It's a marathon NOT a sprint. This weekend, I was privileged to spend 3 amazing days with awesome librarians who are dramatically impacting the achievement of our students at the Tennessee Association of School Librarians Annual Conference. The theme at nearly every single session was student learning. Librarians are well positioned to be leaders during the implementation of the Common Core. We can be myth busters and truth speakers in the same breath. Current collections, especially nonfiction, can be leveraged in such a way that we cause our students to pause, think, question, synthesize and respond. We know that collaboration and ownership are the biggest keys to successful implementation of the CCSS. Its hard not to come home with conference fog (i.e. info overload) or to be on such a high that Monday brings a crushing blow when you fall back into reality. Saturday, my good friend and colleague, Debbie Condry, and I provided librarians with a step by step workout plan that hopefully provided direction for them. Before I share with you a brief summary of the workout plan, let me share my favorite highlights.
A few of my favorite things...
My favorite technique that I learned this weekend was clustering from Marc Aronson. If you are going to the AASL National Conference make sure you go to his sessions. A cluster is a group of resources that are most likely conflicting. Provide students with the opportunity to question and comment on the juxtapositions. I can't wait to set up my first cluster and create displays with a learning purpose. I really appreciated being encouraged to let students choose what interests them without getting hung up on the guided reading or Lexile level. Could we all agree that Lexile and reading levels are guiding points for reading instruction but they should not hold a child's right to choose books hostage?
Another highlight, was seeing the winners of the TASL bookmark contest. The winners created amazing bookmarks. I love that TASL invited them to our luncheon to accept their awards. I can't wait to participate in the next bookmark contest.
The best part of the conference was networking with other librarians from across the state. Librarians, so often feel isolated especially in an elementary library where the pace of class after class can leave you with little time to talk with fellow teachers let alone librarians. Being at conference gave me the opportunity to share, listen, and reflect.
Common Core Workout: Strengthen you Core Muscles
Debbie and I wore our yoga pants and custom t-shirts that said "School Librarian: I train your brain for life" as we led a room full of librarians through a Common Core workout that challenged them to set high goals. We warmed up with a walk- through of a single strand showing the progression of difficulty from K-12. For the cardio segment, we shared sample successful core lessons that we have both taught in the past year. The cool thing about Debbie and I is that we approach our roles in very different ways. I think outside the box and Debbie has a more traditional approach. Thus in one presentation, we catered to everyone in the room and demonstrated that the approach you take doesn't necessarily matter. Every workout needs workout enhancers. I loved sharing the wide variety of apps, blogs, curation tools, etc. that we can use to meet our CCSS goals. Another great workout enhancer is your PLN (personal learning network). There are many tools for building PLNs including Twitter, Edmodo, Facebook, Skype, etc. I wouldn't have known about Dot Day if I had not seen it mentioned on my Twitter feed. Finally, we reached the most important segment of our workout the cool down otherwise known as "regular reflection". We provided a list of questions that I hope served as a call to action. From the comments after the presentation, I know that we impacted the lives of students across the state of Tennessee. Our mission as school librarians is truly about student learning. How are you impacting student learning in your school? Share your CCSS success stories here in the comments. One lucky person will win a "School Librarian: I train your brain for life" iron-on so that you can create your own custom t-shirt.
