Lost in the Reads

via pixabay As educators, we are continuously trying to refine our practice so that we can have a meaningful impact on student learning. Teacher-Librarians are in the unique position to be able to provide support to the entire educational community to achieve this goal. This is one reason why being a Teacher-librarian is such an exciting position. To that end, Leading Learning states that in order to be an effective Learning Commons “It is essential to support both student and teacher growth.” (Canadian Library Association, 15).  This type of collaboration is beneficial to everyone, teacher, students, and the teacher-librarian. The examples below use the Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM) to identify how to best introduce and support change in a colleague’s practice. The following charts outline the Level of Use and Stages of Concern used in CBAM.    from  National Academies from National Academies Teacher 1: Mrs. Sinclair Profile ...

via pixabay                I started my career as a high school English teacher looking to go into Library Services. I am now in an elementary library and absolutely love it. I think I have adapted to the elementary setting and mindset quite well overall. However, introducing online databases to elementary students has tested the very limits of my patience, and judging by my very patient and competent elementary colleagues’ disdain for online research projects, I assume this goes beyond my own lack of abilities to properly communicate with the tiny humans.                While it would be so much easier to just print off what they need, and pull the books of the shelves, it is more important that students begin to learn online research skills early. This is why I want to make things a bit easier for myself and my colleagu...

Teachers lead busy lives. Between planning engaging lessons, coordinating extra curricular events, differentiating instruction, providing meaningful assessment for learning, teachers do not have time to sit through pages and pages of resources and ideas. Good pedagogy is founded in student centred learning. The same applies when teachers are the learners. As a teacher librarian I should be able to provide meaningful, relevant, and current resources, that support what the teacher is already doing with their classes. Giphy Since nobody wants to be the teacher prolonging the meeting at the end of the day, my practice of sharing resources needs to go beyond the quick staff meeting blurb about what’s new in the library. I have come across a few tools that provide a framework for teachers to use in any subject area. These tools allow for the collection of resources and collaboration between collogues that does not require a significant time investment outside of already packed sched...

Giphy Twitter and I have a complicated relationship. I recognize the value of engaging on twitter, that it presents a unique way for professionals to collaborate and inspire one another but the best use I have found for twitter so far is to simply follow We Rate Dogs ( @dog_rates ).  It’s not that I am social media illiterate. I am current on the Instagram, I know a bit about tumblr, and Facebook is (sadly) still my jam, yet, the twitter platform itself is just not intuitive to my technological skill base. Likewise, I have always been a peripheral social media user, I watch and listen, but rarely contribute. This I realize is not an ideal way to ‘do’ social media, and that having a more conscious online presence would be beneficial to my teaching practice.  So, why twitter? This brief video seems to answer this pretty well. It is a few years old now (from 2015) but it touches on the main reasons twitter is still a good place to connect with other educators. It...