Build Your Skills: Put Classes, Conferences, and a PLN to Work for You

by Donna Kearley, Coordinator for Library Services, Denton Independent School District

Last month (before the 2015 TASLA conference), we discussed statewide options through TLA and TASLA to build leadership skills.   Here, in Part 2, we continue our discussion with regional and social media options for professional development. 

Your regional service center and social media provide many opportunities for building leadership.   This cornucopia of ideas may be overwhelming, so just try them until you find the one that fits your personality and your school’s culture.   No one person can use all of these tools - well, at least not at the same time!

Your Regional Service Center.  Look to see what is offered from your regional service center.  Most have someone whose position is to build leadership and another person who trains Instructional Coaches.  Many of those workshops are open to a wide range of job titles.  Check to see what is offered in your area.

Social Media is a good way to build your Personal Learning Network.  

• Find someone you admire Twitter and follow them.
• Participate in #TXLChat and/or #TLChat
• Follow other school librarians on Facebook or Linked In.
• Look for ideas for lessons and leadership on Pinterest or Instagram.

Webinars.  There are several sources of webinars including AASL, Edweb, School Library Journal and other providers.  The  webinars on EdWeb have been fabulous. The topics range from inquiry, PBL, Flipped Learning, Databases (Joyce Valenza), and Brain Based Learning.

American Association of School Librarians every Fall.  AASL offers a biennial conference just for school librarians – in 2015, it will be in Columbus OH. Attend Experience, Education, Evolution for practical skills and inspiration. In the other every other years, AASL puts together a 2 day Fall Forum covering a current topic. Recent topics have been "Transliteracy" and "The Anytime, Anywhere Learning Landscape."  I’ve attend these two and both were fabulous; attendees are friendly, inclusive and enthusiastic about the same things you are!.  

How do you begin?  

Start small.   If Social Media is uncomfortable to you, choose one application and learn to use it well before moving on to something else.  No one can be an expert in everything.   

Find a mentor.  Find someone who is an expert in the skill you are learning.  Ask them to mentor you until you are comfortable using it on your own.   

Instructional Videos.   You can find a teaching video on just about anything.   Look for ones teaching you leadership, skills, as well as instructional tips and tricks.  

District Level Activities :

• Stay up on practices like Digital Citizenship.  Digital Citizenship is a federal mandate as part of the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA).  How can you show your administrators you are meeting their needs in this area?  Are you covering all 9 areas of digital citizenship? If not, you might wish to look at Common Sense Media to see sample lesson plans.
• Learning Commons.   Have you explained to your administrator what a Learning Commons is and what it brings to your student’s learning?  Put together a 5 year plan to transform your library into a Learning Commons.
• Know your district’s goals and how you fit into them.  Present a plan to your administrator of ways you are supporting their goals.
• Invite School Board Members and District Level Administrators to judge competitions, read to students, meet with your student advisors.  They love to be out in the buildings and it gives you an opportunity to make your program visible.  But don’t blindside your principal.  Keep him informed of when Board Members and/or Administrators will be in the building.  
• Create an infographic on your Library Snapshot Day activities and share with people who have the ability to support your program.  

All of these ideas are easy ways to demonstrate leadership and skills.   Stay tuned for Part 3 later in the summer to learn about specific ways to build leadership with your administrators.   

Preach to the Nonbelievers - The School Library Choir Already Knows the Tune

By Len Bryan, School Program Coordinator, Library Development and Networking Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission

We were sitting in a meeting room at the Region 10 Service Center in Richardson, Texas attending the AASL Fall Summit virtually. It was a terrific conference, and I recommend attending one if you ever have the opportunity. We had a good mix of people there; district library coordinators, campus librarians, and even a few folks from Louisiana and Oklahoma. One of the best features in this virtual conference was designated breaks for local attendees to workshop ideas, visit, and most importantly – have a snack. It was during one of these breaks that we got to talking about communicating the library’s mission, specifically with our campus administrators.

Communicating the library’s mission means a number of things to different people, but for me, it means having professional relationship with the people who make a difference in your community and maintaining open lines of communication with those people. We talked about all of the great things that librarians are doing on their campuses, and how many people outside the walls of their libraries never hear about them. Our conversation moved on to how those personality traits that are extremely helpful in our work – attention to detail, innovative thinking, creative problem-solving, a love of information and literacy in all of its forms – don’t always lend themselves to being effective communicators. Many (I would argue most) school librarians are introverts – myself included – and, while we can put on a good show of communicating, an expressive storytime or information literacy lesson, active participation in a technology committee, hosting book clubs, etc. activities tend to wear us out.

We do not, as a species, actively seek out opportunities to tell our administrators what we can do, what we should be doing, and what we need to create the school library as the center of teaching and learning for our campus. Instead, we tend to wait passively for the next budget cycle, hoping our budgets remain intact, or at least suffer from minimal cuts. We often feel powerless as communicators. We are well aware of the power of a well-funded, well-staffed school library program and its impact on student achievement, but we don’t know how to get this message across to the people holding the purse strings. We attend library conferences to gather with other librarians and talk about all of the cool stuff we do in our libraries. We present sessions, share ideas in the halls and at social events, and excitedly tweet all of the cool stuff we’re doing to the entire planet, but we don’t take that enthusiasm home with us and park it in the principal’s office, one place our enthusiasm definitely belongs.

So I volunteered to create an online course Communication for the Teacher Librarian that might help us get to the root of the issue and create some specific strategies to help us all become more effective communicators. I used the Gibbon platform, which made it easy to curate 10 chapters of materials of all types and add Teacher’s Notes (their term) to each resource. I created a Google Doc with open-ended questions for each chapter to help people reflect on each chapter of the course and develop a plan for action. The other nine chapters include articles, videos, and inventories to help us define our communication style(s), the effects our styles may have on others, and specific strategies for improving our professional communication. The course ends with a reality check and rousing call to action. Check the course out. My hope is that my colleagues across Texas and beyond use this course to become more effective communicators and even more able and willing to share their library’s story with their communities.

What a great summer PD option - challenge some colleagues to join you!

TASL Talks: Attend TASLA - Becoming a Leader, Part 1

By Donna Kearley, Coordinator for Library Services, Denton Independent School District

As Joan Rivers used to say, “Can we talk?”

Advocacy is all about being a leader on your campus, in your district, or maybe even as a district Library Leader someday.  Why lead?  It is our job to educate our administrators on what we bring to the table.  Unfortunately, administrators don’t learn that by osmosis, and they have absolutely no training in libraries.   So in order for our program to flourish, we have to teach them. 

Some of us are very comfortable with leading, others...not so much.  So “let’s talk” about ways to coach ourselves into being the leader we need to be.  Remember the saying, “Fake it until you make it?”  Here are some suggestions of ways to build leadership skills.

The Texas Association of School Library Administrators (TASLA) Conference.  This conference is designed for Lead Librarians, Sole Librarians, Managers, Supervisors, Coordinators and Directors of School Library Programs.  But it is also a good way to build leadership skills for future leaders. 

Registration this year is $75 plus your hotel bill.  Meals are provided.  The 2015 conference dates are June 16-18, 2015 in Austin, Texas.  You can find information on registering at http://www.txasla.org).  The draft schedule should be posted soon and includes workshops on Communicating Your Message and Grassroots Advocacy.   Past topics include: Coping Skills for Today’s Challenges, Envisioning Solutions and Translating Ideas and Strategies, I Do Make a Difference, Personnel, Advocacy, Professional Practice:  Where Standards and Dispositions Meet. [Dorcas highly recommends this conference - biggest bang for buck around!]

The Texas Library Association.  Did you miss conference this year?   If so, make plans for next year.  Where can you find leadership training at TLA? Webinars - Ted Wanner puts together some wonderful webinars for little or no cost.    Most are recorded, so you can watch them later if you aren’t available to watch live. Examples include  Dr. Julie Todaro’s workshop on Digital Age Management and Leadership:  Five Critical Steps to Integrating Digital Age Techniques into the Workplace. (April 7, 2015, 1-2 PM CST).  The webinars in the archives include Gretchen McCord’s workshops on Copyright and Joel Castro’s  Are we Speaking the Same Language?  Librarians, Principals, the School Library Program, and Taking the Lead.  These are only $10 in the TLA store.

The Tall Texans Leadership Institute is led by a nationally recognized leader in building leadership.    This year’s attendees have already been selected so start putting together a plan to apply next year.  Tall Texans serves all types of libraries so if you don’t get in the first time, try again.  Ask another librarian to read over your application and give you some critical feedback before submitting.  Many Tall Texans applied more than once before being accepted.

The Program Committee works hard to bring in nationally recognized leaders for all program tracks including management and leadership. Look at sessions offered, but choose wisely. Just like you wouldn’t eat a steady diet of cake, broaden your horizons and attend sessions that are tied to your district goals.   Then, bring reports and staff development sessions back to your campus to share with teachers and administrators.

We will continue our conversation in the next part as we discuss regional and social media options for building leadership skills.