booktalks, I had the opportunity to observe many different styles and creative ideas. Since then, especially within my internship, I have done a number of booktalks: for the book club at my high school and for book share sessions in the middle school where I have spent my last month. Having seen so many booktalks by many different individuals last year helped me as I branched out and tried new ideas with my own booktalking.
This past September, Renate brought me with her to the curriculum meeting for school librarians. During this time, I was able to put faces with the names I remembered from last year’s networking. The meeting was a comfortable environment for me because it was smaller and more intimate than the English curriculum groups; everyone participated and contributed to discussions. The first step I took towards becoming a member of this group was when I booktalked Flygirl. The feeling of goodwill and collaborative spirit that I had noticed during the BES project was quite evident again during September’s meeting. I do not anticipate having many issues with strengthening my relationship with these individuals as I move into the library spectrum and begin to network and share my own resources.
I know that I should actually feel disgruntled. I am a teacher who needs every second to prepare for my students. And yet, I love curriculum in-service days! I get to see all of my friends from other schools; we share what is and isn’t working in our classrooms; we all go out to lunch; and, most of the meetings actually give me useful ideas. If the school library in-service days allow me to network the way I do with my county English colleagues, I cannot wait to join the profession! And, I am pretty positive that the librarians in Frederick County network constantly. Take, for example, last year’s Black-Eyed Susan (BES) initiative. The SLM curriculum office and the English curriculum office banded together to put on a literacy fair in May based around the BES titles. In order to support this, the school librarians (and I!) taped booktalks which were then combined and sent to the librarians and reading specialists in each school. All of them were uploaded to each library’s website thus facilitating access for students across all grade levels. The project truly demonstrated the connections between libraries in Frederick County and strengthened cooperation among all as the librarians resource shared, networked, and facilitated access as a cohesive whole.
The library curriculum specialist, Mary Jo Richmond, included me in the invitation email in June of 2010. She needed 10 high school librarians to tape booktalks of the 10 BES titles. As in any group of adults, there were a few who were unwilling to take on this project. After the initial go around of invitations and email replies-all, there were still two books left. My school librarian, Renate, took on another title, and I responded back to the Mary Jo that I would read and booktalk Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith. I read the novel and wrote my booktalk over the summer. I sent the coordinator of the project my video-taped booktalk in September. Within a few weeks, she had completed combining the booktalks using Moviemaker and had sent all of them to each library. As a group, the librarians decided to display the video on their webpages and share it with English and Language Arts teachers. Renate came around to all of the ninth-grade English classrooms to share the video and discuss the literacy fair in October and ran the video during parent conferences in November, thus facilitating access to a number of community groups.
I felt so special to have been included in with these professionals as they worked as a group to create such a widespread product. Emails flew back and forth before the project was complete as librarians shared how they were organizing their booktalks and afterwards congratulated each other on the creativity of the booktalks. Truly, this project was a cooperative effort. I did not play a huge role in the project. I stepped in because they needed someone to take on a book title. In taking on a portion of this project, however, I shared my resources and began networking with the group of individuals who will soon be my county-level colleagues.
I grew from my involvement, certainly, because I discussed and shared with people new to my professional acquaintance. At the literacy fair, I talked with some reading specialists about the success of the videos and how their school’s teachers appreciated the outreach. I also had the opportunity to see how Renate uploaded the video to her library website thus providing the students with access to all ten booktalks. Prior to this project, the only booktalking I had really experienced was the project we had to complete for my Young Adult Literature course. With last year’s BES booktalks, I had the opportunity to observe many different styles and creative ideas. Since then, especially within my internship, I have done a number of booktalks: for the book club at my high school and for book share sessions in the middle school where I have spent my last month. Having seen so many booktalks by many different individuals last year helped me as I branched out and tried new ideas with my own booktalking.
This past September, Renate brought me with her to the curriculum meeting for school librarians. During this time, I was able to put faces with the names I remembered from last year’s networking. The meeting was a comfortable environment for me because it was smaller and more intimate than the English curriculum groups; everyone participated and contributed to discussions. The first step I took towards becoming a member of this group was when I booktalked Flygirl. The feeling of goodwill and collaborative spirit that I had noticed during the BES project was quite evident again during September’s meeting. I do not anticipate having many issues with strengthening my relationship with these individuals as I move into the library spectrum and begin to network and share my own resources.