Booked Inn

From 1991 to 2002 I was an active committee member of the Australian Library & Information Association (ALIA) – and gladly gave up many hours of personal time to attend School Libraries Section (NSW Group) meetings, ALIA NSW Branch meetings and national ALIA Renewal meetings – only leaving when I returned to classroom teaching in 2003. (Sadly for the local School Libraries Section, it did not survive the “renewal” program of ALIA, or the retirements of many of its committee. Try as we did, we couldn’t tempt too many new/young TLs to commit to advocacy from a professional association stance.)

What other strategies can TLs can use now, to make sure that we do have the ongoing/evolving support of “politicians, unions, and professional associations”? Yes, of course every student in Australia deserves equity, but has recent Australian research demonstrated that it really is the “services of a professional qualified teacher librarian” in NSW that increases student achievement of outcomes? What else can NSW TLs and their professional associations do to convince other states’ powers-that-be that they need trained teacher-librarians in every interstate school?

As I said a previous post, NSW TLs can (and do) at least send messages via our actions in schools to the people making the decisions about NSW schools. Furthermore, we can make presentations at annual NSW DET and ASLA NSW conferences, (as I have been doing these past three years since returning to teacher-librarianship – so far no interstate invitations, but I’m willing to travel). The whole point of evidence-based practice is so we can actually prove that TLs make value-added contributions to our students’ educations. Then, hopefully, we find ways to bring those successes to the attention of the other states’ stakeholders, demonstrating that they are missing out on a crucial human resource: a trained TL.

Something very dramatic does need to happen to alter the current state of play. If the advocacy load should not be on the already-overburdened NSW TL, how will the politicians and unions suddenly be convinced to take up advocacy on our behalf, especially if we decide we are simply too over-burdened to do it ourselves?

We can blow a lot of hot air their way, sure, and write lots of letters and blog entries – and the other states can gnash their teeth in jealous misery – but it is solid action research that is going to provide the evidence for change. We have a prime minister bequeathing grants for new BER school libraries – all over NSW – over the next two years. Isn’t that a strong sign of someone noticing the work of NSW TLs? (Why wasn’t the money shunted into other types of buildings?)

NSW TLs do need to commit ourselves to proving that these promising, current efforts are going to be worthwhile. Unfortunately, that’s more advocacy work for us. A lot more.

I’ve just placed a new response over on the School Libraries 21C site.

This is the section I’ve put off answering because, really, I find it quite daunting. We, as educational practitioners in school libraries, can spout off about how we should be listened to until we are blue in the face, but helping to provide the necessary statistics as evidence for change – in an organised way, that can be trusted and accurately interpreted – is so difficult.

When governments do attempt to initiate national testing of students, to gather that hard evidence of the value being added to learning, we look at their motives with great suspicion – and rightly so, when we all know how statistics can become such a powerful weapon for cost-cutting and false advertising. After all, teacher-librarians spend a lot of time teaching students how to analyse data and texts to detect their authority, validity and reliability.

Ross mentioned that “one of the critical challenges in terms of continuous improvement and personal capacity building is keeping up to date with the vast body of research”.

Having just attended the two-day NSW DET “Connected Learning 2009“ conference (and presenting in a session last Wednesday), I’m internalising a lot more than just “research and carefully looking at how this can be interpreted and translated into daily professional practice”. This year’s conference was subtitled “Transforming Learning and Teaching” (even the order of “learning” and “teaching” in the title was examined!) and it made me think back to this blog site on more than several occasions.

Some of the points raised by the keynote speakers were so important, thought-provoking and challenging. The presentations by Mark Treadwell and Peter Blassina, particularly, were quite mind-blowing. If you haven’t seen the TED talk on “The Sixth Sense” by Pattie Maes (MIT Media Lab), as discussed by Peter Blassina at the conference, it’s a must-see:
http://www.ted.com/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html

After that video, we were all feeling more than a little inadequate, and yet incredibly excited by the possibilities. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, here I was thinking my iPhone was pretty clever, and a harbinger of how students of the future would still be needing the help of teacher-librarians to plough through our information world. If “The Sixth Sense” becomes a commercial reality, the learning curve starts anew before the current one is even finished. Are any of us ready for the next paradigm shift?

Ross also mentions how “often teacher librarians claim that much research is so remote and disconnected from their professional practice. This is an important challenge. In order for research and practice to be more intricately connected, how can this be done? What would you like to see?”

Colleen Foley and I were pleased we had plenty of school principals at our session! But there was so much information to convey in a 50 minute session of a two-day conference – at which all attendees were giving up two days of their vacation. Thus “strategies / initiatives / support at the practitioner level” depend upon practitioners giving up their own leisure time to keep pace. Which is hardly ideal. How else can we ensure that principals are empowered to act in the most effective ways? And will every teacher-librarian be comfortable and capable of providing the local research data being asked of them, and then interpreting it, and internalising the research from further afield, and making it relevant to their day-to-day educational encounters?

At my school, I’m probably very fortunate that we are part of the Priority Schools Program (PSP). In order to keep getting our funding, compiling statistics of our evidence-based practice is embedded. As teacher-librarian, I made sure I was part of the PSP committee, but I can see that setting up something similar – regular, planned pre-testing, post-testing and evaluating – is not easy in non PSP schools.

The time (and funding) needed to analyse results, particularly, and prepare reports that convince all stakeholders that certain changed practices are achieving, or not achieving, outcomes is substantial.

Essential “Strategies / initiatives / support”: Hasn’t it always been about this, and don’t we always complain there’s never enough planning, reflection, money, time and training?

Over on the School Libraries 21C blog, the point is made re “the cost of ‘modern’ resources, especially online ones”. For most NSW DET schools, it is very difficult to justify the expenses of specialist online subscription databases, especially when many topics might only get revisited every two or three years in a cyclic teaching program. Hence we tend fall back on free online material (.com, .org, .edu) and the ubiquitous Wikipedia (although the advantages and disadvantages of such material can be useful teaching points). And, of course, books… which remain viable even in a power blackout.

I perceive a move to more schools sharing campus library facilities. I assume studies are being done on the successes of the NSW “education precincts” already set up. It would be interesting to hear how those experiments are faring. (Did these end up being “libraries of the future”?)

Challenging students to research widely – via collaboratively-planned, taught and assessed Guided Enquiry activities – would seem to be a most effective way to ensure that students will be able to achieve success, especially if the pool of relevant/available resources is already limited by budget. I like the strategy where the students agree they must use a variety of resource types as they research a topic.

Making time for teachers and teacher librarians to plan their collaborations would seem to need to be a high priority, too: ie. one of the school library’s current and future primary responsibilities and functions to meet the learning goals of schools.

But… a school library can’t be setting up its responsibilities and functions in isolation. The addition of outcomes and indicators in all syllabuses puts the learner first. How often do some of us put the learners first in other considerations? Furthermore, individual school communities articulate expectations which can and should inform the learning goals for each school. The trained teacher librarian is an invaluable human resource in ensuring that learners, educators, resources and technology come together in an organised way to achieve the goals.

If the school of the future is not clear as to its learning goals, the school library of the future can’t be expected to be helping to achieve them effectively.

I really like the “What did you do in school today?“ research findings of the Canadian Education Association. Our school has now had numerous sessions on the “development of ideas through the disciplines and through work on authentic problems”, including an excellent one-day session here with Jamie McKenzie, but I think we’d all agree that finding that little bit of extra planning time, to make lessons more focused on authentic problems is the hardest bit. The school day goes by so fast; not to mention finding more time to assess the work before students move on to create their final product. The more “authentic problems” become embedded into our syllabuses and teaching strategies, the more things will improve, but for many staff it’s a challenging hurdle. The way of the future, but we’re not there yet.

I find that a lot of what happens in my school’s library program fits with that idea of “individual and collective knowledge building”, especially in a PSP (Priority Schools Program) school. Teacher librarians seem to be well placed to help students – and teachers – to make connections, and I encourage the ongoing development of field knowledge constantly. Although my IWB has only just arrived, I have seen glimpses of amazing programs that can be used on it during brainstorming and synthesis sessions to take that knowledge building so much further. There’s just so much to learn! The way of the future, but we’re not there yet.

The IWB being placed in the library is certainly also challenging me to maximise the “effective learning time”, since each class only visits for 45 minute sessions, and our semi-flexible timetable has fewer gaps than would be ideal.

Our school has worked hard to ensure we have a positive classroom disciplinary climate” and we have regular, weekly meetings where students who slip through the learning and disciplinary cracks are monitored, discussed and reevaluated, and this helps keep everyone on track. The previous teacher-librarian was always a regular part of this committee, and I made sure I kept up that participation as part of my role when I moved back into the TL position. It’s constantly enlightening, and I know I bring a unique perspective to these meetings.

Our school also tries to have “high expectations for success”. Again, very important, and often very, very hard to maintain, especially in the face of disappointing test results. Inevitably high expectations won’t always be achieved. But you’re unlikely to achieve high results without aiming high in the first place. (But, sadly how often do we hear students, student teachers – or even TLs undergoing their post-grad work – saying, “I only need 51% to get a pass”.)

The importance of “positive relationships with teachers” is also paramount to the survival of future school librares. I do seem to put a lot of energy into that. It pays off, so I keep doing it (Pavlov’s dog.) I think some teacher-librarians still allow themselves to become marginalised in a school staff. That old adage of finding one person you can work well with, then presenting your successes as a team to the other staff, then slowly working with more and more people, is so important.

I know there are some TLs that feel they are unable to do this. (It’s never been my personal experience, and I’m sure it’s not just that I’ve led a charmed life as to what TL appointments I’ve ended up in. Building positive relationships with other staff is a crucial responsibility and, if it’s unable to occur, then it becomes a whole-school problem. Again, this is something that needs explicit training for the participants – in this case the learners are the staff, not the students.)

As Lee Cutler’s group suggest in their post on 21C, “school libraries are the ONLY facility in a school where ALL learning goals of every student and teacher of every KLA and school initiative is supported”.

Sounds good to me. “Developing intellectual engagement” (re the Canadian Education Association’s findings) may well be a good umbrella term for what future school libraries will be able to do best.

Dr Ross J Todd observes, over at School Libraries 21C that, in many schools, outcomes and impacts are often “assumed some how to be lurking in there”. When a new syllabus comes in, educators often try to bend existing units of work to fit the new document, rather than to use the new outcomes to plan new, statistically-valid, pre- and post- tests that will enable staff to prove that learning has occurred. I’m guilty of that myself, trying to stretch old print-based resources to fit new units when library budgets are too tight.

Unless a school has cause to collect measurable data of the students’ achieved outcomes – eg. schools defending expeditures in Priority Schools Programs; teacher librarians undertaking post-graduate study (and requiring valid results for their assignments); etc – that all-important post-test, and results analysis, often get lost in the shuffle in the end-of-term mayhem, and that often happens four times a year, of course.

In a previous school, long before outcomes appeared in every KLA syllabus, we had our first taste of the power of collaboratively-planning valid, measurable, pre- and post- tests, when we re-examined our school-based science and technology units, spent a considerable amount of money on relevant resources that truly supported what we were hoping to achieve, and ensured that every S&T unit maximised the capacity for Talking & Listening (in English).

Schools need to plan for constant revisiting of syllabuses and evaluation strategies. I was going to say especially in schools with a high turnover of staff but, no, every school needs to do this in a structured, cyclic way.

Certainly, I’ve noticed renewed opportunities for the teacher-librarian to be more involved in collaboratively-planning valid, measurable, pre- and post- tests as a result of my voluntary role as an editor of several teaching colleagues’ half-yearly student reports. When educators have to clearly articulate just where on the learning continuum each student is, and for each key learning area, the traditional, waffly comments of yesteryear just don’t wash. I can see where certain gaps are exposed, and then I try my best to lend assistance.

Statements about students’ achievement, at our school, now have to be written in terms of outcomes. The new online reports, as daunting as they are, do seem to be assisting with providing a strong focus on value-added results. Of course, the new reports have brought in an additional problem: many outcomes sound too much like eduspeak, and that can really make some parents feel even more out of the loop.

And, of course, sometimes the best ideas for how something could have been evaluated come too late. (Hurray for cyclic programs, which can be improved each time the units are revisited.)

Similarly, a few years ago, I volunteered my services as an editor of the Annual School Report, and we noticed that the library had, previously, not really rated a mention in the ASR. The last few years have seen added paragraphs about the interrelationship of this school library with other important, high-profile school programs and events: Holiday Reading Is Rad, reading picnics, visiting storytellers, participation in annual community artshows, book reviews in the local newspaper, Circle Time, Premier’s Reading challenge, book raps, and a wiki.

This year, I hope to add OASIS Library borrowing statistics, too, and this is another easily-obtained set of data.

How to ensure that higher order thinking, and pre- and post-tests, are vital elements of the teaching program?

Well, I’m a great advocate of the online book raps and event raps run by the School Libraries and Information Literacy Unit (NSW DET). Programming and planning (including evaluation strategies) are provided. At the conclusion of each rap, we have solid data of learning progress, and the students’ jointly-constructed responses to the rap points remain online, for parents to visit via home or local library computers.

While the maximum benefit from book raps would, ideally, include teachers and the teacher librarian working collaboratively on the rap points, we have also used a highly effective “withdrawal of rappers” strategy, that requires the students reporting back to their classmates. We timetable what is achievable, and that can vary. Because book rapping takes place in the school library – and the new interactive whiteboard arrived this term, and is also in the library – the profile of the library is constantly being flagged (and raised).

Our school wiki (which I instigated, and made a point of branding as the Penrith PS Library Wiki (see “Scan” vol 28 no 1, 2009, pp 30-37) has several pages dedicated to outcomes-based annotations of the students’ progress, much of it in the students’ own words – pre-, during and post- tests, as gathered through whole-school Talking & Listening programs, such as Circle Time (see “Scan” vol 26 no 4, 2007, pp 4-7).

Okay, this week I’ve been reading lots of concerns from teacher-librarians worried about new wireless Internet connections invading their private spaces in their school libraries. People are asking about the health and safety risks of having even more (and larger) electrical cabinets humming away in the background throughout each school day…

Yes, I realise that sometimes teacher-librarians can be completely left out of a school’s decision making processes, but my two random thoughts of the day are:

1. You know, I can’t recall the last time I actually sat at my desk in the library office. It’s a tiny place I race into, to put a spoon of instant coffee into my cup, once a day, before heading off to the staff room at morning tea time. Or, it’s where I attempt to answer the telephone (which usually hangs up just as I reach it, breathlessly – although running in a long, double-portable library is definitely not good for the brand new interactive whiteboard). Or, I also go to the office to snatch a book out of Teacher Reference. If I do any sit down work in the library, it tends to be out in the main library area, since nobody would notice me squirreled away in the back office.

2. Yeah, send all this hardware back, I say, and make the little blighters do their research on slates, with authentic slate pencils, like in the days of yore. (Or is slate a deadly toxin, too?)

Seriously, if someone is insisting that a big, ugly, noisy box is moving into somewhere where you usually work, find yourself a change of scenery! Create yourself a new alcove, on the opposite side of the building. Very few library desks are nailed to the floor. There are ways around everything. But the key to any of this is surely communication. If you (and your principal, OH&S committee, Fed Rep, cleaning staff and teaching colleagues) have not established satisfactory communication skills at your school, then you have much more to worry about than electrical emissions from a new bit of machinery.

The School Libraries & Information Literacy Unit at State Office, NSW DET, is asking for comments on the question, “Do we need a school library in 21st century schools?”. There is a School Libraries 21C blog and associated readings.

Today I added thusly:

I love those reports from country towns, where their tiny public library facility would be under threat of closure – and many of the people who turn up to the town meeting would be residents who’ve never actually stepped foot into the library. But they realise its importance, and they don’t wish to contemplate the possibility of life without a public library. Just in case…

Even for myself, I tend to buy most books I want/must have/need to read. My own ventures into libraries unknown (public, university and school) – as a then-class teacher, when a mature age student, and also when researching a commercial piece of freelance writing – are quite sporadic, but the thought of a 21st century that’s somehow “moved on” from the concept of a physical library space is quite abhorrent.

But I think I am ready for any future library to have a different size, shape, location (partly in holographic or even cyber space?) or collection. I stare at my amazing, new iPhone – which is so reminiscent of Dick Tracy’s funky little two-way wrist radio/computer in comic strips of the 50s – and am lost for words. I mean, I only just discovered that my iPhone has been diligently copying across all songs I’ve been downloading from iTunes to my Macbook Pro, ever since I bought it last September. I simply hadn’t thought to look in that bit up till now!

The other day, while doing a presentation about wikis and blogs, and relying on a live Internet connection, the link went down and we had to call for a replacement computer. Only later, I remembered that all of my extended notes, on another page of the wiki, were accessible via my iPhone’s internet connection. I had my palm cards, of course, but the PowerPoint material and much more were only a few button-presses away!

An off-the-cuff mention of Tasmania tigers yesterday, during Year 6’s library lesson (we were looking at a unique picture book, “How WEIRD is that?”, one of this year’s Crichton Award CBCA nominees), permitted the impromptu calling-up of 1930s b/w moving footage of Australia’s last captive Thylacine, and now we can display him on the IWB at point of need.

Library books aren’t going away – I’m especially reminded on those days when air-conditioner-overload causes yet another blackout in the library, but the power of us having so much instantaneous information is both exciting, and another whole can of worms (as to helping students to be able to sift their way through it all).

Last year the School Libraries and Information Literacy Unit of NSW DET conducted a rap, Identity: Sharing Our Stories for Stages 3 and 4. Due to the success of this rap, via the Edublogs blogging facility, it is being run again this term!

The rap addresses outcomes in English, HSIE, PDHPE, Music and Aboriginal Studies. It draws on a range of contemporary texts, including personal stories, to explore Aboriginal perspectives on what builds strong identity. The rap is helpful for cultural understanding for all students. It also supports the Stage 4 secondary COG unit, “Cultural identity”.

Many teachers complain that they find it difficult to make sure they address Aboriginal perspectives in their programs correctly, and to find relevant resources to support their units of work in this area. Even if your school is not planning to participate, I would again urge teacher-librarians to visit the pages as the rap unfolds. Rapping is a great learning experience – for students, teachers, teacher librarians, AEOs (Aboriginal Education Officers) and community members. A range of excellent online resources is available, including: programming and planning, proformas, music, and online factual texts. This rap offers an excellent way to develop an educator’s familiarity with blogging as an educational tool, embedded in your program of work.

This year, our Year 5 students will be working in groups on the rap activities, and utilising our brand new interactive whiteboard (IWB), which is located in our library. Now that’s exciting! The new version of the Identity rap starts the week of 18 May 2009, and runs for about six weeks. Schools can use as much or as little, as suits their unique situations.

Today I had a relaxing break from the daily school library grind, travelling by two express service trains to Gosford, on the NSW Central Coast, to speak about wikis and blogs (eg. this one!) to teacher-librarians of schools in the Brisbane Waters group.

I kept wondering why I wasn’t feeling too nervous about the presentation itself, but I guess I knew my topic and audience fairly well. As I warned them, I can talk all day (be warned!) but it was great to be given a sizable chunk (about 90 minutes) of their quarterly professional development session to share the learning journey and achievements of my students (and teaching colleagues) in the area of Web 2.0.

Much of what I spoke about can be found online at:
http://penrithpslibrary.pbworks.com/Conference+notes.

Many thanks to Pam Howes and Christine Harpur for your wonderful hospitality!

RL Stine’s old “Goosebumps” series of light, punny, horror fiction is having a major resurgence in our school library at the moment.

I was remembering back to my own primary schooling in the 60s. I had a great rapport with my inspirational teacher-librarian, Janette McKenny (later Janette Mercer when she married my equally-inspirational Year 4 teacher, years after they left the school). One day, Mrs McKenny decided that we needed to revamp the “Ghost Stories” section of the library, and several of us were elected to create a papier-mache skull, that would act as a scary bookend for the section of old wooden shelves (which had been lined with black crepe paper and a sign made out of spooky letters). We spent several hours tearing up newspaper and soaking it in a garbage can of water, but none of us could remember what held wet papier-mache together as it started to dry.

Mrs McKenny remember that papier-mache needed starch, and bought a box of the stuff on her way to school. We scampered off to the storeroom and sprinkled in the powder. Again, the papier-mache refused to clump together. Imagine our horror when Mrs McKenny asked, “Are you ready for me to boil up the starch?”

Luckily, we found another box of starch in the art store room and a quantity was boiled up, the papier-mache was drained and we began to create our skull. The paper was so sodden, it was essentially impossible to get it to hold its shape, even with the addition of thick, warm, boiled starch. After school, Mrs McKenny drove me home with it, and one of the boys who’d been part of the team at school came over to help me have another go at moulding it. I forfeited a “Noddy” beachball from the toy box and we constructed the skull around it. My mother then dutifully took the board holding the model in and out of the sun every day – for about two weeks? – until the papier-mache had hardened. It never needed painting, the newspaper pulp having taken on a suitable, consistent, grey colour from its many hours soaking in the water.

The skull sat in pride of place in the library at Arncliffe Public School for many years after I departed for high school. Gosh – maybe it’s still there?

I was pondering this old anecdote the other day as I passed a local fancy dress shop and, when I saw the skull (pictured above), I realised how perfectly it would dress up our sometimes-popular “Goosebumps” shelf. $13 for a lightweight, lifelike, plastic skull seemed like a great investment – just so long as I didn’t have to endure the weeks of waiting for overly-sodden, overly-starched, papier-mache to harden!

And the effect? “Goosebumps” books are once again flavour of the month with our students, and have been flying off the shelf all month. Several of the students borrowing them are saying, “This is my first time borrowing this year!” and “My first ever chapter book!”. Maybe I should soon try moving them on to a few other spooky authors and titles now that they’re hooked by the reading bug? But at the moment, apparently, “‘Goosebumps’ rulez!”

I was undercoating a large wall of the school library today, and it was hard work. The undercoat is a high quality, very thick type, made to cover tricky porous stuff such as the wood panelling with which this portable library is lined. Hungry, hungry wood, and the oil base of the undercoat means that cleanup is going to be messy and, umm, turpsy. I was up on the ladder most of the day, using a brush rather than risk clogging up the roller I need for tomorrow’s two paint coats, so I had lots of time to ponder things.

I had a steady stream of observers, several of whom wanted to ask if I’d heard the news that “Kevin Rudd is giving out library upgrades” – and therefore was all my shoestring renovating for naught?

“Aha!” I said, several times. “That’s why I secured all my MDF letters on the walls with nails, not glue!” If the collection is moving to a new venue somedaysoon, then my renovations are coming too.

Another colleague asked tonight, on Facebook if spending in education should mean more teachers, not buildings?

Mmmmm. I suggested that if she could see the irreparable leaks in the cramped portable library I work in, and its threadbare green carpet, and rickety shelves (that tremble when I hurry to answer the telephone), maybe she’d vote “new building”, not more teachers?

We do some amazing work in this library, but a purpose-built venue, with modern fittings would be even more amazing. With or without my current renovation enhancements. This type of stuff – ie. earmarking tied government grants – always needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Not everyone needs the same things. In any case, if the Federal goverment suddenly gave my school extra teachers, we’d have nowhere to put them, or their classes!

So yes, I’d say “I’ll take the new library!”… If one is ever offered.

Similary, another colleage wondered why many Australian schools don’t have a web page for their library, even when the school itself has an Internet presence.

I created our school’s website in 2002 and 2003, or rather, I headed the committee to decide what needed to be on it, and did the HTML that made the site work. But this was before I was the school’s teacher-librarian. We ended up putting in some images of Book Week displays on a library page, but not much else. The school web site is quite extensive, but desperately in need of updating.

Since moving into the library in 2007, I’ve also created a school library wiki site, where we publish jointly constructed texts created during library sessions, but I simply haven’t had the time to brainstorm an actual library web page.

When I’ve talked to my teacher and student library users over the years, they’ve described access to OASIS Library as the most valued aspect – and, since the end of 2007, all NSW DET OASIS schools can access their library’s catalogue online, via the teacher portal or Kidspace, and can even do so at home.

So there’s still never been much of a burning need to create a dedicated “web page” for the school library. I guess we could add opening hours, etc. When our interactive whiteboard (IWB) arrives in a few weeks I can imagine other urgent uses for one. But this blog site usually has the links I use with students on any given day. Not to mention my shoestring makeover progress reports.

But yes, maybe I do need a “library web page”… But first, I have to stir this can of green paint. At least it’ll match our fraying carpet.