Looking Back and Looking Forward

      I am excited with the many, many ideas and blogs, posts and research we have piled through this month.  The best part of it all for me is that it is applicable to the work I am doing!  It made this course not feel like a hoop to jump through, but one where I have tonnes of takeaways, lots to be interested in, and lots I have already incorporated into my work.

      One new avenue for development for me personally is that just this week I received another inquiry grant from my school district.  The grant is for my little TL group in which we began as an inquiry group working to transition our libraries to a learning commons.  This year we are collecting resources and sharing with each other our learning.  This is a huge help to me professionally as I am given time to talk, share, discuss, and learn with fellow TLs.  I feel I learn LOTS from simple conversations.  

      We will continue our march on towards becoming a full library learning commons and are almost there.  There are so many ideas I gathered from this last month, such as Book Clubs or Book of the Month to continue the development of the reading culture in our school community. 

retrieved from:
https://fernie.bc.libraries.coop/adult-book-club-books/

Our group also hopes to bring in a neighbouring district guru, Amber Hartwell, to help inspire other teachers in our district to transition their libraries and give us guidance, as well.  I like the idea of having my own personal inquiry in that I am modelling the process for colleagues in our school, just as we embark on a school wide inquiry process.  Another area for me to development in my own practice is staying on top of an efficient and practical way to curate resources.  I think heading forward I hope that my library webpage will hopefully house resources through links, my blog, and twitter.

      Moving forward from what I learned this month is I will be sharing out!  I had thought about it briefly before, but my biggest takeaway is definitely the importance of sharing out and how not just others benefit from it, but me too! 

retrieved from:
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00998J5YQ

Richardson (2012, p.387) named reasons that teachers don’t share out, from fear to a culture of competition in schools, but I feel the biggest factor for me is time.  Really the lack of time is my issue.  However, sharing out with fellow local librarians, colleagues, and other TLs is an area needing growth for me, one that I can attain, and one that will help me professionally, as well.  A quote from Paige Bredenkamp found in fellow wolf Karla Germaine’s blog has stuck with me since I read it: “Knowledge is the result of interactions and experiences through connected networks in a community”.

      I have some highlights of learning I have gained from others over this past month and one is that it is time, past time, to have a blog and active twitter account for my school.  Although twitter has not been my favourite social media form (I don’t feel I have time to sort through what people had for breakfast to find things of interest to me), I do like being able to get snapshot ideas.  It is growing on me now that I found some that are specific to teaching and like the quick snippet idea.  Two new accounts I am now following are from Hannah's blog : https://twitter.com/bctla  and Darryl Beck's blog: George Couros, which both provide professional and thought provoking ideas.  I still feel blogs are more valuable overall to me and I have appreciated blogging with my fellow wolves.  For me it is the discussion feel, like a conversation, that I am drawn towards.   I also like the building on the plentiful array of ideas.  I give an idea, but others tag in and say…”I also tried this”, which is a little new tweak to something I had just done.  It adds a fresh zing to add onto an idea.  Every single blog post from my colleagues has had a little idea or two I have either incorporated already or hope to do.  For example, as TLs we are always looking for a perfect book for someone and ask questions of them, “what did you last read?  What is your favourite book?” etc., but I have tried Hannah’s reader personality test and students had fun with that.  They were shocked to see that some of the books recommended to them from the test they had already read so the simple quiz seemed to work for many.  Thanks to Alison's blog for 2 peas and a dog blog, which I now like to peruse.  Another tidbit idea from Karla’s blog, which is still rumbling around in my head, is about helping students and colleagues with their PLNs.  I have been focused on me, but Karla shared the ideas of Irene Hanreates and her ideas which has me thinking of how important sharing out is, the need to model it, to work on my own PLN, but to help others gain the benefits of this, too. 

retrieved from: https://teacherchallenge.edublogs.org/pln-define/

      The one topic that resonated with me most this past month is in regards to how I will continue my own professional development.  This is my last library course and it scares me a bit to become stagnant.  So often you see a teacher teaching the same grade and same material year after year.  They are doing what they know well, but not updating or challenging themselves with something new.  It isn’t enough to go to a pro-d day, but in a role as TL I can do so much more to be inspired and to inspire.

References

12 Ways a School Librarian Can Help Teachers - 2 Peas and a Dog. (2018). Retrieved from https://2peasandadog.com/2018/07/12-ways-a-school-librarian-can-help-teachers.html

BCTLA (@bctla) on Twitter. (2018). Retrieved from https://twitter.com/bctla

Beck, D. (2018). Mr. B's Blog. Retrieved from http://kidstonkokanee.blogspot.com/

Couros, G. (2018). George Couros (@gcouros) on Twitter. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/gcouros?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Cuthill, A. (2018). LIBE 477: Special Topics in Teacher Librarianship - New Media and Technology in the School Library. Retrieved from https://critiquelecture.wordpress.com/

Germaine, K. (2018). Reflections of a New Teacher Librarian. Retrieved from http://kargermaine.blogspot.com/

Reader Personality Types - A Book And A Hug. (2018). Retrieved from https://abookandahug.com/reader-types/

Richardson, W. (2012). Why school. New York, NY: TED Conferences.

Wilson, H. (2018). Hannah's Learning Library. Retrieved from http://hannahslearninglibrary.blogspot.com/

Here's My Scoop

       I have been taking library courses at UBC one at a time over the past 4 years; all the while I have been in the same school library.  This has worked out well for my own personal learning, as inspiring ideas and changes get implemented as I learn about them.  It isn’t just the actual learning in the courses, but some ideas presented in them that have become part of my practice and some ideas have become springboards for the exploration of new learning. It helps being new as a TL, as the learning curve is steep and quick and you can’t help but start to network and learn!  Also, it helps that the TL position itself is changing from that old school “shushing” librarian.

Retrieved from:
https://www.pinterest.ca/suziholler/shhh/?lp=true

One way I started supporting my own learning since becoming a TL is through collaboration with colleagues.  Every different teacher I work with results in a change in my personal learning.  I am slowly gaining the collaboration confidence of more and more teachers on my staff as time goes by and plan to have this continue for myself, fellow staff, and our learning community.  I may have mentioned previously that I am part of a TL inquiry group that began when we were all taking courses to become librarians.  We naturally were drawn together because of our coursework, but were able to make library plans and make change through the acquisition of an inquiry grant through our school district.  We started on a journey to change our libraries to library learning commons.  This small group of four (Others are joining us this year.  We are year 3 – yippee!) have all made great progress in our own libraries, with ourselves, have started a TL LSA, and advocated at the board level for TLs.  Our vision evolves as we implement changes.  We have new goals for this year plus long term visions and are happy to be making connections with neighbouring districts and with fellow TLs (our LSA coming alive has helped with this) within our district, which has proven to be great networking.

      There are a couple of areas I hope to improve on which will help my personal learning.  First, I have started working at ways to efficiently curate resources both for my use, fellow colleague use, and student use.  It gets overwhelming with the plethora of ideas and resources out there and to keep on top of it all in an organized way will help me use them more and be able to share them out.  I started using Scoop.it! ,

Retrieved from:https://www.scoop.it/media-kit

but I admit I have neglected it.  With my goal of having my whole school doing an inquiry project on one topic, I hope to get my Scoop.it active again.  Another area deserving some attention for me is my school library website.  I want it to be a way to share out student learning.  I think it will help connect me to my learning community, from parents to students.  Although the sharing of successful teaching experiences does not automatically guarantee effective learning and teaching, it helps to develop a knowledge base for teaching that is more applicable to real educational settings (So, Pow, and Hung, 2009, p. 775).  Ideally in my perfect world with spare time my teaching blog could be linked from the library page and yes…gasp…maybe even an active twitter account!  Yang (p.11, 2009) speaks of how blogs allow people to exchange information without space and time constraints, to broaden their knowledge, and to meet personal needs and interests at the same time.  A more interactive website is a win-win for everyone.  One day my curated resources will be linked to the page, in addition other social network options would be good links to add.  I have a couple of people in the district which would be good support for web design and the site has potential to keep me growing in my own learning and definitely is a way to share out! 

References

Scoop.it - Content Curation Tool | Scoop.it. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.scoop.it/

So, W.W.m., Pow, J.W.c. & Hung, V.H.k. (2009). The Interactive Use of a Video Database in Teacher Education: Creating a Knowledge Base for Teaching through a Learning Community. Computers & Education, 53(3), 775-786.

Yang, S.-H. (2009). Using blogs to enhance critical reflection and community of practice. Educational Technology & Society, 12(2), 11-21.