School Library Visits #tlchat @oslacouncil #scdsb

I have the privilege as the Teacher-Librarian Resource Teacher to support 101 school libraries in my school district. Many of my teacher-librarian colleagues direct their own professional learning.  Already I have been invited into 23 different elementary and secondary school libraries. Every time I step into a different library learning commons I continue my learning along with the teacher I am supporting.

There are a few new teacher-librarians who are trying to "learn the ropes" and adapt their skill set to their new role.  I am lucky to be able to support them when they have technical or programming questions.  As I support them I get a chance to relive the excitement as they realize that they will teach all students in all grades.  It is the busiest classroom in any school!

For the experienced teacher-librarians, they realize that they are lead learners and so they push me to keep up to date on reading engagement strategies, Google Apps for Education (GAFE) updates and how it all fits into out provincial document called Together for Learning and the national guide called Leading Learning.

The most popular reason that I have been invited into a school this month has been to assist in the implementation of maker spaces.  Many teacher-librarians believe that the library learning commons is the perfect place to introduce the maker movement to students, parents and staff. I completely agree!  The maker movement is multi-disciplinary by nature that emphasizes collaboration both of which the teacher-librarian has expertise.

Having a space where students and teachers can collaborate, create and tinker is an authentic way to improve problem solving skills, learn deeply and practice the growth mindset approach to learning.
It is really exciting to help transform traditional libraries to library learning commons to support student learning.  All stakeholders are excited to begin and have managed to eek out some way to demonstrate the maker movement in their school.

 In all my school library visits the topics are varied but the goal is the same.  They all want to collaborate more effectively with students and colleagues. For some that is through the establishment of a maker culture and/or developing a relevant collection for inquiry teaching models or encouraging the love of reading through special programming.

I am excited to continue my visits and to connect those with similar goals into meaningful professional learning networks.

Digital Citizenship and Parent Engagement @scdsb_schools @cmvsocialmedia

I have been part of a collaborative effort to bring Chris Vollum to speak about Digital Citizenship with students and parents as part of a Parent Engagement grant. He was an engaging speaker with many practical ideas and examples too help students and parents to leverage digital formats effectively.  We hoped that this presentation will be a start to getting parents more connected with their children's online presence.  I learned a lot by being part of the committee. The committee consisted of two instructional resource teachers, a special education consultant and the school district's communications team.

The first thing I learned about our school district is that they have an amazing communication team who is professional and willing to help us connect positively with our community. The media professionals at my school board run the twitter feed update other social media formats and help us to produce a single brand for our district.  They updated their internet safety and digital citizenship link on the parent portal because they were part of this project.  As a result we now have up to date information created for parents and for future parent meetings around digital citizenship.

The second thing I learned was that I enjoyed connecting students to authentic tasks.  I had the chance to network with students and teachers in two high schools and they helped to promote the event. Although many of the students did not attend the speaker's presentation our discussions were useful to them as they asked great questions.
Here are some of their questions:
How do I buy my own domain?
How might I improve on my footprint?
What's the best social media format for me if I want to go into sales?
I enjoyed interacting with students and I felt that they had many great ideas to share.

Finally I am still puzzled as to how to truly engage parents.
We used word of mouth, Syneregyse voice mail calls, posters, face-to-face presentations by students and several links on Twitter and Facebook and the board website to promote the event.  We created a Google Hangout link on YouTube so parents could watch the presentation from home.  Based on the analytics, very few chose to do so.

It was disappointing that we had a low turn out given the time, effort and funds that were spent to attract parents to the session. The quality of Chris Vollum's presentation was excellent.

I still have the following questions:
How do we support parents when we don't see a large participation rate?
Parents need to make sure that their child is the same online as offline.  They don't need to be tech experts; they do need to insist on good character.  Teens' online life is their real life and it will follow them good or bad where ever they hope to go.
How can we make sure parents are getting the message we send them?
What social media model should we use to get our messages out??

I know this question has baffled many.  I don't think it is because parents don't want to know but they aren't aware of the support that is available.  I wish I could find a way to make more meaningful connections with parents to develop a stronger partnership about their children's learning.

Collaborative Sessions with Lead Learners -Teacher-Librarians #scdsb #bettertogether

Teacher-Librarians (TLs) are lead learners in their schools.  They are the "go to" people when curriculum changes, when new initiatives need clarification and when one's technology plans need a plan B.  Many of my fellow teacher-librarians are actively engaged with their (Personal Learning Network) PLN through our district's email list serve and on Twitter. Sometimes though, face-to-face sessions can be valuable.  I think the "lateral learning" from side conversations that arise when an engaged group meets can be just as important as the planned content.  This week those side topics were about maker-spaces, book collection, digital citizenship and other tech related topics.

I felt that I had the chance to collaborate in two different ways this week.
First,  I had the opportunity to organize and facilitate two full day professional learning sessions for teacher-librarians (TLs) with the help of three Elementary Student Success Teachers (ESSTs), and three Instructional Resource Teachers IRTs.   We co-planned and facilitated  two sessions to help teacher-librarians understand the importance of the Creating Pathways document and some of the electronic tools that are available.  Then we gave the teacher-librarians the time to play with the various software.

 The second half of the day was designed to further our collective knowledge and to determine this year's professional needs to create successful inquiry opportunities for students.
The ESSTs presentations were engaging because they demonstrated their passion for Grade 7 and 8 students as they described some of the tools teachers can use to support students.  It was also an opportunity for the teacher-librarians to meet with their ESSTs and learn more about Pathways.  It is important that teacher-librarians are kept up to date so they can assist students.
The teacher-librarians appreciated the time to network with colleagues -one mentioned he enjoyed meeting his PLN from Twitter face-to-face;)
The chance to co-plan and present with staff from Student Success and Program was one positive aspect of the sessions because it gave me an opportunity to connect and learn from other talented teachers in our district.
The other positive effect of the day that I didn't expect was the requests for more collaboration opportunities. I am now booked to help one TL develop a D2L site for her school library, another wants to learn more about Genius Hour and I can't wait to help another increase his fluency with online presentation tools.  I feel that we achieved our goals around Pathways and Inquiry at these days and I think that the positive attitudes and openness to learn encouraged others to ask for more support. It was a perfect example of a growth mindset at work.
We have three more presentations for TLs in three more areas over the next two weeks.  I will get the chance to co-present with additional  IRTs and ESSTs and I look forward to learning more with each session.
I wonder if the participating teacher-librarians realize that they help me to learn and grow when they share their successes and challenges? I will have to thank the next group!