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Our second Face 2 Face session at the York School seems ages ago now and I can’t wait to get together next week at the ME to WE Global Learning Centre. I’ve had the chance to mull and consider and hesitate on some of the big thinking I did at our last meeting. That day I felt I had embraced ambiguity, blown up some of my thinking and really been open to the process. In my reflections on the day, I wrote “I thought I knew what I wanted to work on this year but now I see that it’s just a small part of the bigger picture, but it’s a good place to start.”
I started this year with a lot of questions, prompted by a construction project in the library that took place over the summer. I wondered…
- How might we engage further in library advocacy? How can I help staff, students and admin be aware of the library and its resources, and the value we bring to the school community? How can I leverage the experts on our staff to help improve the library’s collection and program?
- How might we improve the experience of using the library? What are the staff, student and admin expectations of the library and how are we meeting them? How do we make sure stakeholders in our community know what we do? How do we best manage the library’s resources, from staff and space to tech and time, to make accessing the library as frictionless as possible? How can we gather information about this to inform decision-making?
Through the process of empathizing, iterating, prototyping and getting feedback from my peers, I decided to focus on one questions that brings together three smaller ideas from both of these areas: how might we leverage experts in our community to improve library collections and services.
I haven’t left any of my other questions behind, and they continue to inform my thinking about my action plan. But here’s what I’ve been working on so far:
- Unpacking the library collection into its new space made clear that our non-English language materials are, at best, underused and out of date. I am bringing in experts from our Languages Department to help do some specific collection development in our French and Spanish language materials.
- Over the years, the library has accumulated a small but very interesting and instructionally valuable collection of rare and antiquarian books. We also have a staff member who is passionate and knowledgable on the subject. She and I will be collaborating on a series of hands-on workshops for Junior School students about the history of children’s books.
- I have put up my Action Plan placemat in the library as a way to begin collecting data from students about the library’s programs and services. Leveraging the expertise of our student patrons will help inform decision-making moving forward in a variety of areas, especially as it pertains to accessing the collection and improving research and citation help.
So, what do you think? have I bitten off more than I can chew? I’ll report back as my thinking continues to change and my projects develop. Any feedback or relevant experiences in your own school are much appreciated. Thank you!
Update, January 12: #3 has been a complete success. Look at all this great feedback! Thank you C21 for giving me the courage to ask how might we.
Laura, I love this iteration on your HMW question! You’re breaking down the library walls!
You should also check out the incredible work of Leigh Cassels, an educator in Strathroy. I met her through Future Design School and she’s created this thing called the Digital Human Library. It’s essentially a database of community experts who are willing to speak with students. I wonder if you might consider creating something similar in the library at SCS? Or using her’s as a resource for teachers and students. Here’s a link: https://www.digitalhumanlibrary.org/
See you soon!
Les
Thank you so much for sharing, Les! The Digital Human Library is AWESOME. I love this: “Connections-based opportunities for learning help students make connections across all areas of the curriculum and to the world beyond the school with a focus on how this knowledge will affect their lives in the future, further strengthening relationships within, and between our communities.”
Hi Laura,
Nice work here – I love your phrase “I haven’t left my other questions behind…”. I think it’s so important for our participants to know that a How Might We question can inform other challenges; that an action plan is a step forward, not a one-stop-solution for all challenges.
At Havergal, we had our Latin teacher coordinate a Day 9 experience on Paleography – The study of manuscripts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palaeography. It was full immediately after sign-up opened, and it was overwhelmingly positive! The love of books is still alive! Keep up the great work!
garth.
@lmustard Such a wonderful action plan. If its ok with you I shared it with your awesome head of school via twitter. Hopefully it will help spread the word and help you build your coalition.
@gnichols and @jmedved Thank you both! Your support and encouragement is immensely meaningful. Can’t wait to continue to conversation IRL next week.
@lmustard Inspiring post, Laura! One thought that occurred to me is that you can think of and engage students as experts and as advocates for the library too. Something small that we do in line with this in our library is display books recommended by students. The books have a sticky with the name pf the student and, sometimes, a nano-review by them. Students are more likely to pick up books recommended by peers! Really looking forward to connecting further on Friday 🙂
Always killing it @lmustard! Nicely done. We don’t take advantage of our fantastic librarian enough as teachers either. The other day, a teacher was looking for books to match a theme so she could give the students choice over what they were reading and she reached out. Cathy, (our librarian) put together a spreadsheet and had a plethora of titles that were at different reading levels and matched a variety of the themes Erica had mentioned. She did it so quickly too!
I love the way you pivoted slightly into engaging experts and I wonder how you might leverage some of your alum in this as well? Is that something you’re looking at?
Looking forward to reconnecting!