 Can you talk somewhere in the United States? Yes. That was not the answer I wanted or needed. Good morning. My name is Cathy McMann. I'm the Youth Services Manager at St. Memorial Library. I piece a lot of my talks. I apologize if you're one of those visual people that have to watch. You know the person talking. Thank you for coming. I know I'm competing with Sally Snyder, and that is like, holy cow, you can't compete with Sally Snyder with the book list. So I'm thrilled that all of you guys are here. What we wanted to do today was make it very casual and have a kind of a feedback. We thought it was extremely successful on many levels, and we wanted to share that. There is no PowerPoint. There is no shield. We'll have some handouts. If you'd like to pick those up, they're on the back table. About the book that we just really is a given take. So if you have questions, we'd love for you to raise your hand. Or if you have those with people that are not in our, our buildings, in our comfort zones. Okay, so here's what we did. My name is Kathleen. This is Lloyd Matthews. He was a sixth grade teacher last year that I collaborated with. He is now currently the fifth grade teacher in the same building. Ms. Sandbaker is an author that we did a project with. I did a project with her in the building in my library, and then Lloyd did a project in the building in his building. And then Sheila Welch is an author that came in from Chicago to be here with us today. So we are very thrilled that she did that. So we're going to kind of just talk about, we're just going to tell our story, and you can throw out questions or throw out comments if you need to. I forget to pass the mic, and so remind me to have my director. A year ago, to go to every single PTA meeting in the district, we have 11 grade schools. Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about. I went to 11 grade schools, and Anderson Grove is on, is in our school district, but not in our library, you know, the library card free kind of district, you know what I'm talking about? So I went to the PTA meeting, I'm brought to my director, and Dr. Carley was there, the principal, and she, I passed out our business cards, and said, I love to do book clubs, I love to come to book talks, can you just get me into one of the classrooms? The next day, I kid you not, I go to work, 9 o'clock, my email is there, and Mr. Matthews is on my email saying, I'm a sixth grade teacher, and I'm going to come and talk to our reluctant boys book club after school. I'm thinking, oh my gosh, they can pull boys together after school, and they're going to read, oh, I'm guiding on the heather. So I went there with the idea that I was going to be like the knowledgeable person that I am, and they totally blew me on the bottom. They were good teachers, I thought. So from that little conversation of passing on my business card to Dr. Carley, and both passing it on to Mr. Matthews, we decided to take it one step further after we did the reluctant boys book club, that went out to school. And so I went one time to go back, pulled the books, booked talks, most of them had read everything that I had taken, so that was really a good thing. And so then Mr. Matthews had asked Dr. Carley if it was okay if I just came and talked to his classroom, and from there I can let Mr. Matthews talk. What was really interesting about this is seeing the energy that Kathy brought to our meeting, when he said, it's a brilliant amour. And at the time, well, let's get it in. At the time, initially another four or three teachers I was working with, Mr. Temple, were like, oh, we're getting a lot of caffeine when I see the boys book club. But seeing the excitement that the young men had, it kind of posted to them, it's a lot of the members of the boys book club. And I go, you know, should we keep this exclusive of boys book club, or should we just go break this classic? So we start out, but it's fair, fair, was our first novel book that we worked with. And it was really interesting watching how the students interacted, and I thought to myself, one of our district goals is we're really working on comprehension skills, and especially trying to get young men of encouragement and reading. So it seemed it was too full, but everything was working really well. And I was like, you know, I could probably, somehow, start spouting on their box, and it just went extremely well. We had a timeline for the spirit book, but the kids are enjoying reading it so much that we actually got that, I think, it was like a week and a half. We got that early, and the kids were like, what are we doing next? And I kind of smiled like I thought that was sad. And oddly enough, Kathy said, you know, there was this email I heard about, there's an offer to, and she was like, what do you think? I don't think there's a why, why, why, why, we should try this, we should try this. So she's like, well, just give me a second, let me do something else and get some communication going, and we'll see what happens. Literally the, later on in that week, I'd buy a Sheila Welch, and we find out there's a book that she has written, and we're kind of working on, well, how can we do this? And so as Kathy and I are brainstorming, it's kind of like, great, and then we get, okay, that she's like, now I'm going to do that, and I think I might as well be able to have myself talk to my boss. I realize it's going to take some class time, we just have to make sure that everything's going to fit within the curriculum. As an educator, what I'm seeing, this is such a great opportunity, more authentic learning in the aspect of, there's these goals that we have to make sure that we're accomplishing, but how can we make it real for the students? How can we make sure that the students are so engaged that they want to write, and how often do we get an opportunity to work with the actual author of that particular book, and you're going to work with them every week, and that's what makes it better. Before I, so we did this for four weeks of Sheila, and then basically every week we signed. The first act was rather very interesting, and I think it probably should have go back and forth. Yeah, it was very exciting. Yeah, the book had just come out, it was only a few months old, and I had to write another novel also, but this one was a little bit different, and I actually heard that on the Elsa list, I don't know, Kathy had put out this email saying something about it was a class that wanted to work with an author, and that it would have sounded like it. I could just ask, boy, it was a special class, I don't know, they were so smart. I had to teach it, right? Anyway, so I wrote to Kathy and said I was interested, and we went through things that wasn't we would be able to get the book, because it was so new that it was not a lot of libraries, now it's probably the longest library, but it did come out actually about just about a year ago in the spring. So, and I, then they asked about Skydiving, so I'd done this a few times, I'd done it, we went to Ireland, and I did it with my daughter, and I had done it with a group of teachers in my daughter's library, she was at school by the name too. Oh, well, we could do this, and my husband's really very good with technical stuff, but then he's going to spill coffee on his computer, and the person who was doing the Skydiving had a different name, it was very confusing for a while, and then one time my husband was glad that this was a third, and we couldn't hear each other, and we didn't know what was going on, it was something I had done, we got up later, I turned something off, but I said, well, I don't know, so we started writing notes, and I wanted to give up the screen so that you could hear. And we discovered, well we discovered, I asked my husband this morning, if he knew that Skydiving, but when we wrote, we can't hear you, it was backwards. We adjusted that. But anyway, it was really, really a lot of fun. I think I also had another author, and I call myself a writer, not an author, because unless she I'm not published yet, but I'm one of the writers in this collaborative effort, I've also worked in a library before, in fact, last night I put on my Facebook status going to this, and I said, I think a part of me will always want to be a librarian. And you would not believe how many people liked my status update. They were like, okay, so my background is I started writing, my first book in 2009, and then I wrote, and that one was about my rap war veteran who comes back and is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and this young girl, 13 years old, kind of takes it upon herself to fight for him because he gets kicked out of the library and he's homeless, and it's just a story of fighting for the veterans who returned home. But I did nothing with it when I was done writing that one. I didn't feel like it was good enough. And then I wrote a book taking place in a school, in a high school. It was a school shooting story after the shooting at the Red South. And then in 2010, I wrote I started writing Pictures of Natalie, which is the book that was part of this collaborative effort. And I'll actually read you. This could be a book clap. The story of Pictures of Natalie, written by Ann Baker, is about a teenage boy then who will do anything for his family, especially when his baby sister, Natalie, goes missing, and then goes to great lengths to find his sister. But while traveling on this cross-country journey with his two friends, Loki and Rhys, could he possibly build up his courage to find Natalie? And this is a book jacket that was written by one of the students in Mr. Matthews' class during that collaborative effort. I'm going to talk a little bit more about the things I can find in that class in a second. But first, after I wrote this book, Pictures of Natalie, I knew that it was good or decent, but it wasn't great. And I really wanted to get it to that great stage so I could send it to agents and publishers. And so I wanted into the Pavilion Library, not a library I go to, but I got a good feel from it. And I met Kathy and I just walked up to her and I asked, I wrote this book, is there any way, do you know any teens who could read this and give me some feedback? And automatically she just lit up and she was like, well, of course I do. And she had several groups in mind. She had her teen reading group, and then she also talked about a whole school group, which we haven't used yet, but she had just so many ideas. And I thought that was really great for a writer to come in and she just knew right where she could place me. She had lots of readers that were willing to read this book and give us a good feedback before I could send it in to possibly get published. So I went to meet with her teen group and we met, I would say about five times, but by the second time they had finished the book and they gave me such great feedback. I had critique sheets so then the kids filled out critique sheets for me. So it was almost like homework and they did it all. They were awesome. They just were so thrilled to be a part of this process that they just probably they kept meeting with me, even after we read the book, we had discussed it, like they just wanted to keep meeting. They gave me ideas for other books. They, I think they also came up with book jacket ideas, just any way to incorporate them into the process of what happens in the writing process. There's a benefit for them. There's a huge benefit for me. And then Pappy approached me up with Mr. Matthews here and she said, how would you like to have this class of sixth graders read your story? So I went into that classroom, again it was about five or six times and I met with them, either reading aloud to them or they would read it during class time and then I would come in and we would discuss it and during that time they did, they wrote an essay on it. They filled out critique sheets and they some of them did artwork for the cover of it and so in the end what it gave me, this collaborative effort, was well one, they gave it a self confidence because having kids read your story and they're just so excited to be with an author or writer and they were just so excited and they gave me some good feedback things that I've already incorporated into the story and then for them, I think it really gives them the opportunity to meet an author, to meet a writer, to see the process. I was able to tell them this is the process, you don't just get published in a day or even six months it takes possibly a year or longer, this is the editing process, the book that they read I was able to explain this as manuscript number two it's the version number two I had to edit teaching them about editing, writing and it was such a great collaborative effort between kids in a classroom and a writer being able to tell them this is the process and this is the importance of editing and rewriting and things like that and so I think overall it was it was just such a good opportunity for the kids to meet authors and writers and to see that and I'll stop talking for a little bit, let's someone else talk. At the end of the year it just, it came the process of this is really taking on a different look in the aspect of the things that the kids want to bring to it is every time we're into when we've got that work with Sheila, they're like we still want to do something with Sheila like we've got that work with Pam and they're like, we still want to do something with Pam and then they let us see Kathy all the time and then the year comes to an end so they want to call them being in activity and so we thought, well your parents have heard about this and had interesting discussions of some of the topics that have come up in these books and we kind of thought ourselves, well we're kind of totally like a party and so and you know, you have to start with parties and I really just, yeah the party is cool so they got really excited about that and I said, okay this is something so what are some of the things that we've been working on so it wasn't just even the aspects of the things that were done with the authors, they also went across, they had a lot of information, the portfolio the records that we had set up, books and we also talked to some of our our special language apologists Mrs. Healy our earlier coach Ms. Jim Johnson and then had them have some informational books for parents also to give them information for junior high and I think it was some academic things with that and then we had Kathy come in and she brought in all kinds of information what we could do with the summer library she was our keynote so in our gym, our boss she was once again letting us do this because it did take about the last hour and a half of her school day and we got a bunch of pizza the kids bought a zoo parents RSVP we had 90% response from parents and we had only two kids that were not represented by parents because they just had confidence so we put those kids and adopted that day by having this and then and came in also, so everybody was set up and we had books and it was a great event just watching the kids take their parents from the booth basically talking about what they did and different information in these rooms also to help them as they were moving on to middle school the faculty and the contact, especially when she was living so far away when we started going 15 minutes per skyping in the gym with all the parents there and you can see how talented the kids are and I remember we had Winston go up to kind of get them started and we had a parent and then Hacker go ask a question but they finally got to kind of experience what their kids were doing you know the classroom wasn't just the classroom because of the contact that we had made especially with her director sitting around saying look there are things that we can bring to classroom teachers that possibly classroom teachers would not have access to without meeting the faculty all this would not have happened the winners truly were those students that I worked with last year and even out this year my fifth grader's faculty started last week so we started our school program so I'm like this is going to be amazing because we started three months earlier than last year but that end of the year event last year it was something that I think people in Michigan saw, I have to tell they realized wow what we did was pretty huge and even in that aspect they finally began to understand that not all students get an opportunity not one to work with a published author and then have that type of contact but they'll work with work with a author and then have contact with the author who you cut into that monster and have a manuscript and remember in this paper this is my manuscript it won't be a book I mean we had 25 copies of that I'm like now look, you can't take this home you got to keep this here explaining the seriousness about it and they really got it the writing that came from this was still phenomenal they got copies and made sure that both of them got copies of the lyrics is what the kids were saying and the aspect of the confidence that really came into my students and the writing voices I came in from was really I don't know what I'm talking about but it was really great as an educator this was something I'm very proud to be a part of and hopefully but I want to tell you about when Anne came into the library the day I was sitting at my desk and this was really important because you know as children and young adult librarians are kids and so Anne came up and said do you know any teens that I can talk to and I'm thinking first thing who this woman is and she's not getting that kind of close but then one of us and so I thought well I'll ask the teens I'll ask the teens and my teen activity more that they wanted to even do this and they were all over they absolutely loved it in fact she had another one out that we've only given them like the first two chapters of and about four of them even on me about every day when is she going to bring the next set when is she going to bring the next set and then the part about when we were in Miss Matthews class and Anne bought the manuscript that was a great time to write fair use and plagiarism and all that stuff that they hear in the school library but they tongue out you know like I mean they just after a while you just hear that year after year they can't really apply this was applicable to what they needed to know that they couldn't take the manuscript out of the building this didn't belong to them they couldn't mess with it they couldn't share it it was property intellectual property owned by by Anne and that was huge that was a huge learning lesson it gets published I said well if you read it you'll have gone through the whole steps with them it was a huge huge successful project considering we did it by emails we literally set it up one day and I came in brought the books we read and then from there we did the next thing it just worked really well and I think we would have tried to structure it more we would have fallen flat on our faces but because all of these professionals were willing to you know be flexible and you know let us do what we needed to do what we all do best it worked really well we felt so comfortable about it that when we finished in May with that big educational activity we totally got the six characters and they thought it was so cool that they would have already like they know what that is yeah with your parents that was what they said I'm so sorry to share with everybody else that is willing to do this because she so believes in what we're doing in a public library and her husband is an academic librarian so she gets what's going on but we honestly just wanted to share this with you and we thank you for your coming if you have questions comments anybody else that would try any of this kind of stuff we would love to know how we could expand this and have ideas on how she's going to we would love to know your opinion and what you thought and help what you guys do with all libraries we're all about sharing the well I did did you have any response from your school? repeat the question please I had said that I had gotten into 11 schools when I had passed out my business card to the PTOs and now I had not been asked to do anything else with any of the other libraries last year but I don't take a different answer very well I don't have any issues with that so I emailed them all back and instead of going to the PTO people I went straight to the principals and I'm now in the 7th grade so it worked it just needed to and what's been really nice is that I've probably invited that can go out they're super intended to come and from there we're now taking it to Anderson Grove became our business partner so now we can do some really cool things with them and one more step with this Anderson Grove group we're going to do Anderson Grove Night at the library so we're going to go get fast food at one of our one of our partners and then they're going to come in and if they don't have cards they'll get cards and our friends and it's just a way for them to get into that building because they know who I am they totally know when I lock in the building you know oh she's here liking the stuff but they don't know what I have to offer a zillion DVDs 400,000 books and all that stuff and you see me in my bag and I think it's really important that they put the connection at the public library the school library and the classroom teacher the principal all get that this is important and I'm very passionate about that so I will work on that and we're going to use Anderson Grove as our pilot school number one because Dr. Hardley will allow me to do that and number two Mr. Matthews can sell it from the inside out and we can just totally we think we're going to totally lock it and then it's going to happen in March so we're really excited because they'll have four books by then probably four books by then by the ones that we have fit and we just think it's just one more one more way we can grow this and then once we get the Anderson Grove Library done Dr. Hardley's been nice enough to say that she will go to all the other principals so that we can build this in the other schools because I think it's important that we make that connection of doing that collaborative effort they have the audience I have to stop, why wouldn't we stop? I don't understand anything else? Any comments, questions? It's absolutely not I think touching spirit here I think touching spirit here is the first one I think that is a wonderful six grade read about anger and how to deal with little school emotions and I just love that book so Mr. Matthews and I I read it for years and then Mr. Matthews read it and was like I think this is going to be pretty good so we picked that one and then when Sheila had that email and Sheila that was the next book we picked this year we have we have a list of 12 we know we can't get 12 done and none of them are picked because they're a long winning book none of them want to purchase pick because of content bullying is big this year so we wanted to do something on bullying we wanted to do something on we wanted to do a nutrition and popular book because she's an extremely provider where we can pull it in and and we can show nutrition's writing as opposed to ants writing which are totally different but totally appropriate we have so many ideas we know we can't get it all done but we just so they answered your question we don't want to take books we would like to know if you guys have tried this they are outside our city boundaries for a free library they will have to purchase a library card which is $20 or a year of course but what might and it's really not really the point of getting a card it's the point of getting those kids into that building so they can come to program once we get them into programming cards just come naturally because they see the stuff on the shelves and they make their moms to get cards so it you know we play the game like everybody else does and we make the work I want in the building and we just know that we don't only have a school library to go to that they have us to use as a resource and that we have really cool fun and meet things and because we've got older kids I can tap into those kids for some free volunteers so I'm always looking for a way to make my life easy so so anyway so anything else I just want to further stress the benefits of this collaborative effort I know for myself as when I was 12, 13, 14 years old I would have loved to be in school and working with an author or to see that writing process because at that age I wanted to be an author and you always have that opportunity to meet published authors to work with them and so I think that's a great opportunity and then using the library to have that as the middle person I mean that's just great and to get the kids in there into the library to have groups meeting with authors, meeting with writers is so great and I think it's so important for kids and some of those future ideas if this is something you want to do if you are a public librarian and you bring in a writer and if you can't find a published author especially they won't do it for free and you don't have the money you could find unpublished authors in your area and they probably will do it for free and you could have them not only do something like this where kids read your book or read the writer's book but you can have the writer invite them in to do a writer's workshop get some teams together who want to be writers and have that writer need a workshop or have them just