This post is a response to the question Christina Karvounis posed earlier this month.

Pretty soon now the daily faculty meetings will wrap up, the students will return to campus, and our attention will turn to the few hundred teenage reasons we’re here. We will meet students and advisees for the first or thousandth time and coach them through articulating their goals for the year ahead, their information needs, and research questions. So, as Christina Karvounis shared in her recent post, it’s time for us to look ahead to the next several months and figure out where our priorities, mandates, and inspiration will take us. Like Christina wrote, there are some goals and priorities that stick with us from year to year, that, no matter how skilled, innovative, or collaborative we are, will never be an item we can check off. However, some of those things periodically circle forward in our minds and hearts. I think when some facet of this job attracts our particular focus, that’s the signal that the year will feel more energizing and productive if our goals are aligned in that direction. Not to say we abandon all else, but the ways we feel inspired may shift year to year and I think it’s worthwhile to honor these shifts. 

Ryder Carroll, in The Bullet Journal Method, advocates for conducting a Mental Inventory to de-clutter the brain and decide what is worth paying attention and energy to – to do so, the journaler writes down what they are currently working on, what they should be working on, and what they want to be working on. I think when we identify where the “should be’s” and “want to be’s” overlap or complement each other, there lie our goals! Here’s my current (school-related) mental inventory:

Working on

Blog post

Summer reading group meeting logistics

Answering emails

Scheduling meetings

Should be working on

Database renewals

Collection analysis

Exploring new database authentication methods

Planning research class

Ordering supplies

Digital badge platform for reading initiative

Curriculum review

Want to be working on

Planning classroom visits and book talks

Planning book clubs

Weeding

Reading about reading

Scheduling author visits

Planning activities for advisory

Redecorating Middle School library

Considering alternatives to Dewey

So this year, my heart and mind are drawn to student-centered reading promotion initiatives, revisiting library policies and procedures in order to have a collection that suits and supports the school community as it is now, and using new strategies to support students’ goal setting and reflection with wisdom and care. The other things are really important too, but my year and my service to our learners may be more effective if effort and time are concentrated in these areas, this year.

One evening last week I was driving a van full of Upper School readers to our county Reading Olympics competition; one of my favorite nights of the year. We were pulling into the parking lot of the large public high school where the competition was taking place, when I saw the proud sign at the entrance to the school:

It’s National Library Week!    

I cheered aloud and my students obligingly echoed. However, inside I was thinking, “Dang it, what?!? How could I have missed that? An opportunity to make some noise about our library, and I’ve blown it!” Then I remembered that April, I was pretty sure, is School Library Month, and maybe I could still rally. But what to do with only two weeks left to celebrate?

Luckily, in a past April, an earlier me was a little more on top of things. I remembered that it’s actually been a few years since I have set up pop-up libraries in different parts of campus, with themes and genres relevant to their locations around school. Having already created much of the signage to reuse or edit, and with new books, new institutes, and new students (for whom these good old displays are new and fresh), I can pull off School Library Month. Instead of bringing students into the library, I’m taking over – bringing the school library to them.

Years ago I created Smore flyers to showcase books that would tie-in with areas around school suitable for a small book display – sports for the athletics center, books on food and eating for the dining hall, writing for the Writing Center, and other topics or genres that could go anywhere. Now I just need to swap out a few book covers for some newer related acquisitions, make connections to new programs and renovated spaces, and dust off @perklibrary on Instagram. In the chosen locations, I display just a few books with a printout of the flyer and a self-checkout form similar to the one we use when we’re out of the library, so the students are familiar with it.

Thanks to a fun half-forgotten project recycled from a few years ago, I have a new spring in my step, and a promotion for School Library Month. I can’t wait to think of new pop-up ideas and ways to promote them.

Bringing new titles into parts of campus where they aren’t normally seen but still seem at home is a great way to promote reading and showcase the library as the heart of the school. I love AASL’s theme for this year: Everyone Belongs @ your School Library. How could it be said any better? But I like the flip of that idea, too: Your school library belongs everywhere.

Ellen and I, and probably many of you, are feeling particularly thankful at this time of year for the wonderful profession we are privileged to work in. While some individual class periods, days, weeks, months, and even whole school years can feel like not our best, there are powerful things to love about each day in our world. There are many things in my life for which I’m grateful, but in my professional life, I am so grateful for:

• good work to do that engages my mind and heart and is different every day, and a stunningly beautiful space in which to do it.
• colleagues who care about our students and their learning and are open to doing this good work together.
• awesome students who amaze me every day with their creativity, curiosity, intelligence, drive, compassion, empathy, humor, and courage.
• supportive administrators.
• books and the authors who write them, especially for young people.
• apps, websites, and tools that make our work easier and more effective.
• coffee/lunch.
• a free press and journalists with high standards.
• other librarians in public and independent schools who are so willing and eager to share their brilliant ideas and challenge me to do a better job (whether they mean to or not), and who speak my language and share my questions and professional values.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Back in April at our conference, Carmen Agra Deedy inspired us to contemplate the power of stories and storytelling as teaching tools. I found a line in my notebook from that day – “Storytelling – (inc. into teaching research?)”

As a school librarians, we teach the research process. I have been wondering about how stories and storytelling might improve and spice up the teaching of this process, connecting inquiry to human experience in ways that feel relevant and vital to students. I’d love to help them progress through a research process using story to engage and illuminate, and in so doing, revealing to students that they, as researchers, are creators and storytellers. How to do this? I’m sharing ideas here that are still baking in the summer sun, so I hope you’ll consider and comment freely especially if this reminds you of something you already do or know about. While I’m inspired to learn more about storytelling and to begin to practice it, I’m not quite there yet. So far, I’ve thought of two texts that might help serve as stepping stones to engaging students in the process through story.

This summer I picked up The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin, which had been on my list for some time but until now had remained unread (yay, summer!). Benjamin begins each part of the novel with a quotation from the main character’s science teacher, Mrs. Turton; each part of the story relating to a section of a scientific paper and lending the novel that sense of structure:

“Background: Your background provides the context for your scientific quest. What do we already know? What don’t we know? Why does it matter – Mrs. Turton” (63).

How about a collaborative research unit with Middle School English and Science teachers, beginning a research process with a study of this novel? Has anyone done this or something like it? A summer idea to mull over!

Another book that could work to incorporate visual storytelling into teaching and supporting students through the research process is Grant Snider’s relatable and adorable The Shape of Ideas: An Illustrated Exploration of Creativity. While meant to relate to artistic creation, I think that parts of this simple book in the graphic format are wonderful illustrations for students identifying research topics, exploring information, formulating research questions, making connections between ideas, struggling with originality and procrastination, and reflecting on the process.

If you have this book in your collection, I recommend taking a look at its application to high school researchers as an illustrative guide to and validation of their process and feelings. It also helped me feel better about not knowing what this post would be about until pretty recently.

Benjamin, A. (2017). The thing about jellyfish. New York, NY: Little, Brown and
Company.

Snider, G. (2017). The shape of ideas: An illustrated exploration of creativity.
New York: Abram Comicarts.

Snider, G. (2015). Asking questions [Comic strip]. Retrieved from
http://www.incidentalcomics.com/2015/08/asking-questions.html

Last week I was preparing for the first meeting of a new book club that had been reading  The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle. I hadn’t (and still haven’t) read the whole thing, but I did open up the table of contents a few hours before the meeting to select a chapter or two I could consume before then. Chapter 11 in the section entitled “Share Vulnerability;” is called “How to Create Cooperation with Individuals.” Like I’m sure many of you have found, I find that my best interactions with students engaged in a research process are in one-to-one research meetings, so I opened up this chapter. Either I picked exactly the right one, or I ought to read the whole book.

In this chapter, Coyle meets an IDEO designer named Roshi Givechi, who is prized by her colleagues for her ability to help others solve problems. She is described as a relatively quiet person who puts others at ease with her air of serene competence and approachability. When a design team is facing a sticking point in their process, Givechi is able to help them discover new approaches by “asking the right questions the right way” (151). Coyle is impressed by her term for when this happens – “surfacing.” By making people feel comfortable, listening fully and taking interest in their interests, and asking good questions, Givechi doesn’t offer answers but creates a situation in which the problem solvers can make connections that reveal solutions. In reading about Givechi’s talent, I thought “this is just a super deluxe reference interview!” 

These are some basic elements at the core of our profession that I think we generally internalize, but it doesn’t hurt to give them some extra thought sometimes. Simple but important, “approachability” is listed first among RUSA’s Guidelines for Behavioral Performance of Reference and Information Service Providers.

Steven Bell at Temple University, who was the keynote speaker at the 2016 Summer Institute, blogged last year about the basic importance of being friendly, approachable and trustworthy in library services (https://tinyurl.com/y8x8xb7y). Our Marsha Hawkins in her great conference presentation last month on the “Boy-Friendly Library” talked about this simple idea too, when she said that she greets every student every day by name. Making ourselves accessible and approachable creates the shared vulnerability that builds trust in a community.

I don’t really have an office; I work at the 105-year-old reference and circulation desk in the middle of the library. From my workstation, this is what I see:

The Front Door

When students come in this door, whether to come to the library or go to class, this is the first thing they see: 

Just imagine the pumpkin is me.

Working at a computer at the desk, it is way too easy for me to, as Steven Bell writes, “fail to quickly and adequately acknowledge another person’s presence.” My monitor and the desk itself are physical and psychological barriers between the students and me, and it’s my job to break them. I want to make eye contact, say hello, “happy birthday” and “good luck at the game today” to students as they walk in the door, giving them the cue that they are welcome and in the right place, and usually/often I do. But sometimes when engrossed in a task, I find that I haven’t looked up in a while. Maybe a student will say hello to me and draw me out of that place, making me feel sheepish for failing to greet her and acknowledge her presence. On the other hand, maybe I’ve greeted her enough times that the relationship is there and her greeting can remind me of why I’m standing in the middle of this room in the first place – to be approached, to be open to what the students need and help their ideas surface, and to be at the heart of a school culture that supports and gently pushes at the same time.   

References

Bell, S. (2017, August 21). There’s a reason why eye contact and smiling improve the experience [Blog post]. Retrieved from Designing Better Libraries website: http://dbl.lishost.org/blog/2017/08/21/theres-a-reason-why-eye-contact-and-smiling-improve-the-experience/#.WvtlCGbMzVo

Coyle, D. (2018). The culture code: The secrets of highly successful groups. New York: Bantam Books.

“Guidelines for Behavioral Performance of Reference and Information Service Providers”, American Library Association, September 29, 2008. http://www.ala.org/rusa/resources/guidelines/guidelinesbehavioral (Accessed May 15, 2018) Document ID: ce1dea7f-f77b-c194-2967-b53adb4b40ed

Hawkins, M. (Presenter). (2018, April 17). The fundamentals of a boy-friendly library: Practice and research instruction. Presentation given at AISL annual conference, The Lovett School, Atlanta, GA.

In a post back in November, I shared my hopes for a new Windows & Mirrors book club that was kicking off that month at our school, with The Hate U Give as our first read. I am happy to share now that it was a success! We opened the library and provided pizza during both lunch periods, and had eighteen participants in total. While readers munched on their pizza, I played a video featuring Angie Thomas talking about her inspiration for the book, and then read aloud a lengthier piece on the same. I had the publisher’s discussion guide with me, but really didn’t need it. After eating lunch the readers enjoyed casually talking about the characters and moments that resonated with them, the parts that made them angriest, the book’s humor, and how they identified with the relationships among characters. In both meetings conversation spread to memories of learning about Emmett Till in Middle School and viewing that particular image for the first time.

Our Upper School readers loved this book. It was a strong first choice to start things off, being a pretty new book that has generated plenty of buzz with relevance to students and a movie on the horizon. It didn’t hurt that we had some readers ready to go – The Hate U Give was one of our Upper School Summer Reading options in 2017, and it is on this year’s county Reading Olympics list, so when it came to extracurricular reading time busy Upper Schoolers could cover more than one base with this book.

Since this book club is a collaboration between the library and our Global Diversity Council, the GDC faculty leader and I talk over book choices and logistics. We agree that student input on book choices would be a good thing, but to keep the ball rolling and get a few copies of the next book before winter break we chose the second book ourselves. This month we’re reading Outrun the Moon by Stacey Lee. This choice allows us to open up this session to Middle School students and reveal new windows and mirrors.

Things that seem important so far:

• Collaboration with another campus group. Many of the readers are also involved in the GDC, so they are able to maximize and diversify their participation in that as well as help publicize the book club.
• We have been fortunate to be able to order a few copies of the books to circulate among interested readers over school breaks and leading up to the meetings. All copies of Outrun the Moon, including the library’s hardcover, eBook, and audiobook copies, were claimed within the first two days of the announcement and a few have come back and gone out again. Being able to provide access to a few copies is simple but important.
• One of our ESL teachers has offered extra credit for participating!
• I tend to err on the side of over-ordering when it comes to food, but it turned out two slices of pizza per person was enough.

Last week a student asked how she could get on the “selection committee” for the book club, so students are engaged in this concept and thinking of titles themselves. I created a Google Form to get the GDC members’ input on a selection with an LGBTQ focus to coincide with Day of Silence in April.

This morning I overheard a student tour guide in the library telling prospective families about the club, and while writing this post, two faculty members have emailed me with book ideas. I will really feel like this new try at an old idea is a success if our next meeting goes as well as the first and if the excitement can continue at least until the end of the year, or for a few more books. So far, so good!   

Please feel free to leave book suggestions in the comments. All advice welcome!