Tag Archives: evidence-based practice

Advocacy Is Not Optional

Posted on by

Chapter 8 Advocacy by Kristin Fraga Sierra and TuesD Chambers
Blog post by Judi Moreillon

“Spreading the message for stakeholders to advocate for the program is an essential activity for today’s school librarian, particularly during school closures” (Sierra and Chambers 123).

Kristin and TuesD began their chapter with a note about the critical need for advocacy, particularly in times of stress and change such as the school closures that occurred while they were writing Chapter 8.

In their experience (and in my own), school librarians who are leaders must be intentional about communicating and building relationships with library stakeholders in order to develop a team of advocates who have first-hand experience with the value of working with a state-certified school librarian and providing students with access to the full range of resources available through the school library program.

Advocacy is not optional.

Creating the Welcoming Space
Before communicating the value of the library program, the librarian must create a space in the library that serves all students, educators, administrators, and families—all library stakeholders. These are some strategies for building a space for belonging:

  • Focus on students first;
  • Listen intently to library stakeholders when they express their needs;
  • Distribute marketing tools such as surveys to collect feedback.

In all cases, make changes to the policies, physical space, programs, and teaching and learning opportunities based on feedback from library stakeholders.

Communication Strategies
The coauthors provide many examples of public relations communication strategies that build library stakeholders knowledge of the value of the library program. These are some:

  • Newsletters with section tailored to the needs of specific stakeholders;
  • One-page infographics that summarize the influence and impact of the library program on learning and teaching;
  • Flyers and invitations to literacy events and teaching and learning opportunities offered in the library space;
  • Social media posts that promote books and share the learning experiences of students’ literacy-focused clubs;
  • And more.

Building Relationships
In every aspect of their work, school librarians must be intentional relationship builders. Putting people first is a leadership behavior.

Whether this focus is evidenced through policies such as late fees or lost materials, providing diverse resources to equitably meet the needs all educators and students, or teaching and learning activities that are inclusive of multiple perspectives, the focus on people means that school librarians will build a cadre of advocates as an organic aspect of their work. Others will have first-hand experiences of how the work of the school librarian and the resources and activities in the library program made a difference in their learning and teaching.

“Strong advocacy work is absolutely necessary to the survival of the school library and is a core, undeniable element to the position of the school librarian” (Sierra and Chambers 124). (Sierra and Chambers 124)

Responding to School- and District-level Priorities
While school librarians will have particular areas of expertise and interest, if they are to be successful, they must align their work with the perceived needs of the school and district. They must be able to tell a “library story” that matters to their decision-maker stakeholders

“We need to keep in mind that library numbers and statistics
are pretty meaningless to anyone else unless they are connected
to your school and/or district priorities”
(Len Bryan cited in Sierra and Chambers 129).

This does not mean stepping away from the work of school librarianship and serving as a reading intervention teacher or technology coach throughout the school day. Rather it means, showing administrators with those needs that the work school librarians do will help them reach their goals. In these cases, improve students’ reading proficiency and students’ and educators’ use of educational technology.

This means teaching and coteaching with classroom teachers to achieve student learning targets, assessing student learning outcomes, and determining how to improve instruction in order for more students or all students to reach standards-based learning goals.

With these data in hand, school librarians will demonstrate to administrators how their work matters, and administrators will understand and value school librarians’ impact on teaching and influence on student learning.

Reflection Question
“What types of advocacy efforts have you led or been a part of in your career or schooling experience and what were the outcomes?” (Sierra and Chambers 137).

Work Cited

Sierra, Kristin Fraga, and TuesD Chambers. 2021. “Advocacy.” In Core Values in School Librarianship: Responding with Commitment and Courage, ed. Judi Moreillon, 123-138. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

Early Childhood and Family Literacy

Posted on by

Book Cover: Vamos a leer/Read to MeI am passionate about the importance of early childhood and family literacy. When I served as an elementary school librarian and a K-5 literacy coach, I had the opportunity to take action to influence the literacy practices of the children, families, and educators in our learning community.

I wrote about this in my March 8, 2021 blog post: Literacy Partners Become Advocates and in an article that appeared in the March/April issue of the International Literacy Association’s Literacy Today magazine: “School Librarians as Literacy Partners: Take Action on the What’s Hot in Literacy Report.”

Practices in Early Childhood Literacy
Every kindergarten and first-grade classroom teacher and elementary school librarian can identify children who have been enculturated into literacy practices before coming to school. They may not know the alphabet and letter sounds, but they possess the basic building blocks of literacy. They know:

  • how to hold a book;
  • how to turn pages from right to left and move their eyes from left to right on a double-page spread;
  • that the squiggly lines of the page are words;
  • that words have meaning;
  • illustrations mean something and reflect or extend the meaning of the words in the book;
  • how to listen and attend to a book as it’s being read to them; and
  • that stories are communication tools that people use to share their thoughts, ideas, emotions, and experiences.

They possess this knowledge because a proficient reader read to them and talked with them about books and stories. This is why books such as Read to Me/Vamos a leer (Star Bright Books 2004) are shared in so many early childhood literacy programs and are important in promoting family literacy.

Children who possess the knowledge that comes from experiences with books are ready for kindergarten or first grade. They are prepped for literacy learning while their peers who lack this foundational knowledge are not yet ready to learn the alphabet, letter sounds, and more.

Research in Early Literacy
As an academic and a grandmother, too, I follow research in early literacy learning. Two recent studies have important information for parents and educators of young children.

On May 10, 2021, The New York Times reported on a study that I may not have otherwise seen: “The Power of Pre-K” by Dave Leonhardt. The article is subtitled: “President Biden wants universal pre-K. A large new study examines its likely effects.”

The Boston pre-K study is a rare experimental study in education because the children under investigation were placed in preschool through a lottery system. (Read “The Long-term Effects of Universal Preschool in Boston” by Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Parag Pathak, and Christopher Walters.)

As in previous studies of Head Start children, this study found that the participants did not do noticeably better on standardized tests in elementary school, middle school or high school than did their peers who did not attend preschool.

However, the lottery preschool students demonstrated advantages in other key social and emotional indicators that are important to success in school and in life. The outcomes for the lottery students were evident in terms of better behavior. 70% of the lottery students graduated from high school while only 64% of non-lottery students did so. Lottery students were less likely to be suspended from school or incarcerated. These positive effects crossed racial and ethnic groups and the boys who had preschool experience did a bit better than the girls.

In another study, “Predictors of Reading Ability Among Ten-Year-Olds: Poverty (negative), School Libraries (positive), Instruction (zero), Early Literacy (zero), Christy Lao, Sy-ying Lee, Jeff McQuillan, and Stephen Krashen studied students’ 2006, 2011, and 2016 reading test scores based on The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), an international comparative assessment that measures student learning in reading.

These researchers found that the effect of poverty was negative in all three years and the positive effect of the presence of school libraries (access to books) was significant in two studies and fell just short of significant in the third.

Their study also showed that instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness, which they call early literacy, did not result in a significant positive impact on PIRLS test scores. (They did, however, suggest a positive correlation between the amount of parental reading and SES both times they were investigated.)

Research Informing Practice
Taken together, preschool programs that promote social and emotional learning and elementary schooling that includes access to school libraries in a winning combination for reading achievement and school and life success.

To those two studies that suggest best practices in childhood literacy, I would add, based on first-hand experience, preschool experiences that include books and interactive reading. I would also add school libraries led by school librarians who know how to connect students with books. School “librarians have the training needed to identify and purchase the highest quality books and resources at all reading proficiency levels, in all genres and multiple formats. A well-funded school library collection reflects a commitment by the school, school district, and community to serving all students and families at school and at home” (Moreillon 2021, 11).

And through instructional partnerships with classroom, school librarians teachers also provide students with meaningful opportunities for reading for meaning, to learn, and pursue the answers to their questions.

All together, these are important contributors to students’ success.

I believe in research informing practice AND I also believe, as Ross Todd so eloquently stated, that practice must also inform research.

“Research informing practice and practice informing research
is a fundamental cycle in any sustainable profession”
(Todd 2007, 64).

The conversation between practitioners in the field and researchers must be on-going, respectful, and impactful. Research must be enacted in practice for it to be meaningful. In order to continually improve our practice, school librarians and other educators’ work must be informed by the latest research. And practitioners who daily serve the literacy needs of young learners must hold all research up to our first-hand experience the youth.

Works Cited

Gray-Lobe, Guthrie, Parag Pathak, and Christopher Walters. 2021. “The Long-term Effects of Universal Preschool in Boston. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Economics Department.” https://seii.mit.edu/research/study/the-long-term-effects-of-universal-pre_school-in-boston/

Lao, Christy, Sy-ying Lee, Jeff McQuillan, and Stephen Krashen. 2021. “Predictors of Reading Ability Among Ten-Year-Olds: Poverty (negative), School Libraries (positive), Instruction (zero), Early Literacy (zero).” (in press in Language Magazine)

Leonhardt, David. 2021. “The Power of Pre-K.” The New York Times (May 10). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/10/briefing/universal-pre-k-biden-agenda.html

Moreillon, Judi. 2021. “School Librarians as Literacy Partners: Take Action on the What’s Hot in Literacy Report.” Literacy Today (March/April): 10-11. Available at http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/b46eaa78#/b46eaa78/12

Todd, Ross. 2007. Evidence-based Practice in School Libraries: From Advocacy to Action. In School Reform and the School Library Media Specialist, eds. S. Hughes-Hassell and V.H. Harada, 57-78. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.

School Librarianship in the Time of Coronavirus, Part 2

Posted on by

Image: Equity spelled out in Scrabble letters.I believe a high-quality education is a human right, and literacy is the foundation for all learning. From my perspective, every student and educator in every school across the country and around the globe deserves to have a literacy learning leader in the person of a certified school librarian. However, lack of funding and misplaced priorities at the state-, district-, and school-site levels have resulted in fewer and fewer professional school librarians and a loss of equitable education for all.

Over the past decade, and in some cases longer, many state legislatures have chipped away at district public school funding. (For the unconscionable situation in my state, see the Arizona Center for Economic Progress’s 5/27/20 “K12 Budget Webinar.”) With ever-shrinking funds, school districts have been put in the position of making difficult choices and far too many times school librarian positions have been seen as “extras” and have been eliminated.

In addition, and as unfortunate, our local reliance on property tax-based funding for public schools undermines an equitable education for all. This perpetuates a system that results in “have” and “have not” districts. Districts with less tax revenue struggle to provide complete academic programs, including well-resourced, fully-staffed school libraries, up-to-date technology tools, art, music, and more.

Site-based hiring practices have also negatively impacted school librarian positions. Without leadership from district-level leaders, far too many site-level administrators fail to understand the value of having a professional educator guiding the literacy learning that takes place through the largest, most well-equipped classroom in the school—the school library. If cutting librarians is based on their poor job performance, then the appropriate response would be to put them on plans of improvement or replace them rather than depriving students, educators, and families of professional library services.

What Is a Librarian to Do?
The school closures of spring 2020 created an opportunity for school librarians to demonstrate to administrators, colleagues, and families their many contributions to student learning outcomes whether or not anyone had access to the physical space of the library.

It is in that context that I share indicators that demonstrate the roles effective school librarians fill in their learning communities as leaders, instructional partners, teachers, information specialists, and program administrators. In these five roles, they:

Leader
Culture of Learning

  • Create a sense of belonging, ownership, and inclusion in the physical and virtual spaces of the library.
  • Design a welcoming and universally accessible online library presence.
  • Provide and advocate for equitable access to diverse resources representing all cultures/identities and divergent points of view in multiple genres and formats.

Library Advocacy & Support

  • Collaborate with administrators to assess students’ and classroom teachers’ needs and develop and implement plans to address them.
  • Communicate clearly and frequently with library stakeholders (students, other educators, administrators, families, and greater community) in order to share the impact of school library resources and the library program on student learning.
  • Seek learning community support for library initiatives to improve student learning.

Instructional Partner and Teacher
Collaborative Planning

  • Reach out to teaching teams and attend face-to-face and virtual team meetings to support colleagues’ teaching goals.
  • Reach out to classroom teachers and specialists to coplan and integrate the resources of the library into the classroom curriculum.

Integrated, Collaborative Teaching

  • Coteach with other educators whether face to face or online to engage students in critical thinking, deep learning, and the ethical use of ideas and information.
  • Co-assess student learning outcomes with other educators to improve instructional strategies and resources and ensure continuous improvement for students and educators.

Reading and Information Literacy Instruction

  • Promote reading for information and for personal enjoyment.
  • Coteach how to locate, find, analyze, and use information.
  • Coteach making meaning from texts in all formats (reading comprehension).

Information Specialist
Information Access and Delivery

  • Reach out to colleagues to support educators’ and students’ use of digital devices and tools and electronic resources.
  • Integrate the paper print and virtual resources of the library into the school’s face-to-face and remote academic learning program.
  • Provide instruction to support students and educators in using electronic resources ethically and safely whether from home or from school.
  • Provide online tutorials to support students and educators in using electronic resources effectively.

Program Administrator
Library Management

  • Align the library vision, mission, and goals with those of the school and the district.
  • Use library management software to generate reports and use data to improve library services.

In-School and Remote Collection Aligned to Curriculum, Classroom Teacher, and Student Needs

  • Assess and develop the paper print and electronic library collection to meet the instructional needs of colleagues.
  • Assess and develop the library collection to meet the academic and personal reading needs of students.

Funding & Budget Management

  • Write grants and seek funding to provide students and other educators with resources, including technology devices and tools.
  • Manage the library budget responsibly and help guide district-level purchases to meet the academic program and personal learning needs of students, educators, and families.

Taking Action
Serving as an effective school librarian is a complex job. It requires a passion for learning and literacy and a steadfast commitment to serve the entire learning community. There are exemplary librarians serving at this high level across the U.S. and around the globe. For two examples, see last week’s post School Librarianship in the Time of Coronavirus, Part 1.

If you are an effective school librarian or other educator, please share with me what I missed. If you are a school administrator or school librarian educator, consider how we can shore up the school librarian profession to ensure that all students, educators, and families have equitable, high-quality library services.

Image Credit

Wokandapix. “Equity Fairness Equitable Letters.” Pixabay.com. https://pixabay.com/photos/equity-fairness-equitable-letters-2355700/

Assessment Twitter Chat

Posted on by

This fall graduate students in “IS516: School Library Media Center” are participating in bimonthly Twitter chats. The chats are based on the pull quotes from chapters in Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy (ALA 2018).

We invite you to join us our chat on Monday, October 28, 2019 from 7:00 to 7:30 p.m. Central Time. Chat questions are posted on this blog on the Wednesday before our Monday chats.

October 28, 2019: #is516 Twitter Chat: Assessment

“The integration of authentic learning tasks with diagnostic assessment and project monitoring is a powerful education instrument for [instructional] change and student achievement” (Moreillon, Luhtala, and Russo 2011, 20).

Assessment to Improve Learning
Assessment must always be conducted in the service of learning. When educators conceive of learning as an on-going journey that students and educators take together, they can keep their focus on assessments as measures of both students’ development and educators’ effectiveness. School librarians can maximize their instructional leadership by developing assessment tools, assessing student learning outcomes, and reflecting on the effectiveness of their instruction with coteachers, who are trusted colleague. These activities lead to evidence-based practice.

During coplanning, classroom teachers and school librarians must determine “how” knowledge, literacies, skills, and dispositions growth data will be collected, analyzed, and used to improve schooling for future ready students. Educators use formative and summative assessments and reflection activities to measure student growth.

Formative assessments monitor student growth and provide students with timely feedback so they can improve their work. Formative assessments also inform educators’ subsequent instructional decisions.

Educators use summative assessments at the end of an inquiry unit and are often represented as final project grades. Reflective activities integrated throughout the inquiry process help students understand their own learning process and improve their ability to transfer learning to new contexts.

Rather than using traditional standardized, multiple choice, and fill-in-the-blanks tests to assess students’ content knowledge, educators use performance-based measures to assess how students apply future ready learning in real-world, authentic contexts. The effectiveness of performance-based assessments is determined by how well students can use them to guide their learning process and self-assess their progress as well as their final product or performance.

#is516 Chat Questions
These are the questions that will guide our chat (for copy and paste).

Q,1: Why is self-assessment important for students? #IS516

Q.2: How do educators assess students’ dispositions? #IS516

Q.3: What would you ask a supervisor to observe during classroom-library collaboration for instruction? #IS516

Q.4: What are your strategies for reflecting on your own instructional practice? #IS516

Please respond with A.1, A.2, A.3, A.4 and bring your ideas, resources, experience, questions, and dilemmas to our conversation so we can learn with and from you!

For previous chat questions and archives, visit our IS516 course wiki page.

Thank you!

Work Cited

Moreillon, Judi, Michelle Luhtala, and Christina Russo. 2011. “Learning that Sticks: Engaged Educators + Engaged Learners.” School Library Monthly 28 (1): 17-20.

School Librarian Evaluation

Posted on by

Episode 7: Assessment (Evidence-based Practice) Virtual Podcast Interview with Kelly MillerIf school librarians are to achieve their capacity as leaders in their schools, it is their charge to influence the practices of their colleagues. As noted in Chapter 2: Job-Embedded Professional Development, coteaching is an ideal context in which educators organically practice reciprocal mentorship. Coteachers learn with and from one another as they guide, monitor, and assess student learning outcomes.

If school librarians are to collect direct measures, “they must be proactive in creating the conditions in which they can collect, analyze, and use evidence of their impact on student learning” (Moreillon 2016, 30). In short, in order to maximize their leadership, school librarians must seek out instructional partnerships, and they must coplan, coteach, and coassess student learning outcomes.

And in the best of all possible worlds, school librarian evaluators would observe them and provide actionable feedback in the context of coteaching. I was fortunate in my career to have site-level administrators who, with the classroom teacher’s permission, observed me during cotaught lessons. In several cases, our pre-evaluation conferences were conducted with the other educator present. In all cases, the post-evaluation conferences were one-on-one conversations between my evaluators and me.

Readiness for Coteaching
Jennifer Sturge, the Teacher Specialist for School Libraries and Instructional Technology for Calvert County (MD) Public Schools published an article in the January/February issue of Knowledge Quest (KQ). In the article, Jen shares how she provided collaboration training to help classroom teachers and school librarians prepare for classroom-library coteaching. She also worked with administrators to help them overcome possible barriers to coteaching such as library scheduling, collaboration time, and library staffing.

Jen found that 83% of the classroom teachers she surveyed believed that collaborating with school librarians would benefit students. Of course, there were challenges along the way, but can-do collaborators found solutions to address them. As Jen notes at the end of her article, “I was hoping to succeed but was also prepared to fail. After all, how could this project take off without funding? Through the sheer determination of everyone who has recognized the benefits to students and worked along with way with me, we’re moving slowly but surely to a more collaborative approach in our elementary school libraries” (Sturge 2019, 31).

Evaluating Coplanning
Using a coplanning form is one way to assess you and your colleague’s readiness to coteach. In the January/February KQ article “Co-Planning and Co-Implementing Assessment and Evaluation for Inquiry Learning,” I provided sample planning forms that include standards, learning objectives, and student outcomes evaluation criteria (Moreillon 2019, 42-43).

Effective collaborative planning creates a framework for measurable student success; it addresses the Understanding by Design (UbD) approach (Wiggins and McTighe 2005) to planning instruction. School librarian evaluators will benefit from observing, participating in, or reviewing educators’ evidence of collaborative planning.

Evaluating Coteaching
Evidence-based practice (EBP) suggests that educators base their instruction on published research, apply research-based interventions in their practice, and measure the success of their efforts in terms of the targeted student outcomes. UbD and EBP are aligned and can assist educators in determining the effectiveness of their teaching.

In the same issue of KQ, the literacy coordinator for Bismarck Public Schools Misti Werle shared her leadership in implementing and evaluating instructional partnerships in her district. Writing along with middle school librarian Kat Berg and English language arts teacher Jenni Kramer, Misti shared a “Levels of Library Services and Instructional Partnerships” document that guided Bismarck school librarians in serving as equal instructional partners. The document assisted them in stretching their collaborative practices and helped them assess their progress as well (Berg, Kramer, and Werle 2019, 35).

Evaluating the Outcomes of Classroom-Library Collaboration
In her podcast interview, Kelly Miller, Coordinator of Library Media Services for Virginia Beach (VA) Public Schools, provides school librarians with a pathway to leadership through evidence-based practice. When school librarians collaborate with others to develop an action research project, they can demonstrate their professionalism, collect and analyze data, and document how they are improving teaching and learning in their schools.

This tweet was cited in a recent issue of ASCD’s Education Update: “Have a dream or vision and struggling to get there? If so, let go of perfection, bring as many people together as you can, and focus on continuous improvement rather than a destination point of ‘success’” (@PrincipalPaul 2019, 3). Collaborative relationships can be challenging. Codesigning and coimplementing an action research project can be imperfect at times and collaborators must be able to self-assess and regroup.

Just as educators help students strive for continuous development, wise administrators and school librarian supervisors support educators in continually improving their practice. Approaching school librarian evaluation as providing feedback for learning means that librarians will have the necessary guidance to move their practice forward. Success is in the journey rather than reaching some static target for “perfection.”

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

  1. Why is it essential for school librarians to have a different evaluation instrument than classroom teachers?
  2. Think of a time you had an effective coteaching experience. What would an evaluator have noticed during this teaching and learning event?

For Fun!
Effective classroom-library collaboration can flourish in a positive school climate and a collaborative school culture. Figure 7.4 in this chapter (also available as a free download) shows a possible way to involve one’s administrators and colleagues in suggesting criteria for assessing the school librarian’s effectiveness.

Works Cited

@PrincipalPaul. 2019. ASCD Education Update 61 (1): 3.

Berg, Kat, Jenni Kramer, and Misti Werle. 2019. “Implementing & Evaluating Instructional Partnerships.” Knowledge Quest 47 (3): 32-38.

Moreillon, Judi. 2019. “Co-Planning and Co-Implementing Assessment and Evaluation for Inquiry Learning,” Knowledge Quest 47 (3): 40-47.

Sturge, Jennifer. 2019. “Assessing Readiness for School Library Collaboration.” Knowledge Quest 47 (3): 24-31.

Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. 2005. Understanding by Design, 2nd ed. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

 

Election 2018 Resources

Posted on by

“Productive civic engagement requires knowledge of the history, principles, and foundations of our American democracy, and the ability to participate in civic and democratic processes. People demonstrate civic engagement when they address public problems individually and collaboratively and when they maintain, strengthen, and improve communities and societies. Thus, civics is, in part, the study of how people participate in governing society” (NCSS 2013, 31).

The Center for Civics Education (@CivicEducation) was one of fifteen organizations that collaborated on the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards (NCSS 2013). According to their website, “The Center is dedicated to promoting an enlightened and responsible citizenry committed to democratic principles and actively engaged in the practice of democracy in the United States and other countries” (http://www.civiced.org/about/37).

The Center started in 1965 at the University of Southern California. Researchers have conducted studies related to all five of the projects hosted on this website. The Center’s “Promoting the Principles and Practice of Democracy” video is a worthwhile introduction to their work. Educators who are preparing to connect curriculum with #Election2018 will want to explore the resources available on their site.

The site offers five programs. I have reviewed “We the People” and “Project Citizen” below. The “School Violence Prevention Demonstration Program” provides professional development support for educators who are teaching the “We the People” and “Project Citizen” programs in their classrooms. The James Madison Legacy Project is focused on educator professional development, and Civitas International involves learners in countries around the world.

We the People
This program offers textbooks that include six units of study at three instructional levels: upper elementary, middle, and high school. You can download a two-page summary of the program. If your school or district has adopted these texts or is considering a new social studies/civics adoption, these resources may be important to your classroom-library collaboration. “We the People” videos offer an overview of the program and its impact on student learning.

These are the units in the textbooks:
Unit One: What Are the Philosophical and Historical Foundations of the American Political System?
Unit Two: How Did the Framers Create the Constitution?
Unit Three: How Has the Constitution Been Changed to Further the Ideals Contained in the Declaration of Independence?
Unit Four: How Have the Values and Principles Embodied in the Constitution Shaped American   Institutions and Practices?
Unit Five: What Rights Does the Bill of Rights Protect?
Unit Six: What Challenges Might Face American Constitutional Democracy in the Twenty-first Century?

Project Citizen
This civic education program, geared to middle, secondary, and post-secondary students and youth or adult groups, offers open education resources. The goal of Project Citizen is to promote “competent and responsible participation in state, local, and federal government.” The site offers lessons/units of instruction. The Level 1 lessons are for students in grades 5-8. Level 2 lessons are for secondary and post-secondary students. Lessons are aligned with the Common Core Standards in History/Social Studies.

For example, the four lessons in the “9/11 and the Constitution” unit involve students in reflecting on U.S. ideals and answering the question: “What does it mean to be an American?” The subsequent lessons involve students in learning from various founding documents and completing a questionnaire about how well our country is actualizing these ideals. Students also administer the questionnaire to adults in their homes and communities. The unit concludes with students comparing and discussing the similarities and differences in people’s responses. Finally, students compose an individual or small group statement and cite evidence on how well the American government is fulfilling its purposes as set forth in the Preamble.

As with all published lesson plans and units of study, educators will want to adapt instruction for their students and the context in which the lessons are presented. For #Election2018, students could make connections by examining local, state, and national candidates’ statements to analyze them for “U.S. ideals” as expressed in the Preamble of the Constitution or other governmental documents. They could also examine the prior voting records and statements made by incumbent candidates and determine whether or not the candidates’ statements and actions are consistent. Students could then debate the merits of various candidates using the evidence they found in the candidates’ campaign materials and/or voting records.

Another component of the site involves learners in working together as a class or extracurricular group to identify and study a particular public policy issue. The final product of this project-based learning opportunity is a portfolio that may be presented to other students, civic groups or community organizations, or policymakers.

Both the Center for Civics Education and the Stanford History Education Group (reviewed last week) have resources to offer educators who are building students’ background knowledge, information-seeking and critical thinking skills in order to connect school-based curriculum with #Election2018.

Works Cited

Center for Civics Education. 2018. http://www.civiced.org

National Council for the Social Studies. 2013. College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards. https://www.socialstudies.org/sites/default/files/c3/C3-Framework-for-Social-Studies.pdf

Image Credit:
amberzen. “Vote Button.” Creative Commons CC0. https://pixabay.com/en/vote-button-election-elect-1319435/

Planning for Election 2018

Posted on by

For many educators, summer is a time for planning for the fall. The gardening metaphor works so well for teaching. The more relaxed pace and some daydreaming time provide mental space to plot out the garden where students will think, create, share, and grow come fall. Summer is when educators look for new seeds to plant (concepts to emphasize). We research better fertilizers (resources and tools) and improved ways to till the soil (motivate and inspire learners).

We also look for real-world connections that can help students build connections between school-based learning and the world outside of the classroom, library, and lab. With the midterm elections to be held on Tuesday, November 5th, fall 2018 presents an excellent opportunity for students to delve deeply into the connection between civics and (online) information—between citizenship and digital literacy.

One website that supports student learning and educators’ teaching civics content is Stanford History Education Group. One the American Association of School Librarians’ 2018 Best Websites for Teaching and Learning, the site includes a Civic Online Reasoning section. Based on research evidence (Wineburg et al. 2016), the site offers online resources that educators can use to prompt students to engage in reasoning related to history content.

The site also provides short-answer assessments that indicate a student’s level of development: emerging, beginning, and mastery. Each rubric includes sample student responses at each level, which can be initially used as examples for students and as guides for educators. (Coteaching classroom teachers and school librarians may find these “anchor responses” particularly useful when they share assessment responsibilities.)

As noted on the site, these resources are intentionally flexible so educators can “use the tasks to design classroom activities, as the basis for discussions about digital content, and as formative assessments to learn more about students’ progress as they learn to evaluate information.” The assessment prompts include historical photographs and other printed artifacts as well as social media posts from Facebook and Twitter.

I appreciate the terms used for the Civic Online Reasoning (COR) competencies:
1. Who’s behind the information? (Authority)
2. What’s the evidence? (Reliability)
3. What do other sources say? (Bias or Perspective)

The two other sections of the website are “Reading Like a Historian” and “Beyond the Bubble.” The former includes lesson plans; the latter provides assessments.  The lessons in “Reading Like a Historian” have been adopted by history departments in schools across the country. All aspects of the Stanford History Education Group site focus on documentary evidence as the way to validate information.

If the last election cycle is any indication, there will be no shortage of (online) information that will provide fodder for civic reasoning learning experiences in the fall of 2018. Check out this site and start plotting your fall garden today! Even better, start a conversation with your school librarian and classroom teacher colleagues to collaborate to design learning opportunities for students to develop digital literacy in the context of civic reasoning.

Reference
Wineburg, Sam. Sarah McGrew, Joel Breakstone, and Teresa Ortega. 2016. “Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning.” Stanford Digital Repository.  http://purl.stanford.edu/fv751yt5934

Image Credit: Word Cloud created at Wordle.net

Co-Creating a Community of Readers

Posted on by

“Supporting Middle School Reading: Using a Data Dashboard to Create a Community of Readers” by school librarian Kelsey Cohen appeared in the June, 2018, issue of American Libraries. Kelsey’s article is about how she engaged in a professional inquiry with assistant principal Rob Andrews, literacy coach Lisa Ramos-Hillegers, and instructional technology coach Mike Sammartano to support striving readers at Hommocks Middle School (Larchmont, New York). Their goal was to explore ways to use digital reading logs to motivate and engage more readers and further develop a reading culture in their school.

When educators engage in inquiry, they take risks together. They analyze a challenge they are facing, design, and test solutions that can help students succeed. Sometimes when they examine the outcomes, they find their solution needs to be tweaked and retested before they can achieve their goals.

In the American Libraries article, Kelsey describes an inquiry conducted by Hommocks educators. In this example, assistant principal Rob Andrews suggested the literacy team institute electronic reading logs in order to collect and use student data to improve students’ engagement and motivation. In the first year of testing the logs, the collaborators learned that the digital reading log forms were too detailed and therefore, not completed by enough students. When they revised the form, they involved the expertise of their instructional technology coach. Together, they created a data dashboard where students could access colorful graphs, charts, and lists based on their reading log data. They increased students’ and classroom teachers’ buy-in.

Kelsey displayed the data on a large monitor in the library. Readers used this information to self-assess their reading and classroom teachers used it with students during reading conferences. Along with literacy coach Lisa, Kelsey used the data specifically to reach out to striving readers. Kelsey and Lisa made sure that these students had “first dibs on new book arrivals” and they “created personalized book bins” that struggling readers could browse in their classrooms (Cohen 2018, 19).

These educators’ use of the inquiry process parallels the process that students take when they engage in inquiry learning. This strategy for learning can increase their own ability to guide students (and classrooms teachers) in inquiry learning. Kelsey and Lisa contributed voices from the field in the “Literacy Leadership and the School Librarian: Reading and Writing—Foundational Skills for Multiple Literacies” chapter of The Many Faces of School Library Leadership (2017). In that example, they collaborated with science teachers in creating classroom “wonder walls” as springboards for student-led inquiry (Moreillon 2017, 104).

As the quote from above from Kelsey attests, hers is not a “neutral” stance with regard to library services. Along with her colleagues, she creatively reached out to students who were not frequent library users. The literacy team created a tool that could be used by all Hommocks students. In addition, they targeted specific services to the readers who were most in need and helped them monitor their own reading and develop internal motivation to pursue learning. Rather than simply serve those who came to the library on their own, Kelsey and her team reached out to those who could benefit the most from the resources and expertise of the library and librarian in order to reach their potential as readers.

You can read Kelsey’s article in the magazine or online and reach her via Twitter @KelseyLCohen: “Supporting Middle School Reading: Using a Data Dashboard to Create a Community of Readers.”

With the culture of reading inquiry described in the American Libraries article, Kelsey. Lisa, and their collaborators are clearly continuing on their journey to create a culture of learning in their school. And they are using an inquiry approach to pursue their goals. Bravo to the collaborating educators at Hommocks Middle School and to Kelsey Cohen for her school librarian leadership.

Works Cited

Cohen, Kelsey. 2018. “Supporting Middle School Reading: Using a Data Dashboard to Create a Community of Readers.” American Libraries 49 (6): 28-19.

Moreillon, Judi. 2017. “Literacy Leadership and the School Librarian: Reading and Writing—Foundational Skills for Multiple Literacies.” In The Many Faces of School Library Leadership, 2nd ed., edited by Sharon Coatney and Violet H. Harada, 86-108. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

Image credits:
Quote from Kelsey Cohen used with permission

Youngson, Nick. “Decision-making Highway Sign.” http://www.creative-commons-images.com/highway-signs/d/decision-making.html

#TxLA18 Winning with Instructional Partners

Posted on by

This week, librarians and librarian advocates from across the state of Texas and beyond are gathering in Dallas for the annual Texas Library Association Conference (#TxLA18). This year’s theme is “Perfecting Your Game: A Win for Your Community.”

I was invited to facilitate two sessions at the conference. Last week, I gave a brief preview and made connections to my Wednesday, April 4th session “Intercultural Understanding through Global Literature.”  You can also view the presentation wiki that includes handouts and will include the slides after the conference.

On April 5th, I will be sharing “Winning the Game with Instructional Partners.” In this session, we will focus on the leader and instructional partner roles of school librarians and make connections to Texas and national school library standards. If you are attending TxLA, I hope to see you at one or both sessions or to cross paths with you during the conference.

Last week, Keith Curry Lance and Debra Kachel published an article in Phi Delta Kappan (and available online) titled “Why School Librarians Matter: What Years of Research Tell Us.”

Their article and the research they share fully supports the premise behind “Winning the Game with Instructional Partners,” my forthcoming book, and my years of teaching, scholarship, and service. It provides evidence on which to further develop school librarians’ practice, to build effective school library programs, and to grow our profession.

The correlational research cited in the article has been collected over a twenty-five-year period—not coincidentally about the same number of years I have been involved in the profession. While the presence of a state-certified school librarian is correlated with better student learning outcomes, particularly in reading, the quality of a school librarian’s work also matters.

I have bolded key phrases in the excerpt that follows. “Multiple studies have found that test scores tend to be higher in schools where librarians spend more time:

• Instructing students, both with classroom teachers and independently;
• Planning collaboratively with classroom teachers;
• Providing professional development to teachers;
• Meeting regularly with the principal;
• Serving on key school leadership committees;
• Facilitating the use of technology by students and teachers;
• Providing technology support to teachers, and
• Providing reading incentive programs” (Lance and Kachel 2018).

To summarize, effective school librarians serve as leaders and instructional partners.

The activities and priorities of more effective school librarians have a school-wide impact on learning and teaching in their buildings. “Fully integrated library programs with certified librarians can boost student achievement and cultivate a collaborative spirit within schools. School leaders who leverage these assets will realize what research has shown: Quality school library programs are powerful boosters of student achievement that can make important contributions to improving schools in general and, in particular, closing the achievement gap among our most vulnerable learners” (Lance and Kachel 2018).

April is School Library Month (#AASLslm). “Winning the Game with Instructional Partners” supports the Learner and Educator Connections identified by AASL’s SLM Committee.

There is no better time than the present to step up our literacy leadership and reach out to collaborate with administrators and classroom teacher colleagues to maximize school librarian leadership by building connections for learning and advocacy.

What are you doing every day to practice the leader and instructional partner roles in order to transform learning and teaching in your school? If you are attending TxLA, come to the “Winning the Game with Instructional Partners” session and share your strategies. See you there!

Work Cited

Lance, Keith Curry, and Debra E. Kachel. 2018. “Why School Librarians Matter: What Years of Research Tell Us.” Phi Delta Kappan 99 (7): 15-20. http://www.kappanonline.org/lance-kachel-school-librarians-matter-years-research

Logo © 2017 Judi Moreillon

 

Maximizing Leadership: Chapter 2

Posted on by

Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy was published by ALA Editions in June, 2018.

Chapter 2: Job-Embedded Professional Development

“A team is not a group of people who work together. A team is a group of people who trust each other” (Sinek, Mead, and Docker 2017, 104).

Professional learning embedded in the everyday practice of educators is an effective way to transform teaching and learning. In this model, school librarians can serve as professional learning leaders. They enact this role in a number of ways: through providing formal staff development; by serving as a member or team leader in one or more professional learning communities (PLCs); and through classroom-library collaboration, which involves trusting colleagues in coplanning, coteaching, and coassessing learning outcomes.

While all of these contributions to professional learning are important, collaboration for instruction gives school librarians the optimum opportunity to learn with and from their colleagues. Coteaching is personalized learning for educators. It is aligned with adult learning theory that puts educators in the driver’s seat—controlling the content and context of their learning while they solve self-identified instructional problems.

Planning for instruction is teacherly work. It requires connecting curricula with students’ interests and motivation and making learning experiences relevant. It involves determining goals, objectives, and assessments. It includes identifying compelling resources and effective instructional strategies. Through the hands-on implementation of coplanned lessons or units, educators monitor student learning and the success or areas for improvement in their instruction.

What you will find in this chapter:

1. A Rationale for Coteaching as Effective Job-Embedded Professional Development;
2. A Description of Classroom-Library Coteaching Approaches;
3. A Levels of Library Services and Instructional Partnerships Matrix;
4. An Explanation and Application of the Diffusion of Innovations Model:
5. A Coplanning and Coteaching Self-assessment Instrument.

Coteaching offers educators the opportunity to hone their craft while teaching “actual students in real time, with the taught curriculum, available resources and tools, and within the supports and constraints of their particular learning environments” (Moreillon 2012b, 142). School librarians add value when they co-collect evidence (student learning outcomes data) to demonstrate the effectiveness of their teaching in terms of what is important to colleagues and administrators. Data points the way toward continuous instructional improvement. Coteaching also creates the opportunity for school librarians to co-lead in a culture of adult as well as student learning in their schools.

Works Cited

Moreillon, Judi. 2012. “Job-embedded Professional Development: An Orchard of Opportunity.” In Growing Schools: School Librarians as Professional Developers, edited by Debbie Abilock, Kristin Fontichiaro, and Violet Harada, 141-156. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited.

Sinek, Simon, David Mead, and Peter Docker. 2017. Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team. New York: Penguin.

Image Credit: Word Cloud created at Wordle.net

Loader Loading...
EAD Logo Taking too long?

Reload Reload document
| Open Open in new tab

Download