Lunch & Learn Webinars

by Brandi Rosales-Dawson, Library Systems Administrator in Richardson ISD, and Stacy Cameron, Coordinator of Library Services in Frisco ISD

The Texas Association of School Librarians (TASL) Lunch & Learn webinars are back for another year with timely topics including scheduling, collaboration, communication, programming, and more. The webinars began last year after the TASL executive board saw a need for additional professional learning specifically for Texas school librarians, since not all school librarians are able to attend the annual TxLA conference. Through the support of former TLA Executive Director Dana Braccia, TASL Lunch & Learn webinars were created in a weekend and launched in December of 2018. 

We knew we wanted the series designed around Texas educators presenting the content for several reasons. First, we have amazing school librarians across this state doing great things on their campus, and we want to highlight and lift up their hard work so others can learn and implement those ideas. Second, presenters need to be accessible to those attending or watching the recording. While there is value in seeing national speakers present, we want an attendee to feel they could contact a presenter for additional tips and tricks as they move through their own implementation. Lastly, as we know school librarianship can make us feel like islands, and this is one way to help school librarians connect with each other across the state. 

During the initial year, presenters were selected by word of mouth and their online reputation for innovative implementations on their campus. The Lunch & Learn webinars were such a hit last year with the average registration for each webinar being about 80 and live attendees around 25. This year we opened it up to any Texas librarian/educator who wants to share library programming implementations or instructional practices they are doing on their campus and/or with their community. At this time we are still looking for presenters to fill weekly webinar offerings through the end of the year. If you have a great programming or lesson you would like to present, please fill out the following form so we can get you on the schedule. 

Webinars are free to all TASL members, but registration is required. Each webinar lasts only 30 minutes, but if you’re unable to attend live, you can access the recording once it has concluded. 

To register for a September webinar, click here. 

September 4 - Flexible Scheduling in the Elementary Library

September 11 - Library Ambassador Customer Service Program

September 18 - Upgrade Your Secondary School Library

September 25 - Level Up Your Staff Newsletter

For future webinars, keep an eye on your inbox for emails from TASL or you can find registration links on the Texas Library Association website! 

Let's Promote Libraries (Again)!

by Brooke King, Middle School Librarian in Humble ISD, TxASLTalks Editorial Board Chair

Last school year, the TxASL Legislative & Advocacy Committee began a social media campaign, Let’s Promote Libraries!, with the hopes of encouraging school librarians to promote themselves, their programs, and their instruction. The campaign is back for the 2018-2019 year, and it has been tweaked and improved to help showcase all the fabulous happenings in school libraries.

It is organized around the revised Texas Library Standards, and each month’s topic is framed as a question. Each question begins with, “Did you know that school libraries…,” followed by one of the standards.

On the 17th of each month, we’re asking school librarians to send a social media message about what we do. You can post on any social media outlet or even send an email to a stakeholder. We want to focus on local stakeholders first, and then at the state and national levels.

It’s easy to participate!

Step 1: Look at the current month’s question.

Step 2: Snap a photo and write your message showing how your library shows that standard.

Step 3: Post your message and photo on any/all platforms of social media.

Step 4: Be sure to use the hashtag #txaslleg along with other key hashtags.

Step 5: Repost/retweet/share

There are two infographics to guide you. One explains the full campaign. The other only shows the monthly topics.

So gear up and get ready to showcase those great programs, instruction, and collaboration that contributes to the success of students and your school!

New State Library Standards Update

We are moving ever closer to having our new Texas State Library Standards ready to roll!  At the time of this posting, our proposed document is with the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and we eagerly await their comments and approval.

Much progress has been made since our first State Standards Revision Steering Committee meeting in November 2015. Creating vision and mission statements were the first challenges for the committee. We knew these needed to be strong statements, making the case for the necessity of certified professional librarians in schools to impact student achievement.

VISION: Texas school libraries are essential interactive collaborative learning environments, ever evolving to provide equitable physical and virtual access to ideas, information, and learning tools for the entire school community.

MISSION: Certified librarians and trained staff nurture a culture of literacy and inquiry throughout the school community. An integral part of instructional teams, librarians collaborate with teachers on curriculum design and delivery.  They maintain a professionally developed collection of print and digital materials and assist learners in locating resources that match their academic and personal interests. Librarians model and teach information literacy and digital citizenship, empowering learners to make ethical, informed choices in an increasingly complex and evolving global environment.

Once the vision and mission statements were in place, they were our guideposts in creating the core values, upon which the standards’ strands and dimensions have been built.

Core Values:

• School libraries are essential, safe, and inviting centers for teaching and learning.
• School libraries support reading for learning and pleasure which are essential skills for college and career readiness and for life.
• School libraries provide access to information for inquiry including the pursuit, creation, and sharing of knowledge, and support for both student and professional learning.
• School libraries promote information literacy requiring targeted instruction to efficiently locate, accurately evaluate, ethically use, and clearly communicate information in various formats.
• School libraries are vital technology centers, providing access to devices and online resources, supporting personalized learning, and teaching digital literacy including privacy, safety, etiquette, creative credit, cyberbullying, and creating a positive digital footprint.
• School libraries are effective when staffed by full-time, certified school librarians at every school, supported by trained paraprofessionals.

Subcommittees were appointed and worked tirelessly to create and flesh out each of the six strands and an appendix with additional data collection measures.  Upon completion, these documents were sent to outside experts in the field for comments and revision suggestions.  

It is important to note that the new state library standards create standards of practice librarians use to teach our content, much like the TEKS are used by classroom teachers to teach their content.

The co-chairs (Donna Kearley and I), along with Liz Philippi from TSLAC, pored over the documents taking into consideration the suggested revisions for both wording and format. This document was presented at TLA in April 2017 and then was posted for public comments for a period of 4 weeks.

Once again the team worked to update the document with the suggestions before presenting it at TASLA (Texas Association of School Library Administrators) in June. Comments were recorded and taken into consideration as the team once again worked to continue to shape the document.

Finally, this latest ideation was presented at TLA’s Annual Assembly.  Comments and suggestions were once again taken into consideration as the group prepared the document for final editing and formatting before being sent to the Texas Education Agency (TEA).

Once we have the green light from TEA, the document will be sent to the State Board of Education (SBOE) for approval.  We are hopeful that the document will move from “proposed standards” to “approved standards” before the start of the 2018-2019 academic year.

The proposed standards can be found on the TSLAC website by following this link.

posted by Sonja Schulz