Tag: teaching

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LLED 462: Librarians as educational leaders: Learning Curation

The essential question that I have chosen for my learning curation is:

How can I inspire my colleagues and students as a Teacher Librarian?

Over the last few years, I have found myself in an ever-changing state about my career.  There is no hesitation that I want to stay in education, however, even in my ‘short’ career of just over 10 years I have seen the tasks and stresses of a classroom teacher increase (especially in our current world state) and I honestly do not know how much longer I would be able to stay in a positive mental state if I keep on this path. 

In 2017, I was presented with an opportunity that gave me a new insight on my career path.  There was a posting for a ‘Technology Support Teacher’ within our district and the job description sounded very intriguing.  I reluctantly applied, thinking it would be great for people to start recognizing my name.  Well, to my surprise I got an interview and was granted the position.  This is where my new outlook on my career started.  I absolutely loved this position because it combined so many things that I loved about being a teacher:  a lot of collaboration with my team, meeting and working with staff all over the district (teachers, Teacher Librarian’s (TL), Vice-Principal’s, and Principals), discovering new technology and troubleshooting how to introduce this into a classroom and lastly, working with students all over the district.  Just over a year after started this position we were blessed with our son and I started a year long Mat Leave at the beginning of 2019.  My district position was only a 2-year role, so my return to work was a very shocking one and then led into a global pandemic. 

While on Mat Leave, I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do with my career moving forward.  I loved my role with the district and was trying to think of ways that I could have a similar job.  I had many callouts to Teacher Librarian’s across our district that were just being introduced into transitioning the ‘Library’ to the ‘Student Library Learning Commons.’  This made me think that this is a path that would be right for me.  I love helping others (as we all do as teachers), however, I have always been drawn to working with my peers as well.  When I learn something new, I want to share this knowledge with others, usually to make their life easier.  As a classroom teacher in an Elementary setting, it is hard to have collaboration and connection with colleagues.  We all have different prep blocks and not everyone takes their lunch break to have short discussions in the staff room. 

I am hoping that with a change in position I will be able to inspire others again.  When I was in my district role, the title itself gave some leverage to the information that I was sharing.  I am keeping up with leadership opportunities, such as instructing at upcoming District Pro-D sessions, but I am hoping that this course will give me some more insight on different resources and tools that are exciting and may be of interest to others.  By sharing information and collaborating, I am hoping that I can be a leader in my school or district once I find myself in a TL position. 

The transition from the Library to the Learning Commons has made me think that I can be a leader if I am a TL.  We have learned that, “The role and impact of the teacher-librarian can be synthesized quite simply: teacher-librarians impact student learning and achievement by forming strong and positive relationships with members of the school community, especially the school principal; by collaborating with classroom colleagues to plan, develop and assess independent learning abilities in students; by fostering a recreational reading culture in the building; and by providing informal staff development opportunities (CLA, 2014, p.21).”  As I mentioned before, I hope to inspire by leading others through collaboration and staff development. 

The other way that I wish to inspire others is to continue to learn and grow.  I feel like this is the message that I am getting from all my coursework towards my TL Diploma.  We need to be life-long learners and continue to grow to inspire others to do the same.  I feel like the most powerful way to inspire my peers is to continue this education journey that I am on and keep learning, even once my TL Diploma is complete.  Strive to learn at least one or two new things a month and then share this new knowledge with my fellow staff and students. 

(Couros, 2018)

I came across this TED Talk while researching for my essential question and I feel like Drew (2010) has really nailed it on the head.  My goal is to create those ‘lollipop’ moments in life and really appreciate them.  You do not know the power that your own positivity or wisdom can have on a person. 

Drew discusses ‘everyday leadership’ and how we need to think about leadership from a different viewpoint.

As a yoga instructor, I have had members come back to me months later repeating something that I had said to them before/during or after a practice and they had claimed that it changed their lives.  They were holding onto something that they should not and finally let it go.  They made more time for themselves because I had taught them that self care is not selfish.  At the time, I was just doing my job as an instructor and had no idea what an impact I would have on my members. 

Moving forward, I hope to continue to inspire others without the intention of doing so by constantly learning and growing as an educator.  Even if I can have an impact on just a few people, I know that I am paying it forward and being a successful leader in education. 

Works Cited: 

Canadian Library Association. (2014). Leading learning: Standards of practice for school library learning commons in Canada. Ottawa: ON

Couros, G. (2018, May 30). 5 Crucial Quotes on Leadership and Why They are Important. Retrieved from https://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/8277

Dudley, D. (2010). Retrieved January 31, 2021, from https://www.ted.com/talks/drew_dudley_everyday_leadership?referrer=playlist-how_leaders_inspire#t-361419

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LIBE 477B – Inquiry 1 – Fostering a Reading Culture

Enjoying reading with my son and teaching him the basics of coding 🙂

When starting to think about this topic of fostering a reading cultures in my school, I know that there are many traditionalists that feel like reading should only be from a paper book.  I think that as technology has evolved, we are slowly moving away from that mindset.  I mean, even for this course we were able to purchase our textbooks on Amazon and read them on a device or print if we felt so inclined. 

Our most recent stint in remote learning also opened a lot of educators eyes to what is available online for our students to access.  I know that many companies were offering free subscriptions and access during this time of remote learning to help out during these strange times, which was greatly appreciated.  I know that having conversations with parents, that they were able to find a whole bunch of resources to keep their child occupied while we were in that limbo phase at the end of March and into April.  In my conversations with parents they were getting a lot of use of virtual field trips found online and a lot of people were using Scholastic Learn at home and Math Prodigy

When I was in my Tech Support role, one of my jobs was researching and suggesting different apps to use in an Elementary setting.  ‘Epic!  Books for Kids‘ was always my number one App that I would suggest and was always well received from both teachers and students.  There are a few things that I love about this App.  I have shown some of my favourites in the video below. 

1. You can use it in a generic sense, without having to ‘set up’ a classroom with students names.  I used to just have grade levels and be logged onto the school iPads and then students could use their grade level to look at different books that I suggested, or they could explore on their own.

2. There are ‘Read-to-me’ books which are in the sense our old ‘reading and listening’ stations that we used to have in classrooms with the cassette tapes or CD’s.  This is a great feature of the app because it highlights the words as it reads, which I think is much more beneficial than just having the book because this way is teaches the student how to track along the words.  There are also audio only (mainly longer chapter books) that can be used for independent book study or helping students who struggle with reading, yet still want to enjoy like everyone else. 

3. There are educational videos that are often related to books that students are reading.  The great thing about this feature is that you can easily toggle this function on and off as an educator.  Personally, I have kept this off for my students when it is reading time so that I know that they are finding a book rather than watching a video.  If we were doing something like research I would turn this function back on.

4. With permission of course, you can set up a class (even use avatar names if you choose) list with names so that you can track the books that students are reading.  You can see how long they spent reading, how many books they have read and also assign books or quizzes to go along with reading. 

During return to school I got to see how much students love this app.  They are able to find books to suit their mood.  My favourite memory of all this was when my students started to ask each other jokes from the books that they had found.  They started to naturally rate each others jokes, which I found hilarious.  It was awesome to hear their discussions.  I could also monitor my students that were still learning at home to see if they were reading. 

My grade 3/4 class reading on Epic! Books for kids during return to school in June 2020

I also noticed that the students who were in class were able to read for much longer periods of time than they had during our traditional ‘D.E.A.R.’ time.  From January to March I used to have to put up a timer on our Smartboard for 15min so that students were aware and could see ‘how much longer’ we HAD to read.  Often times if I felt like this time was not being used for its purpose I would start the timer over, or add a few minutes.  When we returned to school in June my students would be reading for 20 minutes, I would check in and ask if they wanted more time and they always said yes!  I was shocked.  I had students that returned to school that did not enjoy reading in the traditional sense, but they absolutely loved reading on Epic! 

I do believe that this is because they are able to switch to something else very quickly and easily if they find that they are not interested in what they are reading.  This may not be the best for their reading endurance, but at least this way they are not constantly getting up and socializing with their friends along the way as they choose a new book.  So I guess it was also a helpful classroom management tool 🙂

Using Epic! Books for kids App with French Immersion Kindergarten class. They loved the Read-to-Me feature, in French I might add!

I used this App to support reading as low as the Kindergarten level.  It is so user friendly and having the ability to assign a collection of books allows the teacher to have a little bit of control instead of a free for all.  The Kindergarten students really enjoyed the Read-to-me books and they were super engaged.   I know that this is in part that they were in front of a screen, but they were still tracking and listening, which is what we want to see in emerging readers.  I think that this is highly important when creating resources for teachers. 

The web allows us to do amazing things, “You create some sort of web tool that students can refer to when you’re working with a different teacher and another teacher comes to you at the same time.” (Fontichiaro & Oehrli, 2014, p. 38)’ Having this access is a game changer for classes who may be working on similar inquiries.  Having a resource like this could allow several classes to be studying the same novel without having to purchase the book, or several classes could be working on the same Inquiry project and the TL would not have to worry about running out of resources. 

As mentioned in my video, if I am to move into a Learning Commons position,  I could see myself using this App a lot  while collaborating with teachers.  It is a great resources for any type of inquiry as it offers both books and videos for the students to learn from.  If teachers wanted students to stick to a general theme of their inquiry, I could also help curate a collection, or maybe several collections of books and videos that would suit the inquiry.

Works Cited:

Fontichiaro, K. & Oehrli, J. A. (2014a). Nudging toward inquiry – Turning the tables on collaboration part I: Planning for success. Library Media Connection 32(4): 36-38.