space – Informative Flights – Musings of a Teacher Librarian

Collateral damage or passive Anura?

Classroom libraries vs. school libraries, teacher superstars marginalising teacher librarians – or is it our fault?

This post was first going to go one way and then through holiday laziness in posting, it has taken a kind of dual direction as I have more time for self-reflection and research.

The first offensive was launched by KC Boyd (2018) in her post “Easy Like Sunday Morning: School Libraries vs Classroom Libraries” where she reflects on Chicago School System and the impact on literacy of shifting from school libraries to (only) classroom libraries (hint – it wasn’t favourable). She refers to Ariel Sack’s post on the importance (and diminishing) role of school librarians who asks “Can this project be done by an individual teacher? Yes. But it’s something different when one person with a vision and the time to implement it leads it consistently for the entire school, every year” (Sacks, 2018). I’d argue there is another factor – one very rarely meets a librarian who doesn’t read (I have however met library assistants without any interest in books or reading); but the Peter Effect is well documented in teachers (Applegate & Applegate, 2004; Binks-Cantrell, Washburn, Joshi, & Hougen, 2012; Turner, Applegate, & Applegate, 2009) with studies in various places around the world documenting aliteracy in teachers / pre-service teachers – “Findings revealed that 54.3% of 195 teacher candidates were classified as unenthusiastic about reading and only 25.2% of teacher candidates reported unqualified enjoyment of reading.” (Binks-Cantrell et al., 2012, p. 526), and the picture appears to be getting worse rather than better (Skaar, Elvebakk, & Nilssen, 2018).

This is something easy to lose sight of when twitter, YouTube, Facebook, blogposts and podcasts are dominated by literacy superstars like Pernille Ripp, Colby Sharp, Mr. Schu, Jennifer Gonzalez, Angela Watson etc. But for every one of them, even a small imitation of them, there are likely to be three or more other teachers who are either not enthusiastic about reading, or, who actually don’t deign to read the types of books their students do – something I know my librarian mentor Katie Day, (successfully) worked very hard on with the teachers at UWCSEA-East when she was there. Based on my own experience I have encountered whole grades where not one teacher has been actively and passionately engaged in books and reading, and where this is apparently not seen as an issue (except when it is reflected in their students’ testing scores – but then the solution has been to work on the students rather than the teachers).

Regie Routman in her article “On the level with levelled books” (Routman, 2018), makes some valid arguments for free voluntary reading, and the choice of a selection of relevant and developmentally appropriate books for classroom libraries, but only makes oblique reference to public libraries and with no mention of school libraries or librarians – not even in a nostalgic or wishful manner. Relying on teachers who care and the intervention of a literacy expert is not a long term solution!

Colby Sharp, boasting a 3,000 book classroom library, ordered in a numbered system unfamiliar to any librarian I asked, talks about book checkout and is quick to dismiss the scanning system a librarian assisted him in setting up as “too much trouble”… (Sharp, 2018)

To which Day responded on FB “as long as he is on top of what all his students are reading, then, yes, it could work. But it’s not scaleable — and he doesn’t mention inventory checks — so at the end of the year you know which books might need to be replaced. With 3,000 books, it might be good for his students (other students? other teachers?) to be able to search and discover what books he has in his class library… Just sayin’… And LibraryThing’s TinyCat is definitely an option he might consider — to be able to see his collection online, whether he uses their circulation system or not.”

And then I found out what his library looked like – with a self-invented number system – ok so Dewey doesn’t do it for everyone, but those random numbers? (Sharp, 2017). I love the idea and potential of classroom libraries – I baulk at the cost, duplication of effort, waste of resources, money and time, lack of discoverability, lack of meaningful data and often stagnant nature of them. I have seen money wasted on thoughtless last minute purchasing without any clear strategy, collection management or development. I’ve seen classroom libraries with books that would better be relegated to pulping or, redistributed to older or younger students. I’d be the first to admit that often no one knows students better than their class-teacher, but just as we shouldn’t have to choose between classroom libraries and school libraries, so too the burden of creating dynamic exciting collections needn’t be the domain of only the class teacher or the librarian – together we definitely are better. Dialogue, collaboration, debate, relative expertise – all these things make us stronger as a learning community.

I started out being a little annoyed at the lack of mention of (school) librarians, but then reading the FB question of a librarian, (who shall remain nameless) challenging whether she should be expected to find a selection of books on a specific theme for a teacher because “she’d already shown the teacher how to find book in the system” and the responses I wondered how much of it was our own fault? We should be falling over ourselves to help teachers, parents, administrators, everyone in the community with lists and suggestions and books and resources they didn’t even to know to ask about. We should be anticipating and proactive. Not whining on FB as to where the limits of our job lie. I love the fact that this is one of the careers where you can pretty much be without boundary and limitless in what you can do – all in the interest of teaching and learning.

Spending a bit of time on Twitter I saw what was going on with Project Lit – something started in an English Classroom that is going viral (Riddell, 2018), (and what an excellent book collection they’ve created!) and I thought, darn it – we’re missing so many tricks here. Why aren’t teacher librarians initiating things like this, or the GRA? Why aren’t we leveraging our knowledge and experience in more ways than just fretting about our increasing marginalization and extinction? Why aren’t we taking more leadership and visibility in these arguments and discussions?

We aren’t part of these discussions and we’re not top of mind to any of the people who are getting attention. Whose problem is that? Do these “superstars” have a blind spot to anything NIH (not invented here), monstrous egos, or are we / have we become just so marginal to the whole reading / literacy scene that we don’t even merit a mention unless prompted (as the Sack article intimated)?

On FB again, another librarian spoke of her school that has gone from a thriving library system with two libraries run by two qualified librarians that’s been whittled down and compromised to one remaining librarian and was wondering what the moral of the story was – I commented “frog in a pot that slowly comes to boil”.

The problem with being a passive Anura is that no one else is going to turn the gas off and you don’t want to be left alone when the party is no longer in the kitchen – with apologies to Joan Lewie (WiggyOfStHelens2008, 2008).

References

Applegate, A. J., & Applegate, M. D. (2004). The Peter Effect: Reading habits and attitudes of preservice teachers. The Reading Teacher, 57(6), 554–563.

Binks-Cantrell, E., Washburn, E. K., Joshi, R. M., & Hougen, M. (2012). Peter Effect in the Preparation of Reading Teachers. Scientific Studies of Reading, 16(6), 526–536. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2011.601434

Boyd, K. c. (2018, June 3). Easy Like Sunday morning: School libraries vs classroom libraries [Web Log]. Retrieved 5 July 2018, from https://theaudaciouslibrarian.blogspot.com/2018/06/easy-like-sunday-morning-school.html

Sharp, C. (2018). My classroom library checkout system. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9u6KHYoLVE

Sharp, C. (2017). Classroom library tour 2017-2018. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGITHdb8tZ8

Riddell, R. (2018, March 12). Project LIT: How a Nashville educator turned a class project into a nationwide movement [Web Log]. Retrieved 5 July 2018, from https://www.educationdive.com/news/project-lit-how-a-nashville-educator-turned-a-class-project-into-a-nationw/518766/

Routman, R. (2018, June 24). On the level with leveled books [Web Log]. Retrieved 5 July 2018, from https://www.middleweb.com/37973/regie-routman-on-the-level-with-leveled-books/

Sacks, A. (2018, May 29). Why school librarians are the literacy leaders we need [Web Log]. Retrieved 5 July 2018, from https://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25920011&item=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.edweek.org%2Fv1%2Fblog%2F191%2Findex.html%3Fuuid%3D76470

Skaar, H., Elvebakk, L., & Nilssen, J. H. (2018). Literature in decline? Differences in pre-service and in-service primary school teachers’ reading experiences. Teaching and Teacher Education, 69, 312–323. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2017.10.019

Turner, J. D., Applegate, A. J., & Applegate, M. D. (2009). Teachers as literacy leaders. The Reading Teacher, 63(3), 254–256.

WiggyOfStHelens2008. (2008). Jona Lewie – You’ll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62eTq8ErUOQ

Make-over update

When I tell people we’re getting to renovate and extend our library their first reaction is “wow, that’s amazing, you’re so lucky!”. And yes, prima facie it is so. But right now it’s feeling rather overwhelming. And ironically most of that is not so much to do with the change as the amount of preparation that needs to be done. Speaking of change – you HAVE to get “Bug in a Vacuum”

I am a veteran of moving. 10 countries in 24 years plus countless internal moves in those countries and 3 moves in the last 5 years. I know it pays to be prepared and to clean and clear before the move. And as I remarked in my last post, a lot of that cleaning and clearing happens behind the scene. Things are slightly more complicated as well due to well, life. Unforeseen circumstances. Like one staff member on maternity and another on hospitalisation leave. And part of my gratitude thoughts each day are for my remaining staff member who is picking up a lot of the slack and the temporary staff member who is happy to learn the ropes and keep things ticking over. And the other temp who has been coming in and the occasional parent or volunteer for their kindness. But it does slow things down as we adapt and learn.

So, significant but time consuming things that have been done this week – including taking up time in my weekends – those weekends that I thought would be computer and work free now that I’ve finished my M.Ed!

Putting patron photos into FollettDestiny – easy in theory but quite a lot of preparation work – including learning all sorts of new Excel tricks on how to add things before and after text in cells! And of course 90% goes well, but the 10% that bombs out, takes 90% of your time to trace why an upload didn’t work, what went wrong and how to remedy it.
Cleaning up patron data. After the last patron update I found about nine pages of patron data that just wasn’t right. Parents marked as students or staff, students who had left years ago, staff who had left, incorrect emails etc. Now bear in mind, when I prepare these lists, I then go into school with a full teaching schedule and it literally took 2 people 2 days to clear it all up in-between their regular tasks of circulation, shelving and THE PREP
Yes, the PREP. we have 9 different grades from Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 6, and each of those have 4 (Kindergarten) -6 (the rest) UOIs. The library has to be vacated by next Friday. Most UOI’s are changing over on Monday coming. Many UOIs have changed this year. So that means checking the central idea etc. checking previous year’s lists, quickly checking with the lead that my understanding of where the topic /theme / concept is going is the same as theirs, making new lists and then packing up 18 boxes of books and DVDs – 9 for the coming week when we’ll have over 1000 books returned from the last units and 9 for the first weeks of January 2017 – just in case. Because of course our handover of an empty library to the designers / constructors is 1 December and of course their hand-back to us is 1 January. But I am of little faith that things are flawless. So I err on the side of caution. And bear in mind, we’re still having our 35 classes a week, plus all sorts of meetings that are using the library so we’re configuring and reconfiguring the space and arranging catchup classes…
The new books. And the wrongly processed books. I still hold vestiges of anger on our last big book order with Follett that went horribly wrong in every which way it could have gone wrong. They didn’t deliver on time or as arranged, they catalogued incorrectly, spine labels were wrong etc. So we’re still sorting out that mess. And then I put in a couple of other smaller orders, but our cataloguer is off on hospitalisation leave so we’re cataloging on the fly. Now this is a GOOD thing I keep on telling myself. I’m all for final responsibility for tasks and work flow, but I’m also all for everyone pitching in and helping and knowing all aspects of the process. It’s been a little peeve of mine in the library world that there is so much segregation of duties and these past weeks have just proven that given the chance people can do way more than they or anyone else may have thought. But it is extra work – did I mention what else was going on?
The weeding. Saying goodbye is so hard to do! I must admit having absolutely no problems ditching the disney fairy series that no-one was looking at or borrowing. But then there are other books – Michael Rosen’s “Sad”. I’m sad that no-one seems to have ever borrowed that. And I feel bad that I’ve not marketed it, or allowed it to see the light of day and be nurtured and treasured. Perhaps if I pair it with Bug in a Vacuum? Weeding is sweet sorrow. It highlights our failings as book pushers. I feel like a neglectful parent when a book that’s been bought doesn’t get the attention it needs. I spend time with each of them and ponder whether putting them on a resource list would help. (No jokes about “will this bring me or someone else joy) Or perhaps asking students and teachers to ponder their fate. And I do both, and some survive for another day.
Acquisition plan – my kids ask me “if we’re getting a new library does that mean we’re getting new books?” This is the double edged sword of money and budget. I was talking to some fellow librarians last week – their budgets are double mine. Sometimes less is more. Our students and our teachers probably only have capacity for perhaps one really good reading book a week. Each. What should that book be? And for research / nonfiction? It’s so hard. I try so hard, but this week it has been stingrays and grasshoppers. Boats and jet planes. Last week it was fast cars and how to make your own vegetable garden (try getting one of those for an equatorial climate, suitable for G2 level), dinosaurs are totally out of favour. They want tornados and not hurricanes. And “Miss where are your Indian books?” and “there’s nothing on Bangladesh” I’m trying to diversify. They deserve Indian books, and overseas Chinese but not ABC (American born Chinese) books, and Korean protagonists and Japanese heroes. The triplet sister of acquisition and weeding is discoverability. I need to crack that nut in the new library. Does that mean genrefying, through label or location? Does it mean more work on resource lists or libguides or other pathfinders?

The problem with grappling with all these things is that they take up a lot of brainspace and thought space and discussion space. All of which is being take up by doing. I’m looking forward to the library being boxed up and having time to be more strategic, having time to go into classrooms and observe and understand.

Design – Space, Thinking and Time (4)

September literally flew by, and I’m at the point of finishing up my final assessment for this course, and working on my critical reflection. But first I wanted to critically reflect on where I was in my own library space.

I’m expanding the LibGuides to better resource our curriculum and to supplement the gaps in the curriculum. Because only I know how to use them, the progress is slow and on a “just in time” basis populating them rather than a nice methodical roll-out, but the reception has been great from both the students and the teachers. I’ve started showing it from Grade 3, and one of my Grade 5 pupils told me she’d spent an hour looking through the library Libguide before the lesson and “loved it”.

My next foray into the digital sphere for this learning environment has been to accost all the teachers to try and get them to download the Destiny App to access our catalog from their mobile phones and iPads. The rollout to students will take a little longer as I have to apply to EdTech for permission to have apps loaded onto their iPads and that is reviewed and action taken only once a term.

I have to mention something about the value of constraints at this point. Up to last Friday, more than 6 weeks into term, our library budget had not yet been approved and I had a bunch of kids whining that they were bored of the books and wanted new books. I’d been fiddling around with the reporting tool of our OPAC trying to do a bit of a collection analysis and see what I had of which levels, what was popular etc. and I discovered that we had about 500 books that had never ever been circulated.

What was the matter with them? I got my staff to pull them all out. I started with nonfiction – about 150 books and put them all on my table with books overflowing onto the floor and invited teachers to come and have a look and see if we could put it in a unit of inquiry resource list or if it would be useful for anything. We whittled it down to about 20 books that are still homeless and unloved, but it was great as the books were “new to them” and hidden on the shelves. The process was repeated for the picture books – but how to get young kids to identify the books and not have them lying on my desk or one of the few tables in the library – and that’s when I decided a little sad face paper clipped onto the book could do the trick. And it did! You would have thought I’d put abandoned puppies free to a good home on display! My staff and I started on a Monday morning and by Tuesday all the books had found a home. So we continued with Junior Fiction and Fiction – with the same response, albeit a little more mature. My older students gasped that award winning books hadn’t been borrowed. They took up the challenge of taking a risk with a book or author they hadn’t tried yet.

These books haven’t flown off the shelves at quite such a fast pace, and there are more of them – particularly in the fiction section. At that age students have become more selective and seem to be getting settled in their tastes. Some have reported back that they’ve enjoyed the “new” books. I’m working through some of the titles myself so I can book talk them as well.

So here are some captioned photos of how the space has evolved over the last two weeks and what we’ve been up to.

A grade 1 class donates a finger counting poster they made	Reverse psychology on teacher resources that hadn’t moved since I started – I don’t wait for them to come to me, I just look at the books and think who might like / need them for their class / self and check them out to them! So far a good response from all and no rejects returned yet…
	Notices everywhere to direct users to our online presence and virtual resources
Stacks of books pulled out quickly as my G6 students did their 3 minute booktalk before their Information Literacy classes.	The yellow post-its are the library “to do” list. As soon as something has been completed, it gets taken down and thrown away. When I think of something I write a note and put it up. Then if I or my staff has time, we tackle the next item that can be done …

On the box, off the box – INF536 Blog Post 1

(a) Describe a problem space that is not serving the purpose it could do, for learning

The orchestra my son was playing in during music camp had a very small podium to rehearse on – about 8mx4m for about 35-40 students including 1st, 2nd & 3rd violins, cellos, violas and double basses. The podium had an upright piano – which wasn’t being used but can be moved but not off the podium. The “norm” would for orchestras is almost double this – a recommended 1.7-2m2 per person – this particularly has to do with health and safety guidelines – for sound exposure (Sound Advice, 2007).

(b) Explain, using some of the suggested reading, why that space might benefit from some thinking on its design

The musicians only come together for four days of rehearsals with the final concert on the fifth day. Most do not speak English, and the average age was about 12 years – an interesting case of “extreme users” as suggested by Brown (2008) where an effective learning space is critical.

Kimbell refers to design thinking as “a set of contingent, embodied routines that reconfigure the sociomaterial world” (Kimbell, 2012, p. 141) – in this case the “embodied routine” of using a podium was limiting the efficacy of the space and not allowing “design in use”. Further the context of a junior amateur orchestra was not the embodied knowledge of the (professional) conductor which prevented a reconfiguration of space and thereby value.

The impact the limited space has includes the fact that it is very difficult for the conductor and the teachers aiding the orchestra to move between the ranks, and individual players – this is normal behaviour in amateur and student orchestras since the players are often too young to just take the instructions and write them in the music unaided, or even sometimes to understand exactly what is meant or asked for so this needs to be demonstrated in situe. All players should be able to see the conductor which was not the case.

Day 1 – squeezing 38 players on a podium	Viola players off the edge at the back
First Violins nearly on the edge	A lot of space and few observers
Day 2, piano moved not much improvement

(c) Describe the changes, however small, you make to that space as a result, in order to attempt to create a better space for learning

The interesting part of the equation is although the podium is small, the rehearsal space is very big, and there are relatively few observers. Although I made the suggestion to the conductor that there was no particular need for the rehearsals to take place on the podium, and we as observers would be happy to sit in one part of the room while they took over the rest – he wasn’t open to the idea.

However, I saw my suggestion in action on the third day when I went to look at the rehearsal of another orchestra. Voila! This conductor obviously was not constrained by the box! The first violins, cellos and double basses sprawled over the front edge, as did the conductor and the spectators were pushed back.

Compared to the limited freedom of movement which leads to more cramped posture and claustrophobic feeling of the first orchestra, there was more space, and this space was used more often by the conductor and teacher-aides to move around the players and “show not tell” what they were requiring.

Why? I can only imagine that with six cello players needing chairs (as opposed to just three in the first orchestra) they just HAD to move down, it was no longer an option to stay “in the box” in this case the constraint was a source of inspiration, and flexibility of mind and “risk taking” behaviour was exhibited (Kuratko, Goldsby, & Hornsby, 2012).

Conductor off the box!	Violins have plenty of space
Cellos spread out. Violas on the podium	no-one falling off the edge!

References:

Brown, T. (2008). Design thinking. Harvard Business Review, 86(6), 84–92. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=heh&AN=32108052&site=ehost-live

Kimbell, L. (2012). Rethinking design thinking: Part II. Design and Culture, 4(2), 129–148. http://doi.org/10.2752/175470812X13281948975413

Kuratko, D. F., Goldsby, M. G., & Hornsby, J. S. (2012). The design-thinking process. In Innovation acceleration: transforming organizational thinking (1st ed, pp. 103–123). Boston: Pearson.

Sound Advice. (2007). Sound Advice Note 12 – Orchestras. Retrieved July 22, 2015, from http://www.soundadvice.info/thewholestory/san12.htm

Post-script

Funnily enough I did ask my son and his fellow other viola players how they felt as well as the other parents. The students were a lot less indignant than their parents. Is it because they are much younger and have less insight and perspective? Or is it because they are more happy to accept what someone in authority decides? Or do they get less upset and excited generally about this type of thing? Didn’t it matter enough? Would it have mattered more if it went on for a longer period of time? Anyone have suggestions? Do we care too much?

New Semester, new course: Designing spaces for Learning

Just started delving into the outline and introduction of INF536 my new course for this semester. It feels like INF530 has barely finished and now it’s already time to move on.

I’m moving on in more ways that one. At the end of last term I unexpectedly found a “look-see” at a school library after expressing vague interest in an opening turning into a job interview and then a job offer and then another interview at another school and another job offer and then the agonising choice between two excellent but very very different opportunities! The tyranny of choice. After a sleepless night and an early morning (like 4am early – another interesting TED talk by Rives – see below), and the input of my entire family a choice was made and I’m going to be leaving my great but part-time and low-paying apprenticeship type job for a real “the buck stops here” job as Teacher-Librarian.

https://embed-ssl.ted.com/talks/rives_on_4_a_m.html

Which makes me even more excited about this course, because I must admit my heart did sink just a tiny little bit when I saw the small space that will be my new “domain”. But then I am heartened by the idea that there is value to be found in constraint. And that the physical space is but one part of where learning takes place. And that I’m going to be learning and doing and learning so this will be a “just in time” course for me.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: