AH... Summer Reads

I am finally beginning to see the end in sight, but still have a number of things to do and loose ends to tie up. Next week is the last week of school before summer vacation and I have 2 more sessions to facilitate as part of my Health and PE duties. I will be meeting with our secondary department heads on Tuesday and assisting in running a Red Cross Swim Instructor re-certification session for the teachers who have the qualifications to teach swimming on Wednesday. I have 2 meetings scheduled for the last day of school and one on the Tuesday morning - both planning sessions for next year.

Just this past week I had the opportunity to run sessions for elementary principals and vice-principals about effective school library programs. I don't think that my predecessor was ever given this opportunity so I feel that this is a good sign - a positive way to end the year I think.

I started writing a response to a post from LC's Chip Van Philosophy about summer reading. As I was posting a comment, I thought that it would make for a nice end of year post. So I am following your lead LC.

I have a stack of books - some professional and most not. There is a series that I tend to re-read and that's the Outlander series by Diana Galbadon. It's romantic historical fiction with a sci-fi time travel element. Jamie, the hero-to-die-for and Claire his witty, talented, resourceful wife are my absolute favourite fictional characters. Galbadon's writing make me laugh, cry, think, get really angry, etc... What is most interesting about this writer is she has had an amazing career background - she has three science degrees, wrote numerous articles for scholarly journals and comic strips for Disney. She is currently working on the seventh installment of her series.

I am anxiously waiting for Stephanie Meyer's last installation of her Twilight series due out in August.

Now, if I just had a backyard pool or a beach house.... Have a great summer!

Image: Frazier, Jim. (2005) Hearst Castle Swimming Pool http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimfrazier/31489256/

PS Ok I just realized something. The photographer who took the above picture is named Jim Frazier. The name of the male protagonist from Outlander is named James Fraser. Interesting co-incidence.

My del.icio.us Tags in Wordle

I was catching up on some of the blogs I follow and this neat tool called Wordle was linked on Cathy Nelson's TechnoTuesday blog . I inserted my del.icio.us tags into it and this is the image it generated. Neat! This tool would be very engaging for revising for the trait of Word Choice. It's a very visual record of over-used words!

Here's my last blog post using Wordle:

I guess my thoughts are turning to summer. Have fun with this tool!

Summer Professional Learning

Summer break is less than 2 weeks away and this brings my thoughts to a few things that I want to accomplish this summer that I didn't have time to do during the school year. So here's my list of things to do this summer that hope will extend my professional expertise:

• write a pantoum poem (a challenge issued by D.H. one of the editors for a student creative writing anthology, the publishing of which I coordinate);


• read a number of professional books ( Critical Thinking by Richard Paul, Adolescent Literacy edited by Kylene Beers, Linda Rief and Robert Probst and The Art and Science of Teaching by Robert Marzano);


• catch up reading my professional journals (English Journal; Educational Leadership; Teacher Librarian - this is available through our board's online databases);


• create a wiki for a research project using Wiki Templates for Super Teaching by David Loertscher et al; and


• Go through the K-12 Online Conference 2007 and 'attend' some of the conference presentations.

These will keep me busy over the summer break. I also have the usual list of cleaning my house (I don't spring clean - I summer clean. No time or energy for it earlier), golfing, biking, hiking, swimming, weekend trip to Stratford and a 2 week vacation. Not sure just where my husband and I are going - we'll do a last minute booking. As long as it is really warm and has beach with salty water we're good.

For those of you who are waiting for the summer to start playing with some of the read/write web tools, I direct you again to the California School Library's School Library Learning 2.0. They updated it for this year and you can complete the 23 things over the summer and be ready to use some of these tools with your students next year.

Credentialed vs Educated

Today I am writing this from a Caribou Coffee in Grosse Pointe, Michigan where I am hanging out with my daughter Dana. She's doing her school assignment and I'm working on this post. There is something inherently cool (at least for me it's cool - it's sort of D. Warlickian) about hanging out in a coffee shop, accessing the wifi and listening to some high school students nearby studying for their exams. I feel more like a native than an immigrant.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what someone needs to be truly qualified to be a school librarian. The reason that I've been thinking about this is because I am really frustrated by the process of getting a secondary TL position in our district. While this process gets a credentialed TL into the position, it doesn't necessarily get a qualified person into the position.

In our province, teachers can become qualified to teach in other areas by taking an Additional Qualification courses offered by Faculty of Educations at various universities. Most AQs are 3 parts (Part 1, Part 2 and Specialist) and can be done on-line, partially online or face to face. The AQ for Librarianship Part 1 has no prerequisites other than a teaching degree. In our district, if you have Part 1, then you are credentialed and you can be placed in a secondary school library. And once you are in the library, you are there for the remainder of your career if you want.

Now the really frustrating thing is that we can have teachers who have never written a formal research paper, who don't know YA lit from adult lit, who don't know what the difference between MLA, APA, Chicago Style, who come from a tech background (and I don't mean computer tech I mean auto, construction, metal tech), an art background, a phys ed background - well any background, being responsible for a secondary school library and a secondary school library program. Now I'm not saying that people with diverse backgrounds can't become good and even exemplary TLs. I actually have a phys ed background - but my undergrad was rigorous - I can't count the number of research papers I had to write. In fact, one of my first year undergrad courses was research methods and I remember spending hours in the university library searching for various types of resources required by the assignment given to us by Dr. Leavitt. It was one of the toughest courses I took. I am also a voracious reader - a really important qualification for a school librarian!

Now one would assume that after taking Part 1, that a teacher placed in the school library would have a basic understanding of the role and scope of the position, a basic knowledge and skill level of the teaching responsibilities required to develop information literate students. One would also assume that these credentialed teachers understand and apply collaborative behaviors necessary to plan, teach and assess with classroom teachers. And finally, one would assume that there would be a minimum application of the technical requirements of the role (now I do mean computer technology). But what is happening is that our secondary school libraries in far too many cases have become an 'early retirement home'. And why? Because the only necessary requirement is that one is credentialed with Librarianship Part 1. Some of these credentialed teachers see the library as a place where they can spend the last few years of their teaching career in relative peace, with no report cards and no marking. Book babysitters.

So if we really want to provide a high-quality school library program for our students in this information age, shouldn't the requirement to become a school librarian be more than Part 1? Shouldn't our districts require more than just a credential? Shouldn't there be professional accountability?

When I started thinking about the emphasis these days on credentials and my frustration with the lack of professional accountability of some school librarians, I thought of the book that I read a couple of years ago written by Jane Jacobs, a self-educated activist, urban planner and visionary. She wrote a book called Dark Age Ahead. In it, she theorizes that North American civilization is headed towards a Dark Age similar to that of the Roman Empire:


Her thesis focused on five pillars of our culture that we depend on to stand firm but are in serious decline: the nuclear family (but also community), education, science, representational government and taxes, and corporate and professional accountability.


Jacobs theorizes that the collapse of these pillars will cause a descent into a Dark Age and she provides evidence that these pillars are already eroding. The demise of the 'education pillar' is caused by universities more interested in credentialing than providing high quality education. I guess I'm feeling that some of our secondary school libraries are descending into the 'Dark Age' as a result of needing only a credential to become a TL and the lack of professional accountability once in the position.

Change

Over the past year and half that I have been in this position, it seems to me that the overwhelming theme that winds it way through my daily life is change. I have always welcomed change - if it has been on my own initiative. I'm not so good at accepting it if it's been thrust upon me. Saying that, I have to say that most of the changes that I go through are usually of my own initiative. I'm always looking for new and better ways to do things.

Recently, I connected to a blog entry by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach who wrote about educational change and the 9 principles for implementing change. This blog entry is worth a read, especially for those who are responsible for bringing about change in their schools. Her 9 Principles for Implementing Change are listed below in italics:

1. People Before Things

Any significant educational transformation creates “people issues.” Teachers will be asked to challenge the status quo, engage in mutual accountability, changed job descriptions, development of new skills and capabilities, and in general school staff will be unsettled and resistant to these changes. A shared approach for managing the change through learning communities — beginning with the leadership team and then engaging key stakeholders and teacher leaders — should be developed early, and utilized often as the change moves through the school or district.

2. Start at the Top

Because change is inherently unsettling for people at all levels of any organization and especially schools, when rumors of change begin to surface, all eyes will turn to the principal and other members of the school's leadership team for strength, support, and direction. Which means- the leaders must do more than talk a good game.

3. Everyone is a Player in the Change Game

Transformational change in a school needs to include everyone. That means all staff, from the custodian to the secretary and even the lunch room staff.

4. Garner Buy-in
Teachers are inherently rational and reasonable folk and will question to what extent the change is needed, whether the principal is headed in the right direction, and whether they want to commit personally to making change happen. The articulation of a formal case for change and the creation of a modified, shared vision statement are invaluable opportunities to create or compel buy-in.

5. Can't Give Away What You Do Not Own
To truly be successful at implementat[ing]... change there must be ownership by those willing to accept responsibility for making change happen in all their areas of influence. Ownership is often best created by involving people in identifying potential problems and crafting solutions- which happens naturally in a community of practice.

6. Communicate and Often
Too often, those involved in the change make the mistake of believing that others understand the issues, feel the need to change, and see the new direction as clearly as they do. The best change programs reinforce core messages through regular, timely advice that is both inspirational and practical.

7. Know Your Culture and Predict Possible Impact

Educational leaders often make the mistake of assessing culture either too late or not at all. Ask yourself, do you know your school's readiness factor in terms of accepting change? Does your school already have strategies in place for how to bring major problems to the surface, identify conflicts, and negotiate outcomes? Do learning teams, and ultimately your learning community know how to identify the core values, beliefs, behaviors, and perceptions that must be taken into account for successful change to occur?

8. Expect the Unexpected
21st Century change is by design emergent and organic in nature. Implementation [...] never goes completely according to plan. People react in unexpected ways; areas of anticipated resistance fall away; and the external environment shifts etc. To manage the needed shifts in your school, the community will need to continually reassess. This is why ownership is so important.

9. As the Individual Grows so Will the Collective Wisdom of the Community

Change is both an institutional journey and a very personal one. Educators spend many hours each week at school; many think of their colleagues as a second family- and as their community away from home. Individuals (or teams of individuals) yearn to know how their work will change, what is expected of them during and after the change, how they will be measured, and what success or failure will mean for them and those around them.

Currently, professional learning communities are becoming more widespread in my district and introducing PLCs into secondary schools is one of the responsibilities of the implementation team of which I am a part. Some of our elementary schools are in their 3rd year of learning communities and as other schools see these schools using a collaborative approach to manage change they are asking for resources to establish PLCs in their schools. So we are setting the stage for supporting change by introducing teachers in secondary to collaborative professional learning teams. We are asking schools to change the way they operate so that all students can achieve.

Shared leadership is an essential component - why? Because one person can't possibly do everything. However, as Doug Johnson says in a recent post about educational change:

"Major cultural shifts are about transfers in power, and nobody gives up power without a fight." In addition, Johnson says that the only way that cultural change will happen is if it is mandated through government policy.

These 2 blog entries got me thinking about the shifts that are needed in education - shifts from isolation to collaboration, from content-focused to process-focused, from regurgitation to creation. I think about how some secondary classrooms operate, and think about the shifts that need to take place to meet the needs of all students. And I think of how we need to prepare students to be part of an unknown future and I know that the way we have been doing it will no longer work.

I think of how our secondary PLCs can be supported and look to Nussbaum-Beach's principles of supporting change. But I also remember what what Doug Johnson says about cultural shifts - that "... schools will not change through internal motivation".

It is an exciting time in education when one can see the potential of and the need for cultural shift and when one is involved in supporting that shift. And after reading about the 9 principals for implementing change, I recognize there are reasons for some of the reactions that we get from teachers as we support this shift. However, it does seem a daunting task when one reads what Johnson has to say about change.

Image: "Change, we fear it...", apesara's photostream. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/apesara/2146031745/>

The Host: a Stephenie Meyer Adult Book

I usually write this blog on Saturday mornings but I was away at a choir festival this weekend and left my computer home as I knew that I would have no time to even boot it up. One of the things I did have some time for was reading on the long bus trip.

As a result, I just finished reading Stephenie Meyer's most recent book The Host. It is promoted as a book for adult audiences so I was really quite excited to read it. I've read all of her YA books beginning with Twilight and I was hoping that her writing would get a little more explicit for an adult audience ( I am a fan of writers like Diana Galbadon - great storytellers with a flare for ... um ... romantic scenes!).

The book is science fiction, which is a departure from the romantic horror (a combination you think wouldn't work but does) of Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse. The story is about an Earth where alien parasites are inserted into humans to take over the body and brains of their hosts. Here's the teaser from the publisher:

The author of the Twilight series of # 1 bestsellers delivers her brilliant first novel for adults: a gripping story of love and betrayal in a future with the fate of humanity at stake. Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of their human hosts while leaving their bodies intact, and most of humanity has succumbed.Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie''s body, knew about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the too vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn't expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind.Melanie fills Wanderer''s thoughts with visions of the man Melanie loves-Jared, a human who still lives in hiding. Unable to separate herself from her body''s desires, Wanderer yearns for a man she''s never met. As outside forces make Wanderer and Melanie unwilling allies, they set off to search for the man they both love.Featuring what may be the first love triangle involving only two bodies, THE HOST is a riveting and unforgettable novel that will bring a vast new readership to one of the most compelling writers of our time.

So think of the writer's craft here - Meyer wrote dialogue that had to show internal conversations between Wanderer and Melanie, she had to write external dialogue between Wanderer and the other characters and had to write reactions to the conversations by 'both' main characters without losing the reader! Meyers does an excellent job of this. Amazon has a video of Stephenie Meyer talking about The Host and you can access it here.

This is the reason I think why this book is classified as adult - it will take a fairly fluent reader to keep track of the dialogue. The content of this book is very tame - the romantic scenes are less than one would see on television and no more than what one would read in a YA book. But it's the sophistication of the writing that makes it a book for adult readers, not the content.

I definitely recommend the book for secondary school students. It certainly would be a way of introducing science fiction to students who would probably not read it. Science fiction doesn't appeal to many but here in this book Meyer has taken the genre and softened it to appeal to a wider audience. I really enjoyed the book and recommend it.

P.S. Meyer's fourth book in her Twilight series will be released on August 2nd and is called Breaking Dawn. Chapters is taking orders now.

Image from: www.amazon.com

The Importance of Linking Writing with Science and Social Studies

I came across an excellent podcast from Tony Stead on Miguel Guhlin's wiki. Tony Stead is an Australian educator who has written books about the importance of reading and writing non-fiction with primary/junior students.

I have always thought that we teach far too much fiction and not enough non-fiction in school and that is why we have comprehension difficulties with textbooks in the higher grades. Our schools have leveled books in classrooms and book rooms - how many of those texts are non-fiction?

Stead has found that:

In K-2 classrooms, 95% of writing experiences were with personal narrative and story.
By 6th grade, children will have spent 84% of writer’s workshop composing personal narratives, stories, and writing from prompts

• 73% of students read nonfiction at least 3 Reading Recovery levels below that of their fiction.
  
• 15% of students read nonfiction 3 grade levels below their fiction.
  
• By third grade, only 7% of students struggled with decoding nonfiction at their grade level.


• We teach decoding, how to get through text, but we spend little time helping them understand what the text is actually saying. ESL children can easily learn to decode but because it’s a 2nd language, they don’t have understanding of which words to use for concept. They can read at 28 level of Reading Recovery, but comprehension level of 4.
  
• You know which kids who are going to be your strongest readers and writers—it’s about oral comprehension.
  
• Students who were competent readers of nonfiction were also competent in reading fiction, but not vice versa (my emphasis).
  
• Boys were more competent than girls in comprehending nonfiction but girls read with better phrasing and pace.
  
• Boys slow their reading down because they want to make meaning of non-fiction. They do what every child should do—they fight to read.
• Children can read 3–4 levels above what they’re benchmarked on topics they’re interested in.

You can read through the notes to get the flavour of the presentation. The podcast is quite long (it's the whole presentation he gave at the conference) but I listened to it while I was working on other things.

But the gist is integration of curriculum - combining social studies/science, inquiry-based learning and non-fiction writing.

He also talks about shifting the use of the KWL strategy to the RAN strategy. KWL is only useful if the student has sound background knowledge. If a student has weak or incorrect background knowledge, then the second category of KWL (what I need to know) will also be weak because really the student doesn't know the right questions to ask - his research questions will not be set up correctly.

RAN - Reading and Analyzing Non Fiction Strategy

What We Think We Know Yes we were right New facts Wonderings Misconceptions

• Whatever the content area is—such as sharks—I am not going to start off with what do we know. As a class, I ask them, what do you THINK you know? Why is this better terminology than what we think we know?
  

This techniques allows for diagnostic assessment of background knowledge. This gives the teacher a way into kids' heads and allows the teacher to differentiate for the class. He says that kids will read books to confirm what they think they know - they are more engaged. This strategy changes the way kids read and is the basis of thinking and inquiry-based learning. When you use the RAN with social studies, this strategy will bring up bias and prejudices that the students have - a good thing to know so that this can be addressed in the unit.

Lots of really good information on this podcast - perhaps a personal summer professional learning opportunity as you'll need some time to listen to the podcast. Is That a Fact is available through our board's Professional Bookstore (only available to board staff).