 All right, good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Library Commission's weekly online event. We're a webinar, we're a webcast, we're an online show. The terminology is up for debate. So whatever you want to call us, we're here live online every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. If you are unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record our shows every week, and they are posted to our website. And I'll show you at the end of the show where to go to watch all of our recordings, our previous shows. We do a mixture of things here. Presentations, interviews, book reviews, mini-training sessions, basically anything library related, we are happy to put it on the show and share it with everyone. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes do presentations, but we often bring in speakers as we have done this morning. And remotely, just from elsewhere in Lincoln. April and I are both in Lincoln, Nebraska today, but we're not together. Are you at the school or where are you? I'm at my school, yes. April Jorgensen is from our Lincoln Public Schools, and I've got her on to talk about this morning. Many states or cities have done these one book, one community. As she puts here, one state, whatever. Yeah, it's all over. But they've done one for their school, which is a new... I had not heard of this, I'm sure it's gone on elsewhere, but I just heard about this recently. April actually presented about this at our State Library Association and School Library Association conference this past fall. And it was a really interesting topic, so I thought it'd be great to have her come on here and share it with more. I'll just hand over to you, April, to take it away and tell us what you guys did there. All right, great. I'm really excited to be here. I was looking at the map where everyone's from, and I was like, wow, everyone all over the place is interested. I'm so excited. Yeah, we are pretty broad with the people that come in to watch the show. It's cool, I think. Yeah, it is great. I am excited because this is literally the best thing I've ever done as a librarian. Wow. I tell everyone. So I can't wait to tell you this is mostly our experience at my school, so I know your experiences might be different should you try to undertake a similar program. But I think there's a lot to take away, and we've learned a lot, and there's some really great books I get to share with you. So let's get started, I guess. Great, yep. And feel free to ask questions, and Krista said she'll, if you type them or whatever, she'll let me know, too. Yep, I can grab any questions. You can use the questions section or just ask me to unmute you and you can use your own microphone if you have one available to ask. Sounds good. So my school is named Scho Middle School, named after a former superintendent. So it is spelled right. So we call our program One Book One Scho, and we just call it a community-wide read, and it's a similar idea to, in our town, One Book One Lincoln, where obviously people in Lincoln aren't required to read the book, it's just they buy a bunch of copies at the city library, and it's encouraged and talked about, and there's activities and book clubs, and that's what we do. No one in our school is required to read it. We buy 50 copies of the book every year. We promote it, promote it, promote it. We have book clubs and all kinds of things, and we hang up lots of signs, and we promote it on our web page. In the past, I didn't get any made this year, but we've also made stickers that they could put on their little plan or they carry around saying, I'm a proud reader of whatever that your book was, just trying to saturate the environment with it so that they hold their interest and keep it going. So our first question I thought I'd start with is, why do we do an all-school read? We wanted to promote a sense of community, and so when I say One Book One School One Community, in our sense, what we've mostly done is our school community. I've been in middle school, grade six to eight, and I've always taught this level, but I find it's difficult sometimes. They're here such a short period of time. They don't have the independence that high schoolers do where they get to be. We don't have as many sports. We don't have pep rallies. It's hard to find a way to make these kids here in these three short years proud of where they're from, and this is one way that we do that. We know that by doing an all-school read increases personal reading, it gives the teachers, and we always welcome parents and community members and the students, the common ground for discussion and growth for a book. I mean, if you have one book that you can talk to kids about and you're a health teacher, that's a foot in the door. If you are a kid who doesn't like to read, but you read one book, this all-school read, that's a foot in the door. And we always choose a book that helps students connect to some sort of cause in the world, helps broaden their horizons and gives them some action to take. So with that in mind, let's talk about how we got started at my school because it was truly an accident. And while I do a lot of work for it now, I was not even the one who started this program. It started my first year at this school. I went to the first staff meeting, and the teachers were talking about, one of our committees was saying our school goal is to promote personal reading. And I looked around and I thought, I am in heaven. How did I end up at this school where the teachers already, all agree they want to increase personal reading? And along with that, a social studies teacher who used to teach language arts came to me and said, do you have any book you recommend? I want to do a read aloud with my social studies class. And so I found her a book, which I'll reveal in a moment. And that same committee that I mentioned with their goal of supporting personal reading because they had studied the 40 developmental assets, as you see here, that teens need to succeed. And one of those on that list is personal reading. And a reading for pleasure, it says there, under 25. And so they started thinking, and the social studies teacher said to me, what if we read this to the whole school? And I said, do we have some money? And amazingly, an anonymous staff member donated the money to buy 50 copies of that first book. And they were five bucks because they were paperbacks, which was perfect. But yeah, thanks to that person, we were able to buy those books and get started. Year one was in 2012, 13. And we chose the book Along Walk to Water, the one I had recommended to the social studies teacher. And I don't know if you're familiar with it, but I'll tell you a little bit about it. It is by Linda Stupark. It tells the story of Salva Dutt, a real Sudanese boy who survived the Sudanese Civil War and walked thousands of miles as one of the lost boys of Sudan and survived and lived to tell his tale. And the book alternates chapters with another narrator who is fictional. And she is a girl living in modern-day Sudan. And she doesn't get to go to school because she has to take a long walk to water every day because they don't have access to clean, safe water. And so she has to walk four hours a day to get water. Salva grows up and he wants to do something about this. And there is a real organization that Salva Dutt started to bring water to these cities in Africa. So it was just a fantastic book. We got started a little late because we didn't plan on this program and we didn't order these books until October. And so we started promoting it in November. We have a whole room-type time once a month. And so I made a little video and a little lesson about it. And we had a level under 800 kids that year and the book circulated 300 times. And being a short book, a lot of teachers also used it as a read-aloud. But we were so excited. I mean, that's, you know, 40% of our kids reading that book. So we were just stoked. And it lit a fire under me that I didn't even know was there. And other teachers too. So we started making some connections. One of our staff members, and this is the beauty of this program. I do not take full credit for it. The staff members in our building just started finding connections and saying, can we do this? Can we do that? We have a social studies teacher who found out about a group. It's one of many. It's similar to Salvador's foundation called H2O for Life. And they help schools start clubs. And he started it. And they actually sold bottles of water to students and parents at events and things. They raised $400. And it was sent to, I'm going to butcher the pronunciation, Lusania Junior School in Uganda. And this picture is a photo of the very well and the very kids that we helped, that our students helped fund. So that's them. And what a great connection. And we got a chance to share this information and this story in this picture with our students afterwards. Wow, that is really amazing. Yeah, to see that it's not just reading a book and having fun and talking about it, but putting something tangible into effect because of it. Yes. And it was so... Again, it was just our first book, but we really realized the power of these reads and how important the selection of a book is. Right. I was going to ask is how was this particular book picked to begin with? The Social Studies teacher asked me what would be a good social studies read aloud. And I was familiar with it because it was nominated for one of our state awards, the Golden Sower. A couple years before that. And I had loved it and had previously had a teacher read it aloud and his kids loved it. So yeah, again, it was just kind of all by accident the first time it just grew. Nice, okay. Yeah, and for anyone who's on the line who doesn't know what a Golden Sower is Nebraska's Children's Choice Book Award. So the kids themselves vote on which books would get the award each year. Yeah. So then another club that we had called Project Peace, one of their teachers, sponsors, was doing a graduate school project through I think Dome College here in Lincoln. Or, great. And they were working with a school in the Marshall Islands. Very small, part of the world, but very poor. And they, our kids helped with a fundraiser and they raised $500 to purchase backpacks and school supplies for the kids at this school. They sent us a video of them receiving them and them getting up. Every kid wanted to get up and tell us thank you. It was just amazing. Just amazing what we got to see them do. Another aspect of that first year, we had a new ELL teacher. Now we no longer have an ELL program at our school, unfortunately. But we were talking to one of the students, doing a read-aloud of this book for them. And one of the students mentioned that her mom was one of the lost girls of Sudan, which are often not as talked about as the lost boys because there weren't very many girls who walked for her safety and survived and then moved to the U.S. And with that I finally thought, oh my gosh, we got to get these kids involved in this research, too. And so they each picked a self-selected research topic. So some of them chose to research waterborne illness. Some of them chose to research kind of the background of the Sudanese Civil War, things like that. So one of them researched more about Salva Dutt himself and what he's doing today and his foundation. And we helped them make a Google presentation. And they also kind of had a host to practice some of their manners and some of the social norms and greetings in the U.S. And so they all made a Google presentation. You can see in the picture they'd stand up in front of the class and some of the administrators and other teachers were invited and they had to welcome them at the door and they had to offer them treats and all that good stuff. And it was great to see that even these kids who are learning our language were able to gain so much knowledge about the world and about even the plight of others. Some of these kids overcame great challenges to be here. And the student who shared that her mom was a lost girl, she started opening up in a way that she hadn't previously and it was so moving. And we ended up, the ELLE joined up, writing an article about it for a library magazine because we were just so excited to see the connections they were able to make. So that's mostly our first year. So I guess I'll start year two. So toward the end of year one I realized this is amazing and we have to do it again. So I started looking for a good book and wonder came across my desk and in the spring of 2013 and I was like, this is it, this is the one. It's got a great cause and it's easy to read and kids are going to love it. So I went to the principal and our library director here in Lincoln always tells me, always go to the principal with an idea. So at my cradle, Den Degir, he happened to mention well I have some funds. If you can think of something that would help promote reading, let me know. And I said, I have just a thing. I found another book that should be our next one, Book One's Go. And so in May we ordered those, which means we had time to process them and they were already at the beginning of the year so we were able to promote it right away and we had a couple extra months of checking out that book and reading that book. The funding actually, we're very lucky. I mean, you just never know what's going to happen. It was funded by our school's namesake, Dr. Scho, donated the money and he is just a huge supporter of reading. So every concept on the new book is coming from our projects and activities. If you're familiar with Book Wonder or not, it's about a boy named Tommy who was born with a cranial facial abnormality and he has never gone to public school because he's had so many surgeries and things, he hasn't been safe for him actually to be in school because he might get sick before surgery. And so I believe he's going to be at this grade and he starts public school. And the book is told in different voices, sometimes Augie, sometimes his sister, sometimes his mother did the school. And it's just a fantastic read and such an interesting insight, again, to something that our kids don't often think about and a way to think outside themselves and think of others. Well, this book, you know, you can see it as a New York Times bestseller and it took off that year, which helped us out tremendously. There is an association called the Children's Cranial Facial Association, CCA, and they were so excited that a book, a good book for kids was finally talking about this, rare, relatively rare types of disorders. And so they were promoting the heck out of it. And they had a program where we got to have our kids sign up online and they pledged to choose kind, was the theme. And they had worked with bracelets that say choose kind. So we handed those out to kids who were being awesome friends and things like that. That book circulated over 550 times. I'm counting all 50 copies. That's a total of 550 times. My next slide here, it was a little bit more about the craniofacial association. And I share this because maybe you want to choose a book and maybe you're going to try one of ours. Here's some resources that are already there. And you are welcome to connect with me. My email is on the first slide. I have set up lots of links and connections to this thing that I'd be happy to share. So they have special books you can get. We got Teacher Packets. We did the choose kind challenge. The most amazing thing, though, whether you see on the bottom or the left there, is connect to a real-life Augie. That meant a real-life student with a craniofacial disorder. And we were so fortunate that we were able to connect with that group. And our first friends got a visit from a real-life Augie, a girl with a facial abnormality. And she was so sweet. And we couldn't... She's in third grade, I think, at the time and we could not put her in front of an audience of almost eight hundred middle schoolers, even though she was with her mom and her mom talked a lot. So we said, how can we make this a little more friendly for a third grader? And so we have a group here. Our counselors are fantastic. May every year choose small groups from each grade to be first friends. And these are students who are leaders, who are positives, who are helpful. And every time we get like a new student at school, they help orient them and they sit with them at lunch and take it to their classes. And so we thought these were a natural fit for kids to come learn about. What it's like for a kid who's different sometimes. And some of the struggles they went through. And lots of them had read the book, too. So it was really great. I see these kiddos. There are eighth graders now. That's a great program. You don't want to scare the poor girl coming in to see the school. I can see that being in. Something you have to think about, yeah. I just want to mention, you had mentioned the links and everything to the different organizations. As we're going through this, I will be grabbing links to any of the groups, the books, the organizations that April and the school worked with. I'll have them all collected at the end of the show when the recording goes up for everybody and links to everything that she's mentioned here today. Lovely. We have any questions yet, or do I keep trucking? The only question we had, actually, you kind of mentioned it after they mentioned it. Someone wanted to know if you had ever considered doing the school-wide read aloud, which is how you said you guys got started with this. I'm sorry. Well, we didn't do a school-wide read aloud. It's more of a if teachers want to read aloud, they do. But it's mostly teachers instead of reading on their own. So, yeah, that's something we've talked about our principal this year is really pushing a more personal reading too. So it's something we're exploring. Yeah. I know you said some of them switched from the first book, when you first mentioned the first one, did teachers somehow involve into the curriculum depending on how it could relate? Yes. And when they were studying Africa, it would be a good time to read it. And when just in general that worldliness that they tried to promote, it was a lot of social studies and language arts teachers who did a lot of that read aloud, I think. Have you ever considered doing the school-wide read aloud so that all students can experience the book and the discussions? So it seems like for you guys it was mainly a teacher-by-teacher on a case-by-case basis deciding what could be brought into the individual classrooms. Correct. And I think some schools have an everyday home-room type of situation. That's a good point to do that, yeah. That would be a great time to do it. We don't have that ability. So it's harder to say you know, in the first period every day you've got to take ten minutes out to read, even though your other five classes will have to be working on something else those ten minutes. But I would highly encourage that idea. Cool. Alright. Well, year three, this was last year. This was a funny year because it was December of reading Wonder and I was with my son any day. And the day he decided to be born I had been at the city library getting this book, Iqbal. And I read it from maternity leave and said, this is it. This is the book. And so he helped me out. Press or no. He totally did. A little lesser known so I'm going to tell you a little bit about it. Iqbal is based on the life of Iqbal Masi, a real boy who lived in Pakistan and was a child slave in a carpet factory. His family sold him to the carpet dealer because they had an unimaginable debt that they would never be able to repay. And that's very common in that part of the world. It's illegal everywhere. It happens everywhere. And the debt his family owed was equal to ten dollars. Ten dollars. And that just floored me. And looking back at our other books, we've done this global kind of look at the world with Long Walk to Water. And then we did a little bit more local with Wonder. And so I think it's time for another global book. And I had no idea that child slavery or slavery in general, to be quite honest was still so common around the world. And I did not know what industries were most guilty of it. And I did not know how much it really does. We really do have an impact on what we buy and where. So reading this book got me all inspired. So we ordered it in April and back it out to teachers who wanted to read it at the May staff meeting. So I let them keep it all summer so I got more teachers reading it, which was really great. And it's another very short little book. And it circulated three hundred and thirty three times a year. And that's a picture of me checking it out at staff meeting basically forcing it on them. You can take it. It'll be just fine. So what kind of connections did we make this year? Because remember, every book has a cause that goes with it. This year we there is a group called the Red Thread Movement. And they make these, you can see the picture, those red bracelets that you tie on. And it's meant to be like a conversation piece, just like the Choose Kind bracelets or the yellow bracelets people wear. They are made by women trying to escape human trafficking in I want to say Nepal. Don't quote me on that. And we sold them just to staff members. We felt at this level, at the middle school level we didn't, human trafficking is very broad. It's not just like labor, it also involves sexual exploitation and that was not a topic we really felt comfortable getting into with kids. So we stayed a little more broad, but we did sell those to teachers and raised $90 for that cause. This year we had a couple teachers it's not even me, it's amazing what happens when teachers get on board. They said, can we start a student breakfast input club? And I said, yeah, do you want to use the library? And so they did. I can't do it in morning, do it in my own family situation, but they did and they still do it today. Project Peace Club that year raised $864 for goats in Nicaragua. So they learned and taught all of us during our homeroom time about how a boat makes a family more independent and self-sustainable so that their kids can go to school and so they do have an income from selling the milk and selling any baby goats so that they can hopefully escape some poverty and families don't have to sell their children into slavery. Student Council did food drive and they also served meals at our local soup kitchen, the Matt Talbot kitchen and then this is where a lot of magic happened. So every time I choose a book or I look for a book and it's not just me I run it by other people, but for some reason everyone seems content to let me choose some books and they're cool with it. I was looking for sources of information for kids and what they could do about slavery and human trafficking if we're going to use this as our cause and I found this organization called Free the Children and it is directly tied to the real life of diplomacy. There was a boy in Canada at the time of Iqbal's life and death. His name was Craig Kielberger and he was a middle schooler at the time and he read about the untimely death of Iqbal. If you google it, I'm not really running for you. Iqbal is murdered as a child for standing up to slave owners and Craig this middle schooler read this online or in the newspaper and was outraged. For whatever reason, he could not get over it and he could not get past it and he started talking to his parents and teachers and people in his community and he decided he wanted to motivate kids to do something and as a middle schooler started a group Free the Children. I don't know if we have anybody from Canada, but if you lived in Canada everybody knows Craig Kielberger and everybody knows Free the Children but not as well known in the United States. He has made this his life's work. Maybe in his 20s, early 30s now, I don't know and this is what he and his brother do with their life. Free the Children helps fund raise for things like goats around the world and helps raise money for education around the world. You just have to look them up and they are amazing and we learned so much that we were able to tell kids about and I really hope you'll check out about their website. So based on that then we started looking and we found out that Free the Children has what they call we day and the theme of we is moving from me to we and that was something we loved teaching our kids if it's right in with developmental assets and being part of a larger community. So we contacted them and we found out that they were doing their first ever year of we day celebrations in the United States. They've done them for years in Canada and they were doing here and they were doing one in Chicago which is about eight and a half hours from here driving so we put our name in and we day is like a giant concert there are rock stars and movie stars and in this picture that's Craig Kilburger in the blue jacket we got to meet him we couldn't believe it I know I'm gushing it was I think it's totally appropriate that would be very yeah so you can't buy a ticket to we day you have to earn it thousands this filled the all state arena in Chicago 10,000 kids and so to earn it we had to talk about all the projects our school was doing and your school anybody can join your school has to do one global act and so this is our first time and so our local act was our food drive and our soup kitchen work with our student council and then our global acts were the ones that project peace did with Nicaragua and what the staff did with the red thread bracelets and based on that they got back to us and said you have 15 tickets to offer your school so we sat down with those two club leaders because they had done the most work and we said who are your most involved kids you're most dedicated and they picked them and our PTSD very graciously funded our trip and we rented three mini bands and we took I think four or five staff members and we all drove these kids to Chicago and spit the night in a hotel and then all day at all state arena and you can see here we got there a little early and we're looking at this guy standing beside us and we're like isn't that Craig so we had to go in and say hi and take a picture and tell them how far we came and this was before the event but so this we day is huge and so there's all kinds of videos online you can see so I think I've got time I might show a little bit of this video really quickly this is not live from our event but they're very similar to this and we ended up being so lucky too when we were getting ready for our trip they sent us these permission forms said every you know student has to have their parents sign this because we are recording the Chicago event for a live national broadcast on ABC television in August so it was in April but it aired then so we I didn't see myself on TV but we were there so let me show you a little clip of this and I can't born out of this two brothers deal private design we got the hope for the world can be a place we called it we day born out of this we call it a generation together for all issues you can care about more than an event it launches Europe actions for social change you can't buy it to continue you are in the concerns tens of thousands retentives hundreds of thousands watching the world millions watching our TV born out of a dream for us to be there for the world to be there is not a single we day is our generation we day is the movement for our children pride with courage is a majority there is no room like this room anywhere on the planet we day is more than a one day event it launches a year long series of actions to better our global community and we made that commitment today so I'm going to stop it there but did the audio work okay yep it came through nice and clear a little happy because we're like broadcasting it over online but I grabbed the URL for this and it will be included in the links afterwards so everybody can go and watch the whole thing themselves alright I didn't want to do it all and I didn't know what I was talking about so basically as you see it's not about taking a trip it's not about meeting Craig it's about these guys spend their life motivating students like ours like yours to make a difference in the world and that is the best thing I've ever done teaching and that is why I love the direction our school is going and the way we've partnered up with Free the Children and we day so we get back from this super inspiring event and our kids are all talking about what they want to do next year and all this stuff and let me tell you they are our best spokespeople this year and we get an email and saying tell us why your school believes in making a difference in the lives of children you can be eligible for an award and so our kids wrote about why they want to make a difference and the We Day Foundation told us guess what you won and so in our honor about $8 was donated to adopt a village country I can't remember which country right now but it was it was pretty amazing so I feel like we keep getting lucky and that doesn't normally happen to me but as anyone else is interested you need to register your school at the beginning of the school year you should know that if you do your global and local and you get invited to We Day and you should be aware that details come really late like it was this thing was at the end of not quite the end of April and we were getting details at the beginning of April so we kind of knew we'd have 15 tickets but we didn't know when or where exactly and so don't be prepared to work hard at the very end and yeah like I said it was funded by PTSO and our student fundraiser so that was amazing and I got to go on that trip which was just fantastic and so we're kind of trying to build on that again this year and do more things in connection with We Day and our book this year's book is called Rime Schemer I think it's becoming more common but I don't know how many of you would have heard of this either it is a novel in verse about a boy named Kevin middle school who's a bully and he tells the story in verse and he's not very nice and he's not very likeable but he's kind of got away with words and he doesn't really realize it and he starts he gets in trouble and so he is assigned to duties in the library of course and he finds like the old classic books like Peter Pan and Secret Garden or whatever he claims nobody reads anymore and he starts tearing out pages and making kind of blackout poetry out of it or what's sometimes called found poetry where he circles certain words in it to make a poem and sometimes they're very deep and sometimes they're very funny and you really learn a lot about kind of why he's a bully and how he overcomes it and the tables turn and now the bully is being bullied and so it's been a real eye-opening book for kids we bought it in April again like teachers read it over the summer we've had some small classes reading it together we've had multiple copies in this slide's outdated, we already have a book club started and they have Breakfast and Read Project Peace and Student Council again are working to earn We Day and as of October it circulated 200 times I haven't had a chance to run the numbers but I'm really hoping it's a lot more than that by now but it's another short little fast book the author's second book is also now out on a totally different subject and that one's fantastic too I don't recommend it enough so when we talk to kids about the book in our little homeroom time we kind of did have them write their own kind of blackout or found poetry this was just a couple examples I'm not saying they're fantastic necessarily but it was really fun it gives you an example of what Kevin's poems in the book look like I liked this one those are really creative I like that yeah there's another one can you see the words there? yep awesome one more and we didn't give them any like topics or anything they just said look what can you make so it was fun so this year we're keeping our connections to helping others and looking outside yourself the way Kevin in the book finally learned to do and being kind to others and we're working with We Day again or Free the Children and they have lots of campaigns projects that they like try to promote and get schools to do I don't know if you've ever had one of these administrators I love our administrators but they say let's do all of them seriously? okay well she did come and say I've worked out a schedule in October we'll do this because of this and we'll do November because of this so different clubs and different people are in charge of them and some are bigger than others so let me see if I can get these in order we started with We Take Charge which is about doing something to promote taking care of the environment recycling, saving energy all those types of things, saving water and so during a little homeroom time we watched videos about things you could do this one's my favorite you should totally look it up it's a video on the correct way to use a paper towel you know those cheap brown paper towels in the bathrooms don't absorb anything you just have to fold it in half and then it's super absorbent and if everybody in the world or everybody in the United States used one paper towel in there each day instead of two or three I can't remember the billions of paper towels to be saved in three so we showed things like that we brainstormed about taking a shorter shower we talked about unplugging your cell phone when it's charged from the wall we talked about not running the water we saw you know there's lots of things that we went over with that and they made pledges with that one of our other big ones is the we scare hunger that we did which is a Halloween time food drive so this was our second year doing it and it's super fun we our student council delivered paper bags donated by the grocery store and they walked them around the neighborhood and left them on doorsteps in our neighborhood with a little note saying we'll pick these up on Friday I don't know October 30th or what if you leave them on your doorstep and so they did and then we get a bunch of teachers and stuff to bring their trucks and volunteer and drive around and some of us walk with them and we all pick up all these bags of food and we did that in October it went great what else did we do oh this one's an ongoing one we are Rafikis this is one of the ways these Rafiki bracelets are one of the ways that we the children raise money for their efforts and they have different colored bracelets that donate money to different causes so you can choose if you want to donate by a bracelet that supports clean water or bracelets that supports food or education or health and we've been selling those at each of our conferences and there's another event coming up I gotta talk faster we are silent was another big one we spent our day we prepped all the kids and we had to take a pledge of silence for all those people who don't have voices whether they are slaves or they're bullied or something like that and they spent an entire lunch period of that whole day not talking and it was really interesting to see because that doesn't normally happen and they each wrote about who they were the remaining silent for and we had this beautiful big mural in the hallway now with all of their stickers on it of who they're standing up for we step up is a movement based one and we haven't done that one yet but it's kind of been our theme this year as in we step up we help out and every time we post to our Facebook or our Twitter page about something great we're doing we tag it, SCO steps up so that's kind of been our theme and each month our counselors choose student leaders who are recognized for being a great part of the community and stepping up and they get a SCO steps up t-shirt we just did we are in love and it's still kind of going on it's kind of timed around Valentine's Day to be kind to each other in a lot of the ways Wander talked about we kind of went with the route talking about online and how easy it is to forget that there is a person behind the screen or behind the text and we did we showed an interactive video I hope you can find this Christa it's called Words Hurt in Government and you choose your reply and based on your reply you can see on her pretend webcam how she reacts so we had them try it with fully type answers and friend type answers and that was really powerful we're making another mural in the hallway told with inspirational quotes and things and all of our teachers are going to take a note so that every kid in the school has a nice note from their teacher on their locker on Valentine's Day so let me talk about positive outcomes we have loved seeing and I mean we like the staff have loved seeing our kids connect with the larger community the food drive in the neighborhood global connections and understanding it just puts you in such a different frame of mind when you realize like I hate going to school but this kid can't go to school because she has to walk four hours for water right there is just generally been more talk about reading and staff have something to read and talk about there's been more excitement about books you know you still have some staff this is the only book that they read all year but hey that's one more book than they were reading before and that is a win to me and that's why I want to keep it going and the way it brings clubs and staff together in our theme and in our quest to teach them to make a difference about the world so where do we go from here we're always trying to get more speakers and authors to come we want to connect to more Lincoln sources if possible parents organizations neighborhood we're always looking for more ways to celebrate those who read you know it's hard when it's not mandatory or really kept track of and we're trying to get staff to read more in general the principal had me make up some signs for everybody's door that said your teacher is currently reading so that they can write down e-mails magazine or you know don't look it doesn't matter we want to just get that culture of reading and I don't know if my next slide came I must have missed it I almost had a heart attack before this presentation started it was two minutes till it was supposed to start Christa and my walks in like I'm getting my coffee before we start and she says I have amazing news and I said I've got to start a webinar what is it she doesn't have to hear this and she said we won and I didn't know what we would said as a school in the meet-a-wee program we were in a drawing I put our name in the drawing to win a speaker to come to our school from the meet-a-wee organization and he's coming in like two weeks his name is Dr. West and I tried to add it to the slideshow maybe it got deleted oh I got to go that's okay he's coming he is an inspirational speaker we saw him at meet-a-wee he lost both his legs below his pelvis when he was a child and despite all that he's climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with his hands and his wheelchair and he loves talking to students about overcoming obstacles and working hard so we are so excited congratulations that's awesome if you want to go ahead we do also usually grab these PowerPoint slides add it to your slides and get the information there then send it to me then I'll add that with the additional information up to the recording and it's in the wrong spot so we'll keep going how do you try to get your school if you're watching you probably want to know what do I think about so I think this is a really important slide when we choose a text but like it or not you have to think about cover appeal when you are voluntarily getting kids to pick up a book it cannot look super girly boys read it and it can't look you know what I mean think about the length and the text size like I was a little worried about wonder because it was a longer book but then when I looked at text size I realized oh there's a lot of white space it won't be as long to read feeling the both genders thinking about the reading level is it appropriate for all levels does it have a cause associated with it one of my favorite pages is linked there it's called AmityGirl.com I also follow them on Facebook because they're always teaching me about wonderful women in history and today and they have a link they always recommend awesome books and one of their pages is about social issues so I'm always looking at those books to find the next one book on school ask other teachers whose opinions you know you think are good or maybe you have a committee that you want to start we are trying to alternate a global and local focus I still have not found a book for next year so I don't know if it's going to happen but hopefully I can find a global focus book next year and then can you locate or curate some resources for teachers to help with this topic and would it make a good read aloud you guys probably already know about purchasing but can you discount a bookstore or your book job or online wherever you get the best deal my book job so the district had the best price but it was going to take weeks and weeks so I called Barn to Noble and I said hey if you match the price I'll buy them from you and get them in four days and they said okay so I got them faster and they would get them out to teachers for summer and if you can play ahead and try to have it ready before you start school but you know we've done it both ways promoting the book if you can show the teachers before the next school year so they have more time to think about it and know about it home room type time is a great place to read excerpts and do lessons if the book has a book trailer that's awesome I spoke I always speak to my kids about it at the beginning of the year at library orientation I visit reading classes, we have signs signs displays we have one shelf that every year now is bad as the one book once go shelf and then we even put out last year's winner or the other year's nominees and find an easy way to put books on hold our system doesn't allow our students to do it but we do it through Google Form these are some of our signs encourage teachers to take the lead in any way they see fit I told you some of the teachers were doing college classes and they found connections I hang up the screen sign this year for everyone a teacher who's read it, I do that every year share related news articles there's my thing about Spencer and good luck share it with the world that's been aside from sharing this program my second favorite thing is telling everyone and writing articles or whatever I talked a lot are there any other questions? that's great so we did have a couple someone did ask you already answered the question what book were you considering for next year they were thinking ahead for you sorry I can tell you the ones I'm considering it's no way final there's two global ones I'm considering half a world away I think it's by I want to say by kata kata but I might be wrong and it's about a family that adopts a boy from Mongolia or Kazakhstan I think it's Kazakhstan it's been a while since I read it and then my other option might be a book called look both ways in the barrio Blanco and it's about the children of illegal immigrants and it's a very realistic view of what that's like and it's a good middle school level so that one might be a contender the few that I like for a more local issue I like we are all made of molecules it's a book about a boy dealing with his father's death and remarried and a very mean step-sister but we haven't really done a book about death like that in dealing with grief I've also talked about fishing a tree about the girl who can't read or thinks she can't and then El Defo by C.C. Bell about what it's like to be deaf I thought that was another good one another question? yeah lots of ideas do you try to balance global and local but about fiction and non-fiction? is that that's a good question I have no problem with non-fiction and I would be happy to include it if I found the right book and like I said there's a lot of criteria and I hope some of these books have crossed into the based on true story things so I feel like we're close and we're definitely open to it it just has to be a really engaging book so we always buy companion books so when we were studying Iqbal about lots of books about free the children and about child slavery and other books about Iqbal that were non-fiction so we have those out on display too same with Wonder and Superman but I haven't found the right one yet another question came in you said you get 50 copies of the books each year for circulation yeah I know my library is constantly trying to weed for shelf space do you keep all 50 copies of the books for following years or do you then get rid of some of them do you have space issues with that that every year you're buying so many copies of the single title? yeah that's a really good question so we only put a few on the shelf and we put the others back into a storage room and here's why we have a couple of reasons one, just because we read it last year doesn't mean that the sixth grade social day teacher might not want to read it with her class next year and so if I have a class set that's awesome until I'm in four years I've been hesitant to get rid of any yet but they are in a back store room because I don't have room on the shelf for 50 copies of each there has been oh well so then can we tell everyone some of my other librarians within our school link and public schools have borrowed and so sometimes it's for a month you know teacher borrows and one year we loaned all of our copies of Wonder to another middle school and they used it for their one book one book one and this year we loaned some copies of Long Walk to Water to a school to do a project and and then I also know that if we need to our Nebraska Library Commission has like book bag checkouts we do we have book club that's what I meant so if I do decide to read you know and the other schools don't need a mass amount of copies that's probably where I'll give them yeah the library commissioner does book club or we send a bag of how many books and English and information about how to run your own book club mm-hmm yeah anything else um let's see we just have let's see here let's see here I just want to say how wonderful all the projects were that you did say what just someone saying how wonderful all the projects were that books inspired books inspired yeah I think my biggest advice would be don't be afraid to try it and don't worry if you don't know what you're going to do with it yet because if you I really hope you love the staff you work with and I hope you have even a few that you're close with you'll be amazed what happens we didn't know what was going to happen we certainly didn't know every year we didn't know how powerful would be just try it was the worst that can happen right um we do have a question for someone um Dave make sure if up at our south city I've got you unmuted Dave can you talk hello this is April Dave you're unmuted if you are you're not hearing anything not hearing anything yeah it told me I was muted and unmuted but Dave if you want to type in your question could you do that because I'm not hearing you I've got you unmuted on our side but I'm not hearing anything no see if he gets it Dave we can't hear you so you type in your question I'll give you another minute or two to be able to do that while we wrap up here oh wait here we go oh we just typed an excellent program I worked with a high school that um all subjects participated in the topic topic that is so awesome that is so awesome I said I don't think we're the first people to invent it but I do think we've got a good thing going we're keeping it moving absolutely definitely alright I'm gonna unmute you I'm gonna mute you just for a second April I'm gonna mute you I'm gonna mute you I'm gonna mute you just for a second April I'm getting some feedback suddenly from your speakers it looks like I suddenly started hearing myself feedback through I don't know if you changed your setup there or something you did no I didn't change anything it's it's weird I'm just hearing myself I'm not sure if anyone else hears this or not no I don't know alright he just also says science can figure out what are problems etc for what Dave was talking about what they did with their school so we're trying to get connected with it alright well I think we'll wrap it up we're a little after eleven o'clock so I want to not run too long for us so thank you April thank you very much for asking me to speak about my favorite and it's pretty obvious that it is yes it's a great program it sounds like you guys have done some really cool fun things and just getting the kids involved and so doing all these social things and just being able to do something proactive and useful for the rest of the world I think is a very cool aspect of it yeah well thanks again everybody for coming yeah thank you very much April everyone for coming as I said the show has been recorded and it will be available later this afternoon potentially it takes how long it takes it to process see I'm going to switch over to sharing my screen here now there we go there we go as I said I was saving the links so here is where I have in our delicious account we put all of our the links from all of the books that April mentioned the websites that you talked about I tried to grab all the videos I think I got everything in here so this will be included afterwards when the recording is available also the recording will be here on our Encompass Live website if you go to these are our upcoming shows but right beneath that to our archived Encompass Live sessions where we have all of our previous shows are posted here so this one will be there and the PowerPoints will be included if April April you would send those to me afterwards I can put them up here sounds great cool those will be here the links will be here and you'll be able to either watch this again or share it with your colleagues so that were up for today's show I hope you join us next week though when our topic is Teaching Digital Literacy with TechBoomers.com and other online resources TechBoomers.com is a relatively new website I believe last year maybe the year before that has been created with tutorials about teaching digital literacy to adults and they have web videos and training and all sorts of things and it's getting more and more they're always adding new topics to it I believe Black who is from TechBoomers.com will be with us to talk about that next Wednesday so hopefully you'll join us for that and any of our other upcoming shows we have listed here on our website also Encompass Live is on Facebook so if you are a big Facebook user please do go over there and like our page we post notices of when the shows are coming up here it shows a reminder to log in for this week's show right before it started and when the recording is available I put a reminder up here as well letting people know the recording is up so if you are big on Facebook please do go over there and give us a like so you can keep up with us other than that that wraps it up for this morning thank you very much for attending this week's Encompass Live and we will see you next week bye