Finding the Right Level

AASL has issued a Position Statement about Labeling Books with Reading Levels. Helen Adams wrote a wonderful blog post about this, including this quote: “Recently I helped a student who came to me while his class was in the library browsing. As the librarian of a middle school library, I often see situations such as…

Not a sacraficial lamb to slaughter

The big buzz at AASL11 was Barb Stripling is running for ALA President. Yay? Let's try that again, shall we: The big buzz at AASL11 was Barb Stripling is running for ALA President. YAY!! Why the initial "yay?" from so many people? Many people know that she's a great candidate but we also know that…

The Role of Reading

The recent twitter effort to get our senators to remember school libraries/librarians during their ESEA discussions made me think about the role of librarians - or, to be accurate, it was one of the things that made me think about our role.  And then there was this tweet by LizB Twitter / @LizB: if your…

Not Drinking the Kool-Aid

While at the recent AASL National Conference I had the pleasure of spending time with several people new to the World of AASL. They weren't new to "Big ALA", but they'd spent time in other divisions despite being school librarians (I know so many others that belong to ALSC or YALSA and have little to…

#AASL11 Reflections: HS – College Information Literacy

First of all, this wasn't really about the entire continuum, it was more about the 12-13 disconnect. In other words, what we HS librarians think our students leave knowing, and what first year professors actually see when our students get there. The caveats of the study are that the students were from Catholic schools that…

Get active!

For the past couple of days, I've received several requests in my inbox and social media feeds.  For those of you who aren't au courant, there's a petition over on WhiteHouse.gov and a Twitter effort to influence our Senators. With qualifications, I'm endorsing them (and yes, I realize that my voicing my concerns/qualifications is a…

#AASL11 reflections: technotreats

I'm always interested in how others are using technology (and technotools) intelligently in their schools - after all, we know that technology is only a tool, it's not the answer to our pedagogical/programatic problems. Right? Here are some of my takeaways (and one rant) from the conference. 17 Things to Chew On The presenter, Alicia…

#AASL11 reflections: assessment/evaluation

Having worked in several NYSAIS evaluation committees (and written on the evaluation for accreditation process, I was interested in what my public school peers were doing vis-a-vis the NYS School Library Media Program Evaluation (SLMPE) Rubric. NYSAIS has recently updated its process and libraries aren't mentioned (why? this is a huge mistake, imvho) and looking…

#AASL11 Reflections: overall impressions

Having the opportunity to spend time taking with peers, learning from them during formal presentations as well as in informal conversations is always wonderful, and the AASL conference certainly provides that opportunity. The focus on school libraries is something of a dual-edged sword, however. Why? Because when you're in a walled garden you don't get…