Well, my third year in the library has come to a close (which is so crazy, as it both feels way longer and way shorter than that). I'll admit that the end of this school year was pretty tough; our school suffered a student death, which rocked our student body in a myriad of ways and, beyond that, our staff culture just felt tense throughout the second semester. Honestly, I needed the calm of the summer to seep into my bones a bit before I felt able to look back at the good, the bad, and the ugly from the year. Now that the heat of the summer is baking away outside my window, I thought I would use this week's blog post to reflect on my goals from this year and consider where to start with a shiny, new school year come August.
When I started writing this blog post (in, gulp, May), I made a list of each of my goals from the past year. I thought I would use the space to reflect on each one. But, as I kept returning to the post throughout the summer, I realized that no one, including myself, wanted to read such a lengthy post. So, in the effort to save my readers (and myself) some valuable time, I focused my reflections on two major goals. I definitely attempted other things that are equally as important--increasing my collaborative efforts across content areas, fostering a culture of literacy, building a makerspace, and encouraging independent reading--but below, I limited myself to reflecting on inquiry and digital fluency, since I feel like those two areas stand out in the revised AASL Standards, and, honestly, because I'm proud of the work I've done in those two realms.
I started my inquiry journey last year with the iSearch process in Pre-AP 9th and 10th grade English classes, but I always knew I had higher aims. This year, I started laying the groundwork for two new, exciting inquiry projects--the 10th grade "Adulting" inquiry and the 11th grade "Change the World" project. While I'll detail both projects in future posts, what I liked about both was that they had immediate, real-world application for students. They were very different assignments--the 10th grade project called on students to investigate a career and career path, while the 11th grade project encouraged students to create materials that argued for social awareness--but both had aspects of project-based learning incorporated throughout, especially in that students were given the parameters of an assignment without being provided with an exact roadmap of how to get to the final product.
Next year, I plan on using the concept of Genius Hour and best practices for choice novel reading to restructure the 9th grade iSearch process and 11th grade "Change the World" project to incorporate inquiry skills throughout the school year, instead of just throwing everything into a single unit. I want to work with our career counselor to involve more community members in the "Adulting" project, and I want to collaborate more with my regular level teachers to foster greater buy-in to the inquiry model instead of the traditional research paper project.
During the past two years, I spent an awful lot of time showing students HOW to use tools instead of letting them experiment themselves; for example, when working on a book trailer project, I spent about a day getting students set up with Animoto and then walking them through how to choose music, pick a theme, lay out pictures, delete an item........the list goes on. Some students needed that direct instruction, but, let's be honest, a lot of them were done with their whole book trailer by the time I had finished my spiel. By the end of the day, I was exhausted, and there would STILL be students asking the very same questions the next day, no matter how I delivered my instructions.
This year, I decided to flip that on its head. Instead of choosing a digital tool myself, I worked with teachers to develop choice boards (much like this one from Kasey Bell) that gave students options for both their final products and how they chose to get there. I then used Symbaloo and Destiny Collections to curate lists of potential tools that students could choose from. Depending on the project, I would occasionally use Screencastomatic or Screencastify to create a video tutorial that students could reference during their work, or I would teach "microlessons" to groups of students (for example, sitting with all the students using StoryboardThat to create a comic strip explaining the cell cycle). This inevitably meant that I was not always the expert in a tool, that I couldn't answer every question that arose, but what I found really awesome was this: students helped me, and more importantly, they helped each other. Take the "expert" out of the equation, and...magic!
Part of encouraging digital fluency in my students was tackling my own digital fluency. I had dabbled in Twitter in the past, but I threw myself into the deep end, taking part in chats, participating in challenges, and daring myself to post something (ANYTHING!) at least once a day. I believe that my Twitter PLN has been a true game-changer for my own digital fluency as well as my efficacy as a teacher-librarian--it has led me to some wonderful educators, some amazing tools, and the creation of this blog, where I hope to not only reflect on my own journey but also offer ideas to others. I can't wait to continue that work in the fall.
As promised, I'll stop my reflections here and sign off with the hope of bringing "3 Quick Things" back into the rotation in the coming weeks (what choice do I have, really, as the coming school year is barreling down on us so quickly that even Target ads can't quite keep up?). I hope you get a chance to kick back, relax, and enjoy a good book before the end of summer--my most recent recommendation, The Book of Dust by Phillip Pullman!
Love,
Your Library
When I started writing this blog post (in, gulp, May), I made a list of each of my goals from the past year. I thought I would use the space to reflect on each one. But, as I kept returning to the post throughout the summer, I realized that no one, including myself, wanted to read such a lengthy post. So, in the effort to save my readers (and myself) some valuable time, I focused my reflections on two major goals. I definitely attempted other things that are equally as important--increasing my collaborative efforts across content areas, fostering a culture of literacy, building a makerspace, and encouraging independent reading--but below, I limited myself to reflecting on inquiry and digital fluency, since I feel like those two areas stand out in the revised AASL Standards, and, honestly, because I'm proud of the work I've done in those two realms.Goal 1
Increase inquiry to include grades 9-11 and encourage cross-curricular inquiry opportunities.
I started my inquiry journey last year with the iSearch process in Pre-AP 9th and 10th grade English classes, but I always knew I had higher aims. This year, I started laying the groundwork for two new, exciting inquiry projects--the 10th grade "Adulting" inquiry and the 11th grade "Change the World" project. While I'll detail both projects in future posts, what I liked about both was that they had immediate, real-world application for students. They were very different assignments--the 10th grade project called on students to investigate a career and career path, while the 11th grade project encouraged students to create materials that argued for social awareness--but both had aspects of project-based learning incorporated throughout, especially in that students were given the parameters of an assignment without being provided with an exact roadmap of how to get to the final product.Next year, I plan on using the concept of Genius Hour and best practices for choice novel reading to restructure the 9th grade iSearch process and 11th grade "Change the World" project to incorporate inquiry skills throughout the school year, instead of just throwing everything into a single unit. I want to work with our career counselor to involve more community members in the "Adulting" project, and I want to collaborate more with my regular level teachers to foster greater buy-in to the inquiry model instead of the traditional research paper project.Goal 2
Encourage digital fluency
I wish I knew who to credit with the quote that "We can no longer be satisfied with encouraging students to be digitally literate. We now need to strive toward digital fluency." This idea was so instructive to my work this year, as it reminds me that I need to be constantly moving from teaching students how to use a new web tool toward the point where they can choose a tool that best meets their needs. That's what we do, right? We decide whether PowerPoint or Google Slides will work best in a given situation, whether Quizizz or Kahoot (or the new and flashly Gimkit!) best fits our teaching style. My goal was to make students feel empowered enough to make their own choices, knowing that support would be there when they needed it.During the past two years, I spent an awful lot of time showing students HOW to use tools instead of letting them experiment themselves; for example, when working on a book trailer project, I spent about a day getting students set up with Animoto and then walking them through how to choose music, pick a theme, lay out pictures, delete an item........the list goes on. Some students needed that direct instruction, but, let's be honest, a lot of them were done with their whole book trailer by the time I had finished my spiel. By the end of the day, I was exhausted, and there would STILL be students asking the very same questions the next day, no matter how I delivered my instructions.
This year, I decided to flip that on its head. Instead of choosing a digital tool myself, I worked with teachers to develop choice boards (much like this one from Kasey Bell) that gave students options for both their final products and how they chose to get there. I then used Symbaloo and Destiny Collections to curate lists of potential tools that students could choose from. Depending on the project, I would occasionally use Screencastomatic or Screencastify to create a video tutorial that students could reference during their work, or I would teach "microlessons" to groups of students (for example, sitting with all the students using StoryboardThat to create a comic strip explaining the cell cycle). This inevitably meant that I was not always the expert in a tool, that I couldn't answer every question that arose, but what I found really awesome was this: students helped me, and more importantly, they helped each other. Take the "expert" out of the equation, and...magic!Part of encouraging digital fluency in my students was tackling my own digital fluency. I had dabbled in Twitter in the past, but I threw myself into the deep end, taking part in chats, participating in challenges, and daring myself to post something (ANYTHING!) at least once a day. I believe that my Twitter PLN has been a true game-changer for my own digital fluency as well as my efficacy as a teacher-librarian--it has led me to some wonderful educators, some amazing tools, and the creation of this blog, where I hope to not only reflect on my own journey but also offer ideas to others. I can't wait to continue that work in the fall.
As promised, I'll stop my reflections here and sign off with the hope of bringing "3 Quick Things" back into the rotation in the coming weeks (what choice do I have, really, as the coming school year is barreling down on us so quickly that even Target ads can't quite keep up?). I hope you get a chance to kick back, relax, and enjoy a good book before the end of summer--my most recent recommendation, The Book of Dust by Phillip Pullman!Love,
Your Library
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