 The school libraries are the great equalizer for all children regardless of social economic status and how many or few books a child has at home. The San Jose State School of Information is the largest MLS provider in the nation and the world and we are committed to being an unyielding and strong ally in helping strengthen school libraries in California and nationally. Tonight is the second of three school library summits we're sponsoring. We'll also be hosting a National Library 2.0 mini conference globally in the fall. I want to especially welcome all of our attendees but especially school board members and school leaders and thank you for taking the time to join us at this important event. As a cognitive psychologist and instructional technologist and leader in emerging technologies it is with great confidence that I say both reading literacy and now digital literacy for students, teachers and parents are essential for success which makes the role of school libraries even more important today and in the future. We're honored to have some of California's foremost school library experts and leaders with us today and so let me turn it over to Dr. David Loicher who will help moderate the event. David? Well thank you very much Dr. Chao. You know as we guide you through this whole change in libraries into learning commons and on into innovation centers you know we realize that the idea of change is just incredible in all of our lives and next slide and it's really interesting we expect I think lots of professionals in our lives to keep up and change as the world changes and for example our doctors and dentists and tax consultants and so many people in our lives we expect them to be the best of the best and for example we want them to keep up. I was once in a car with a with a doctor who said I don't bother with keeping up on the new findings in medicine I am more comfortable just doing what I do well and I thought you know if I were if I were in your office today I would just grab my things and run run out the door but if we look back at George Washington for example his doctor you know led him and was a major cause in his death and his dentist equipped him with wooden teeth and we think well we hope our doctors and dentists can do a little better than that but in the area of libraries you've got four pictures on your screen on the left is the library I remember from my high school the librarian attended study hall and in one end of the study hall was the library and it was a bunch of lawyer bookcases and she would allow two students to come up into the the library and we could peer through the glass doors and if we really really really wanted one we could say I want the blue one the the blue one with the spine and so she would raise the door very carefully hoping maybe we wouldn't want to take it off because otherwise she'd have to shove it and then I remember a box over in the corner that had lots of drawers and I said to her what is this thing and she says keep your hands off she said that's the card catalog she says and and I I spent all my time filing it and I don't want you to mess it up well I hope you had a a much better experience in the libraries of your childhood but you know for many many years we've had school libraries have been just a full of bookshelves with lots of books that circulate and and that was the main function of the library to be a storage and retrieval center and unhappily there's still a lot of those around even in California but during the 1960s everyone was discovering audio visual materials and so those came into the libraries and maybe you remember the 16 millimeter projector or the phonograph records or the sound film strips boy they were they were just wonderful but um toward the end of the uh well at the beginning of the millennium 2000 you know all of a sudden the internet happened and uh and and micro computers and suddenly we we began began to emerge into a whole new world and in the lower right hand corner we've even uh uh gone into what we call uh innovation centers or innovation labs in some schools and so uh what we we think about the transition of uh the school library along a continuum just like we expect our doctors and our lawyers and things to say up to date next slide and so probably the easiest way I can use to explain uh the difference between a library that's just kind of books that are circulating and a learning commons is to do what I had to do I wrote a book uh in the last uh in the 1990s that was very popular it was called the taxonomies of the school library program and when the internet dawned on the world uh I thought well I need to do a third edition and so I started to to read through it and all of a sudden it crashed in my head you know nothing I had said in the past made made a bit of sense in a totally changed world so I got together with a couple of really great uh uh teacher librarians in Canada and we came up with the idea of the learning commons and what it did is it forced us to rethink every single thing we'd ever learned about libraries and and flip those notions and so I'd like to introduce that idea to to you as a way of helping uh everyone understand this major change in in that we advocate in school libraries so for example if you were a student or a teacher and you uh walked into uh the learning commons what would you expect to find well in the learning commons I could read a book but I could also in its many formats now but I I could also write a book in its many forms and formats and share that my writing out to everyone I could watch a video but I could also create a video and we all know that these this generation is that's uh hooked on on videos of all kinds uh uh they are most actually uh anxious to share with everyone they know uh videos and so they love to do that I could um I could uh play a game in the learning commons but I could also create a brand new one to share with others I could I I could uh use a computer program but I could also use artificial intelligence to create a whole new program that might serve you know and and and make a major difference in the world uh I could um I I could obey the rules of the learning commons or I could help revamp the rules of the learning commons you know I could if I were a teacher I could I could use lessons that I've used in the past but now in the learning commons I could uh partner with the teacher librarian to create some exciting new learning experiences um if if I were uh if I walked into the physical part of the learning commons I could also realize that there could be a virtual learning commons that could be uh available 24 7 and it would be a community of of teachers parents students and the librarians uh investigating learning and learning to learn within that a whole different social environment rather than just a one-way street I'll hear some things to click let's move to the next slide so um another way to think about the the change and one of the most valuable things teacher librarians add to this this uh a change to learning commons is how they partner with with teachers uh in the creation of learning experiences uh yes we are concerned about major scores that are coming in in literature I mean in reading and mathematics and we support those for example in reading you know as as children start to study animals what we would want to do is to try to build wide reading in many formats as possible while they're uh studying animals rather than just reading a little passage in the textbook and or listening to the teacher talk uh and of course as they would if they read widely they would build background knowledge uh that would help them in passing whatever test is going to come their way um and and another thing that teacher librarians could do is choice choice choice for kids for example my grandson came to me a couple weeks ago and said oh that I am reading this series of books and the library has volume 22 but they've missed library uh volume 21 and I said well just come right over my computer and we'll just see what amazon can help with and you know I was thinking you know I'm at grandpa uh who can do that but there's so many children who don't have the wherewithal or uh to to be able to to read as much as they want to read in you know in any topics uh that they're interested in and that's going to make a difference of course in math uh I have a a senior in high school grandson and he said you know I'm in an advanced math class and my teacher really is not very good at explaining differential equations or whatever we're studying and most of the class is failing and I was thinking you know the teacher librarian could could work with that teacher and and we could list the major the major skills that have to be mastered and the teacher librarian would work with that teacher to provide 10 ways here's the resources you could do I could do it in Spanish I could do it by video I could do it in a blog by reading blogs I could do uh guiding tutorials in any way there would be 10 ways to to help every learner progress in mastering what what is required and of course uh so that's what we can do for the standardized test scores but then there's a lot of other things that we teacher librarians are great at doing you know they can they love to partner with with with teachers on on high uh in technologies and we're most interested in and digital uh literacy and with uh with all of these things coming how do we behave for example in many different formats and and things coming at all of us and we we we choose to blend in rather than teach a class in digital citizenship for example and the teacher and teaching a topic we we we like to join those two things together so that the uh they experience in real time you know what it is like to be a digital citizen for example and and another concern that teacher librarians have is is is the whole idea of what what information can we trust in today's world I mean we're all hit with this plethora of just uh messages of all kinds and types and and so the teacher librarian can fold into a learning experience is happening in social studies or science or literature or whatever this idea of literature stat stick model where we we we do six tests of information confidence so of any kind of information coming into me I could ask who is saying what to me for what reason for what gain through what channel and with what evidence and if if I get a red light on any one of those things I don't let that information stick in my brain I flush it but if I give it a green light I I let it stick and I learned from it and if I give it a yellow light I just haven't quite decided yet so that is a really important skill that I want to push in as a teacher librarian into whatever the uh learning experience is going on in the classroom and uh so uh what what we're we're trying to say is that uh it's something like building a chocolate chip cookie and you know if um if teacher librarians would like to be the chocolate chips okay so if the teacher brings the kids in for and teens in for a learning experience and we get one chance to teach them in 15 minutes some databases and send them back to the classroom and we never see them again it's kind of like building a chocolate chip cookie with a one one one chocolate chip and we'd like that cookie to be just full of chocolate chips of things that that both teachers and librarians could uh push together I did some research um on um on classroom teachers and teacher librarians a few years ago and I asked the teachers you know at the end of a think of a learning experience that you just finished what percentage of the students uh met or exceeded your expectations and the answers came back over 200 teachers I think um about half of the class in other words if you're into education it's the bell curve about half of the students succeed and then I asked uh teacher uh librarians when they when they teamed with though when they teamed with teachers uh take that learning experience and and tell me what percentage of the students met or exceeded both of your expectations and the answers came back 70 to 100 percent now in my book that is a huge game in other words what's happening when these uh when the teacher librarian starts at the beginning and carries through as a partner clear through the learning experience to the end what happens that means that and they combine that means that our chocolate chip cookie is absolutely delicious and we always say that two heads are better than one but I also say that you know you take one and one and you add them together you get three because the the the the total is greater than the sum of its parts so the two heads truly are greater than one let's go to the next slide um let's see if you want to know a lot more about this whole idea of learning commons there's this wonderful website that uh over the last year's been growing my students and I have been working on it you can find it at www dot um a live library dot info or you can take your camera right now and and uh take a picture of the qrl our code and it'll take you there and there's just a lot of things to work with and conversation starters for board members administrators and uh teacher librarians to get the conversation started where are we are we keeping up are we doing the best we can etc next slide you know uh there is a wonderful uh eminent researcher in libraries his name is Keith Lance he lives in Colorado and he is about to release in September a major major study on the situation of of uh teacher credential teacher librarians all over the country and I ask him as a personal favor to uh to uh take a quick look at California and see how we're doing and uh we are challenged I'll tell you uh so we have the the worst uh number of teacher librarians to students ratio in the in the nation except for one and that's Idaho so uh so that's a major negative for all of us to think about that in in trying to give opportunity to every single learner that comes under our our direction uh but um you know uh but I was thinking that maybe tonight instead of listening to me more that you would like to meet some real great uh California teacher librarians and and see what they're trying to do to to make a huge difference in their schools and as we got volunteers ready to do this the problem is they do so much and we we say to we're going to have three minutes and so you're going to have to just kind of uh tell us one one or two big major things that you do and so we're going to open this wonderful showcase to all of you and our first presenter is uh uh Lisa Bishop Lisa go ahead hi everybody I'm so happy that you're here um it's very thrilling to have all of you part of this symposium thanks for organizing at Dr. Lorcher and all of you at San Jose State University and all of our directors of school information science programs you are fantastic thank you for supporting all of us next slide thank you uh this is a few years ago yeah I just feel like all of us need to rock our libraries when we get one we're so lucky um in California especially that we just need to rock it as as as fast as we can and as best as we can and to support one another while we're doing it because we're kind of like a one person band next slide thanks and this is why we do what we do this photograph is one of my very favorites from some of my first years as a school librarian at at Flynn Elementary in San Francisco um getting the students to love learning and love the library and love reading this is why we do what we do but it's not only just a love of reading it's a love of a community and helping each other and supporting one another um so I just love this picture so much next slide um I'm now a middle school teacher librarian I've had an elementary school library and now a middle school and I feel like we are able to help create leaders in our in our libraries and that's what I've been trying to do um since I became a teacher librarian is create ways that students can become leaders in the variety of ways in our schools next slide yeah another reason why I do what I do so many students a lot of these students at my first school were kids who didn't want to be in the classroom didn't want to stay in the classroom they were our hallway walkers like we all have our hallway walkers so we started a mouse squad and guess what they were in the library all the time they wanted to read more they wanted to help and they become they became leaders of technology next slide next slide um I'm part of a reading task force right now in our middle school we're have we're seeing a lot of students coming to us from the elementary grades not able to read not able to read nearly any single syllable words some of them very few syllable one syllable words and so many students are walking the hallways because the school is not grabbing them in ways that they need the library is doing that but we're only one person so we're doing reading we're writing we're we're you know doing wellness we're doing suicide prevention we're doing stop motion films we're making slime and lip balm at lunch we're bringing in guest speakers but the variety of ways that we can can promote reading the pajama parties that we had when I was an elementary librarian it was so much fun we had oh gosh over a hundred people in the library with the grandmothers the grandfathers the parents the kids in their pajamas and reading their own stories and just we have to consider new ways to promote reading thanks next slide oops I think we went too fast but there were three slides that we went through really quickly if you can go back you got 30 seconds Lisa we're over at three minutes oh thank you do you want to do a closing statement yeah here's what I like to say to everybody support school libraries and librarians as much as possible we create bang for the buck so we are worth every single dollar and then some for the state of california I really if you want me to be a cheerleader anywhere in your in your area I will come and I will cheer for more school librarians thanks for listening today next up is Jordan hi everybody my name is Jordan Maddox I'm in my first year as a teacher librarian at madera south high school in madera california before this I was a classroom teacher for 12 years a history teacher at middle and high school levels but made the pivot to being a teacher librarian this year I want to share about two areas that I brought to the teacher librarian world that come from my background one is community organizing and the other is working in digital spaces so one of the first things that we decided to do was start to offer esl and citizenship classes which is something I've done at libraries all over california throughout my career and we offer them twice a week myself and another support staff teaches them our community madera is there's a lot of migrant farm workers they call it little wahaka of the central valley and so there's lots of folks that need language support and help and we wanted to offer that gratis to them so that they could get the support they needed and also build connections with families I think Rachel's going to try and push play on this and we'll see if it works okay so we don't have sound but what this is is a video of an event that we put on in keeping with this idea of library as community support and so this is our school gymnasium and we did a Thanksgiving event where we gave 1200 meals away gifts gift cards so those are my students right there that are passing out food that's my associate martin dressed as Santa Claus it was a great event and it's kind of all in keeping with this general scope of supporting families through the library next slide so three other things I wanted to highlight one on the left hand side and this is all in the kind of digital space is book recommendations a lot of students don't know what to read next they read one book and they like it and they're like well that's the end of the my reading career so we have a QR code on there students scan it send it in and then it gets sent to my phone and then I just literally text back my text message will just go right through an email that sends to them a book recommendation we also started a podcast called bookstories it's on Apple and Spotify and Google podcasts you can look it up and basically it's me interviewing staff teachers students even sometimes parents about their favorite books why they love reading their reading life all those kinds of things just so we can model what we want our students to aspire to and then last but not least we have a YouTube channel that covers you know basically areas that teachers need help with whether it's remediation or connecting them to college skills and so we created a YouTube channel and update it three times a week thank you next up is Amy good evening everyone this is Amy linden I am a high school teacher librarian I'm at El Dorado high school in Placerville which is midway between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe um it is a suburban and rural district and I've been teaching for uh almost 30 years and the teacher librarian for most of those um at my school I I'm pretty typical do the usual teacher librarian things a lot of research a lot of citation practice with noodle tools or MLA format APA format citations I do a lot of um free reading book talks um and several years ago I was introduced to the concept of breakout EDU which is breakout rooms um in doing them in your library um and I feel like kids these days are so technology oriented they don't get enough experiences with things that are kinesthetic and tactile and I really like what these kind of experiences give to them and they can be adapted across the curriculum so I started out with a set from breakout EDU but soon uh after figured out that they did not offer uh all of the topics that my teachers really wanted to delve into with uh puzzling and and trying to do these so what happens is um usually there's a box they have to try to break into it there are five usually different locks on the box and each one of those locks is an opportunity for a different kind of puzzle pathway um and so kids have to work together there's a lot of collaboration they're usually in teams of three to six kids um and I have usually about six boxes going at once um and so there's either one or two or three steps to each of those puzzles that they have to find out and a lot of it has codes involved uh ciphers um and I think it's really great for kids to you know learn how Morse code works or um I have uh different types of like Caesar ciphers with different alphabet codes and things that they have to figure out so I started to investigate how I could do them beyond breakout EDU and so I now write my own games especially for teachers when they need them so I have them on a variety of things I've done them for AP uh calculus I've done them for you know history and next slide well I think fill in that so the teacher comes with the idea and science social science uh just about whatever they want to do uh I will write a course for them uh or a uh write a uh something to go with their course specifically and it's really fun as you can see the kids there I think they really enjoy the opportunity to um to touch things to figure things out uh you know that they actually can kind of tinker with and um they get up and around and are moving trying to put clues together from around the room such as one way we practice critical thinking and hot's is what we call higher order thinking skills so synthesis um and analysis and um just putting those puzzle pieces together to come up with a combination and that's pretty much it one of the things thanks for listening this is one of the pictures this is pretty pretty funny if you wanted to go back there um I did this one this week which is one that I designed a couple years ago on the cold war and the funny thing is that I have one phone line um that's an old landline in my library and uh have been able to hook up a rotary dial phone to it and that is the best all year to try to get these kids to figure out that phone thank you for listening well yeah you're up hello my name is Leah Lattice and I'm the teacher librarian at Long Beach Wilson High School. I hold master's degrees and an admin credential and this is my 19th year managing our library. Wilson is a diverse campus with roughly 3,600 students and 150 teachers that our library supports. We have solidified ourselves as a hub on campus by providing a warm and welcoming environment for all of our students that focuses on literacy, academics, and social and emotional well-being. Our library is vibrant and busy and constantly changing to provide for whatever needs arise and we usually pull in a couple hundred kids a day who both study and relax. We also schedule class instruction, provide library programming, and serve as a facility for testing meetings, events, you name it it's truly pretty magical. Next slide. One of the many things I do is have a creative and collaborative relationship with our SPOT department which includes 12 of our student population although I've always welcomed them worked with the department it was really during COVID that a stronger bond was forged and a deeper collaboration began. It started with zooming in on Fridays to provide some variety to instruction and it evolved into lessons in which I curated resources for the teachers and took the learning beyond the classroom. So our collaboration has since continued with regular instruction and lessons and we fondly refer to it as a sped-lib collab. This is a photo of our moderate severe mixed grade functional ELA class holding their passports that they created during our recent lesson where in the world. Next slide please. So when we collaborate we use the Encyclopedia Britannica electronic database which is part of our suite of California State Library digital resources and a while back I realized you know our SPOT kids they can do this too and would a great innovative tool for the teachers. So it's interactive, differentiates, adds variety and has a variety of features to also support our ELLs and those with hearing and vision challenges. It teaches library research skills and gives access to additional resources that are credible and safe all while supporting the SPED curriculum that often lacks in content resources and rigor. Basically it elevates both learning and instruction. So in this lesson students were introduced to countries and their slides were linked to the Encyclopedia database entry for each site and depending on the teacher's preference and student need we would read the entry together or use the text-to-speech feature then we would pull out sentences to write and for your reference both the links are live for the lesson and for the database entry on the great wall. So although the database has been a powerful tool in providing and adapting instruction and learning the greater force has really been the collaboration and enriched relationship between library and the SPED department. Because of it SPED students and staff feel even more supported and connected which aligns with our district school and library goals of excellence and equity of valuing diversity and supporting the personal and intellectual success of every student every day. Thank you. Next up Nancy. Hello everyone. I'm at Mission Education Center. I've been there since January of this year. I was previously at another school so you can change that. Thank you. So I'm at Mission Education Center. It's a newcomer school. There's pre-K, TK up to fifth grade and they stay for one year. Slide. Next slide. So this is an interesting school. It's their Spanish speakers only. They've come from all different parts of Latin America all the way from Colombia, South America. We have one from Portugal that speaks Spanish and Portuguese. Many from Brazil, Honduras, Central America. Anyway they come and they don't know any English. They may know thank you, yes and no and that's about it. They're placed in the classroom according to their age. Many of our students in fourth grade have never been to school and it's not because they didn't want to. The pandemic hit when they were probably in kindergarten or first grade. And then you put in the traveling. That's another reason why they weren't in school. All of our teachers here are bilingual. You can switch the, there's an array of challenges that they face. The majority of them have been interrupted. They are sporadic or they haven't been in school. They come with little English. 100 or the 98% are significantly below grade level. Like I say here, we place them by grade whether they've been to school or not. They've experienced significant trauma and I'll talk about that in a minute. 93 of our students are enrolled have been, have come through our, to the past border unaccompanied and some of them have crossed up to seven borders. 97% are Hispanic. We have one child that's Mexican and Chinese. A lot of tardiness. We're in kind of an affluent neighborhood in San Francisco. Our students come from the Tenderloin. They come from the Bayview, the Hunter's Point and they either take the bus or they come on the school bus. Next slide. So myself, for myself, I always say that my students come first. I am both an educator and a learner. I'm very reflective with my practice. That's a daily reflection. It's a weekly reflection. It's a yearly reflection. And then my personal growth is my responsibility. Next slide, please. So how do I achieve and aspire to all of the above or better yet, where do I start? And this is about advocacy. Next slide, please. So in the first two weeks, like I say, I was, I was moved from one school to another because someone had to leave so I took over another school and I'm there. And within two weeks, I have to do all of this, meet the teachers, write letters to families, do some student surveys. Before I can even do anything, I want to, I need to observe, put my looking glasses on, create expectations with classroom teachers and students and myself, create tentative schedules because as much as we want to have a flex, a flexible schedule, in elementary, it's not, it's almost impossible. So I always make sure that I have two hours of a flexible time. It's usually between 1130 and 130. Those are the times that I consider my flexible time. And then I always get myself on that committee. What do I quickly assess as well is the library collection, the furniture, what's available, what kind of money, what kind of technology there is. Next slide. And you have 30 seconds, Nancy, to close up. Already? Yikes. You're actually at four minutes already. I am. Yep. So do you want to close up? I have to identify my needs. And so what I, in this school, I went to their, what their vision was, and it was to promote a very, to provide different perspectives and cultural voices. Next slide. But what I found in the library was I didn't see that. I didn't see that at all. So I was able to get the money that we got from our district was, from my school, was 4,000. When I shared what I had with a principal and the admin, and the other, in the SSC, I was able to get another, secure another $8,000. You can go to the next slide. So what I did was I had to make sure, I had to identify my stakeholders. You can go to the next slide because I already said that one. And this is admission education center. Again, I was there since January. I just went to the principal and I said, look, these are all our needs. And so this is what we did. And I was able to get everything, but the bookcases, which they said they would purchase in next fall. But everything else we got. Thank you. Gabriella, it's your turn. Hi, everyone. I'm Gabriella. And I am a middle school teacher librarian at Paul Revere Middle School in Los Angeles Unified. And we had a One Book One School with New Kid. Next slide. Okay. So I was able to get 11 out of our 15 English language arts teachers to read New Kid. So it wasn't quite one school, but we were almost there. So approximately 80% of my students read the book. This was also inclusive because bed students, because it's a graphic novel, bed students felt that it was accessible for them. And they included, in fact, the one of our bed classes liked it so much, they went out and bought Class Act. And that is going to be their second book for this semester. So that was really gratifying. We had Jerry Craft visit, do a virtual visit, and we had about 100% participation from our homeroom teachers. So 80% read the book and about 95 were able to view the presentation. And also with graphic novels, using it in the classroom, validated graphic novels as actual literature and doesn't dismiss it because many students gravitate towards graphic novels. And I think that is a really important skill and tool for teachers to utilize more than they do. Next slide. And so how I got teacher buy-in, I mean, all of you know, some teachers really hold on to, you know, the book they've read the last 30 years, and they're not going to change that and read a new book. So first, I created the lesson plan for teachers with grade level standards. I made it as easy as possible for them. I included formative assessments, a summative assessment, how to use Canva, made it again as simple as I possibly could, how many chapters to read every day so that I could just pass it on to them, and they could start with their classes. With Hoopla, so if you're unfamiliar, it's like Libby or Overdrive, except you are able to have unlimited copies. So it's great for a class to read a book or novel together. And Los Angeles Unified has collaborated with Los Angeles Public Library. So all of our students receive a digital library card. With that, I went into English classes and gave out their student success cards to kids and then got them onto Hoopla. So again, made it as easy as possible for their teachers. So there wasn't any excuse for them not to participate. We held our virtual visit during homeroom, and I had worked with admin to change our homeroom to accommodate a longer homeroom and then shorten the other classes by five minutes. And that was a conscious effort, so that again, it wasn't going to impact your normal day schedule. It's not like periods two to five are now going to be behind or ahead because period one had a virtual visit. It was all during homeroom. Everyone could participate. And then like I said, 80% of our students read the book, and then they were excited to hear the author. And so when I looked on the Zoom to see who was not attending, what teachers were not on, I was able to go to their classrooms and say, oh, why aren't you on? They thought it was optional. Well, how many of you kids read the book? Bless them, 90% raised their hands. And the teacher said, oops, okay, I guess I'll get on. It's a bigger deal than I thought. And like, yes it is. And then finally, our booster club, I had to do a little finagling and convincing them to find Jerry Kraft as he was a rather expensive author to do even a virtual visit. Luckily they were able to do so. And I waited until Donors Choose had a match offer. So you are able to do virtual author visits through Donors Choose. And with that match offer, it was essentially half price. So our parents were very happy with that. And the kids were happy to have read the book and then have him come. And thank you so much. You can slip the next slide. It's just permission. Nina, you're up. Hello. I have heard so many great ideas today. So it's really exciting to be here. And thanks to all the presenters before me. I can't wait to run away with your ideas. So I am the coordinator of career, coordinator of libraries, first career education and outreach. There are 15 school libraries in our school district that I help oversee. And kind of like my title suggests, libraries really are the bridge, the intersection, the crossroads of so many important things. And I think we've heard that over and over and over again today. In my district, they are really valued. They are considered important. And our media coordinators sit on a lot of adoption committee's curriculum council board were kind of really used as advisories to the district when they're making big decisions. So that's, it's an exciting position to be in, to have to be in a role where libraries are valued the way they are in my school district. So I'm going to really, and I know three minutes and I'm going to go quick, but I'm going to quickly explore our advances when it comes to curriculum support, our literacy efforts and our outreach. As far as curriculum support, you'll see I throw up a slide here. All of these are little things we've done. There's been a lot of different things. But what I want to emphasize here is that libraries provide support to our non-content specific areas. So we think about content as a teacher. You're like, they have basal readers for math, for science, for social science, for language arts, but they don't really get the same type of support for curriculum that's supposed to be integrated, integrated into what they're doing. So that's tech. That's social emotional learning. That's diversity, equity and inclusion, digital citizenship. You've heard these words over and over again today. But what we haven't emphasized is how difficult it is to teach for teachers to constantly be thinking not only of what they're teaching, but also how to integrate all of these great important things into what they're doing. And I think that's where we shine as librarians. We come in and we show them ways to do that. The other part of curriculum support and again, this is not new news, but that public library connection, when you think of a goal to create lifelong learners, you have to think about that vertical articulation piece. And that begins TK pre-reading all the way up through adult life. So we've created this partnership where a student's ID that goes along with them from kindergarten up allows them digital access to the resources that are available within their community. But we've taken that a step further where we've started to make, I have a portion of my job that's connected to CTE, which creates these partnerships with our local community colleges where we start understanding the tools and databases that they're using, whether they're ProQuest or Gail or whatever they have and start influencing our public libraries to buy those. So we're creating like a community of competency really, because these kids have been using the same tools and you're not seeing that trade in and trade out. All right, I need to go faster. I'm sorry. So this slide really quickly shows a framework. The next slide, literacy support. I wanted to mention the fun, the fun of libraries, the maker spaces. We're doing that. We're doing the hands-on activities, the ozobots, the bebots, the green screens, the breakouts, the art games, the contests, the things that make our students enter into the curriculum. And we have gone a step further with our organization of shelves. We've genre-fied based on our standards. So we have social justice standards, teaching for tolerance, that are identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion. We call them ideal labs. And ideal labs are areas that our kids can walk into and look and find those books that are already pre-tagged like a librarian would with that genre of identity. Okay, and then community support. Nobody makes community partnerships better than librarians. We have all these virtual, virtual authors that have come into our schools. We have partnered with our local water district. They're currently for Earth Day doing succulent planting. They're paying for assemblies for our schools. We've partnered with Cal State. They're doing alpala dissections with us. All of this organization of all of this program is coming through our libraries. Core literature and guidance support. We have noticed that a lot of our core literature right now is changing. It's being challenged. We have to step up and be leaders in all of this, fight for the freedom to read, et cetera. But we have gone one step further. About 30 seconds, Tina. Thank you with guidance on that. And then I'm going to end before 30 seconds. These are just pictures. I mean, I said a lot of words, but pictures speak a thousand and our kids are smiling and happy. Thank you. All right, Lisa. I'm Lisa Chibi, and I was a teacher librarian in LA Unified, and now I'm the education librarian at CSUN. And so research as a verb is a unit, a foundational unit in research that I co-created with Dr. Susan Norton, an English teacher at Fudugos High School. And this is a low stakes, high engagement, 10 lesson unit designed to build foundational skills in research and allow students to practice just those skills. The final assessment, you can go ahead to the next slide. The final assessment is a presentation of everything that they've done, practicing research, they compile all the work that they did in those 10 classes. And it is assessed using a mastery learning and grading model. So this first slide in the presentation, so this is all student work. This is one of the sample student presentations. In the first slide, they present what they did in the first two lessons, which covered teaching students how to use the question formulation technique to build research questions, choose topics, brainstorm questions, and identify priority questions and the criteria based on criteria that they created. And then from those questions, they identify their keywords. The next slide. Using the keywords, they then sort these keywords into concepts by like concepts and then expand and explore other ways they might express those concepts so that once they begin researching, they have a lot of alternatives in case they reach any dead ends. Next slide, please. From here, they take the concept chart and develop queries using their Boolean operators. Then they practice just applying three queries to three different databases. And they simply observe the results. How do the results differ? Noting those different source types that come up for each query and database and the numbers. And then from this, they choose what they feel is the best combination between a query and a database or maybe they make up something completely new if none of them worked in order to find their articles. Next slide, please. They have to download and annotate three articles in relation to their research question and then present them in a slide. This is just one of the articles. They have to identify the citation and bibliographic information, summarize the source and explain why or how it connects to their question. This also starts to build digital literacy skills as you can see throughout the presentation learning how to link and share files appropriately. Next slide, please. At this point, the students are a little overwhelmed and stressed which is one of the parts of the information search process is that anxiety. And so we do a found poem to both relieve anxiety, add in some creativity and allow the students to reconnect emotionally to their topics. So this is authentic research. They chose their topics for a reason and this allows them to kind of get back to expressing that in a more personal way. Next slide, please. Finally, we have the reflections. So first the students reflect about what they learned about the topic, but in a way that this is not like this isn't a synthesis project. This is just the start of research and really giving them the idea that research is not just answering a question but discovering new information on which you will probably build further questions and areas of study. And then the 30 seconds left, Lisa. Great. Then the next reflection is about the process. So it's that metacognitive element where they really think about which parts of the process they enjoyed most, which were most challenging and how can they use these skills for future research projects and to build these skills in the future. And all of this is verified through our pre and post test. So you can see great improvement. This was the first unit that we did in the spring of 2028. We replicated it again the next term. And you can see over and over again that we have consistently that improvement in those test scores. Thank you. Janet, you're up next. Thank you so much. I am so happy to be here tonight to join you all. This has been incredible listening to all the wonderful things that teacher librarians do. I happen to be a supervisor of library services. So I have the absolute joy of overseeing our team of teacher librarians. And that was after I spent 13 years as a teacher librarian at one of our local high schools down in Central Unified in Fresno, California. Next slide, please. One of the reasons that I'm so passionate about what we do has been because of the success that we saw with only two of us in the school district. We were so fortunate that we were identified by the California School Board back in 2012. And two of our programs were identified as Golden Bell recipients, which was a huge honor. And I think really made a huge difference for our district recognizing the value of the role of the teacher librarians. One of our programs is called Slammin in your library. And it is now, it's been going since 2005. It's expanded to different schools, which you'll see on the next slide. And it became so popular that it became a yearly event, as well as athletes as readers and leaders, which is a reading program where we take high school students in to read picture books to younger students about the importance of eating right and making good healthy choices regarding exercise. So in 2014, I had the opportunity to move into the district level. And at that point, our district felt strong enough about the work we had been doing to add three more teacher librarians now to our middle schools. So all of our secondary schools at this point had teacher librarians. There is on the slides, my friends, a very extensive list of the things that teacher librarians can do for you, will do for you, and they will make an incredible difference. We are truly the only teachers who are authorized to teach digital literacy and digital citizenship, although we know many others do, but we are credentialed to do so. We have more than 100 student athletes each year now who participate in Athletes, Readers, and Leaders. And that program is also moving into our other high schools. We continue slamming. We do those now at middle schools, and we have more writing as well. All of our teacher librarians at all of our sites do collaborative lessons. They do the makerspaces, including a family maker night. We got involved in Battle of the Books. All of our sites do book clubs. We have teen author and artist publications, book tasting. A new program a couple years ago came out of COVID, where our high school EL students read with kindergartners via Zoom, and it has become incredibly popular. During COVID, it was the students themselves that said we need to connect with these kids. Let us use Zoom for athletes as readers and leaders. And then from that came the Kinder Tech Buddies as well. We also have reading buddies. We work to create safe spaces for our students, not just in the space itself, but in the collection that lives in all of our school libraries. To conclude, I can tell you how we knew we were being successful. When we got ready to open a new high school, one of the first jobs listed was Teacher Librarian. Thank you so much for letting me present tonight. Well, it's been quite a showcase for everyone. And thank you, Ms. Weil, for your summing up from the district level point of view. If any of you want to see many other wonderful, wonderful examples, go to the previous slide, if you would. Again, we just want to remind you that www.alivelibrary.info is a place to listen to many, many other interviews across the nation, from Boston to the West Coast and everywhere in between. There must be at least 20 there. And there's so many great ideas. And so next slide. So we wanted to have you meet some of the educators that prepare these Teacher Librarians for their roles. And I am so happy to introduce you to Dr. Leslie Farmer. Go ahead, Leslie. Thank you, Dr. Lurcher. We're really happy that you folks are here and that you've had the chance to see some great examples of what current California Teacher Librarians are doing to contribute to the achievement of your school students. And now we'd like to share what pre Teacher Librarian programs are doing to prepare already experienced classroom teachers to become highly qualified Teacher Librarians who add value to your school community so that your students will achieve to the extent possible. We are lucky to have faculty from all three of our state accredited Teacher Librarian programs. So we'll just briefly introduce ourselves. Again, I am Dr. Leslie Farmer and I direct the Teacher Librarian program at California State University in Long Beach. And my colleagues. Hi, I'm Dr. Mary Ann Harlan and I am the current Teacher Librarian program director at San Jose State University. And now I am the Master of the program director for Fresno Pacific University. Super. So what we want to do is just, you know, share with you some of the activities, the innovative learning activities that our own free service teachers experience so that they will be prepared in order to really make a difference so that your students will achieve. So we're just going to really cover the state authorized functions that Teacher Librarians do starting with collections. So Katie, you want to start us off? So our students and all Teacher Librarians are constantly working on collection redevelopment. I was like, wait, what's that? So not only do you get your collection figured out for your students right in that moment, the whole windows, mirrors, sliding glass doors, totally what Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop wants us to do. But in a few years, it changes again and again. And like every year you're having to reevaluate, is this still credible? Has the information changed? Have the needs changed? So always looking for that and making sure that collection not only has books that supports content that's being taught across the campus, but also books that students want to read on their own. They have to want to keep reading. That's what's going to help us overcome our literacy hurdle here. Gee, we have the books that are going to get them excited. And yes, that's what's in the collections. And that's what we're working on too with programming and displays to get everyone that walks in like, Oh my gosh, wait, we have books about this? I didn't know. Yeah, that's what we're doing here. I'm putting it in your face sometimes, like literally like I will even have a book like at my desk. Oh, I'll just get this book. Yeah, because like going to the stack sometimes that's too much effort. But you have to like be aware of your students to know what to put on display like that. And I think you bring up a really good point and that is being able to get the material that they really want. And so that's one of our really important things is kind of like, you know, administrating, managing all those resources. I know as our, in our program, and I know all of us do a really good job of kind of helping those teacher librarians produce, you know, databases and, and, you know, library web portals that show how, you know, materials are organized and taking in consideration, you know, what is a culturally responsive organization? How can our students who have disabilities make sure that they can access information, students who are English language learners? So all of that, you know, really is part of that piece to make sure that you would they have systematic, optimum access as convenient as possible to all the materials that we have in so many different formats. So that's absolutely so important, having the collection and having there and having it really use, which brings up a point about collaboration. So Katie, you want to kind of mention about that too? Like, wouldn't it love to have a co-conspirator and deciding awesome staff? Like, I would have loved to have a cheap teacher librarian back in the day, but now I get to be it for other people too. So whatever teachers are thinking like, oh my goodness, I would love to do x, but I just don't have time to figure out, I want to do x, but I'm not quite sure how that would work or I'd really like to do x, but I'd want to see that in practice with students first. Or, you know, I had this really great idea, but I just really need someone to like bat it off before I like unleash it in front of some unforgiving software creature things. Like, yes, all of those things. That's like a big old flashing neon sign that you should reach out to your teacher librarian. They really are the person that will help with all of the things. Like, could you just imagine if every single teacher reached out to the teacher librarian like, cool, there doesn't have to be 50 of me, but yeah, all of the things, really. And I think they're really good. Okay, good. I'm sorry. I was just going to say, I mean, we do really stress the idea of relationships and building those relationships because teacher librarians have the opportunity to see everything that's happening in the school and make connections between other teachers that some may not have the time or may not be, it may not be obvious. So if you're working in a high school, you might be separated by departments where the teacher librarian has the opportunity to see what's happening between the departments and bring those collaborations and those relationships together in the same ways. If you're working in elementary school, you might be able to do that with grade levels. And so we really do kind of emphasize this. This is a thing that all three of our programs lean into quite deeply and all of the people that you heard talking tonight also lean into. I think you've probably heard a number of them say, I collaborate with my teachers in order to achieve X for my students. That collaboration and co-teaching is so, so critical within all of our programs that candidates have to show competency and not just what they can do, but they like want to do it and get excited about it before they can get their credentials. So like, yes, you will be working with willingly, excitedly to like, help kids and students and, sorry, that's a safe, but help students and teachers to be excited about the content they get to deliver. And I think you bring up a really good point. It's like, and how are we going to collaborate? And that's where the piece about, you know, all the different kinds of literacy, information literacy, media literacy, digital literacy. I know you have a lot to say about that, Marianne. Yeah, one of the things that we do really, really stress and focus on is the idea of multiliteracies and, and the ways that literacies and the different type of literacies, literacies and overarching thing, but it's not just about reading, right? It's also about the tools and the technology that you can use. It's about understanding how search and algorithms work. It's about understanding how to find and evaluate information. It's about understanding the ethics around artificial intelligence in ways that, you know, may not be immediately apparent to people, but that librarians are finding themselves needing to constantly and consistently be on top of so that they can teach this. You have a literacy instructional coach in your school librarian. It might not specifically be about reading. It's about all of the other types of literacy that let us live and see in our world and different formats and all of these different types of things. And Katie probably can speak to some of that as well. And hit on one just briefly, but I want to bring that back to the forefront because the literacies continue to grow as our worlds evolve. So the whole concept is that we need to prepare our students for all the literacies of the world they live in. And so right now, yes, I'm spending so much time trying to be on the front end of artificial intelligence literacy. What is it? And that's surface level. We can't stay there and we don't with anything. So not only do we figure out the what so that we can get others to figure out the what. So we're figuring out like, what is it? How do we leverage it? Why is it important? How do I create with it? And then how do I share? So we have that sequence with everything. It's understanding, creation and sharing. And that's what has to happen for true comprehension of the literacies. I think that's a really good point about the whole spectrum of experience. And certainly in terms of technology integration, because that really is like in our wheelhouse that I have this point. I know as an example, our students do digital storytelling actually create an online graphic novel that's about a children's or young adult author. And that, you know, promotes, you know, reading literacy for the kids. And because they model it, then, you know, they're able then to have those kids, you know, the arcade 12, you know, students, then develop their own digital storytelling. And so in the process, you know, they're engaged in reading and research, digital literacy, media literacy, visual literacy, the whole package. And so that whole cross disciplinary idea and cross literacies is really key. And I know you can one more piece with that, too. That's so critical. Because while, yes, all these literacies and the creation and whatnot is fun, we also have to like empower about the misinformation and the difference from that and malinformation and disinformation, be like, wait, what, aren't all those three the same thing? No, they're not. So another reason why the schools need their teacher librarian. And I think you bring up a good point that professional development of the whole school community is certainly part of our piece. And Marianne, I know you're really good at that. Yeah, I just wanted to say I wanted the things that I'm hearing Katie talk about and what Katie has to bring to the table that Leslie and I don't as she's still in the school library. But one of the emphasis is that idea of that you are lifelong learners, you are modeling lifelong learning all of the time, you like, and as a school librarian or sorry, teacher librarian, we emphasize that we emphasize the idea that this is not like you don't end when you leave our program, you have to continue to learn, and you have to continue to share your learning. And we really emphasize the idea of like taking a position that allows you to do professional development, we require our students to try and do a professional development at least bare minimum propose one. And so you are actually getting I said it earlier, but I'm going to reemphasize, you're getting another person on your campus that fills the role of instructional coach or literacy coach, and all of those ways. So they're like kind of, you know, kind of, they can contribute to that. My role when I was a school librarian or teacher librarian, and what I emphasize for my teacher librarian candidates is your role is to support your admin in and building all that that thing and so kind of backing up what they need a lot, as well as supporting your teachers like you're not just supporting your teachers and your students. It's a whole school community. And we want to lean into the idea that we can provide professional development because we are modeling lifelong learning. And that reminds me of when I was a teacher librarian that I would actually help with grantsmanship, you know, for administration and doing some background research for it. I'm sure you've had experiences in doing professional development too, Kitty. Completely. I like to call it backwards personalized PD. So again, when the teacher is like, well, what about Blake or sometimes they don't know what they don't know, like, there's that. So like, okay, can I just go ahead and steal your class? I want to try this concept. So you get to expose them like we talked about, or we didn't talk about it. We were exposed to the concept of breakouts early on by a couple of our different showcase people, but maybe they don't know about that. So you can like invite them in and that's what you're doing. And the teacher gets that like hands on experience real time with their students, their standards, their content, and really just being able to observe a model lesson, see what it looks like and learn all of those things. So another stage of what does that professional development look like? If you're just going into a session, there's like 300 of you listening to the wah wah wah, you know, and then nothing else, that doesn't really work. But if you have these like smaller segments where you can see it happen, and then your teacher librarian, another piece of that is they get to then turn around and watch the teacher do it. And then between both of those, you're still debriefing, having the conversations, what went well, what didn't go so well, even if I'm the one doing the lesson like, okay, what can we have done differently? What could get better? Because like we've talked about, we're still growing in our education and still learning. And if we ever came in, like the teacher librarian knows everything, now we know a lot, we got to go to school again, there's a lot we're always learning. But like, no, we still continue to learn having that relationship is so key. And we're there in the trenches with the teachers, the classroom teachers, to like, okay, what do we need to do for our students? And I think you bring up a really good point to Katie in terms of like, you know, planning with them. And it's not just, you know, the lesson, I should say, but it's the whole, you know, school mission itself and really being strategic with, you know, having data, you know, driven planning. And I'm sure in our program, we do action research. So the students, you know, actually learn how to, you know, the pre service teachers, librarians, learn how to do the critical observations, being able to collect, analyze, you know, data, you know, create action, you know, plans. And Mary, and I'm sure that you've got some experiences on that too with your students, right? Yeah, I mean, we always lean into the idea that you need data to support any type of claim that you're making, whether that's, you know, about how you're supporting reading in your school or how students improve. Dr. Lurcher mentioned earlier how students improve when they have two teachers co teaching a lesson. We are always constantly supporting that idea that you need, you need the data. It can't be just the gut feeling like I think this happened. It actually has to have like kind of the hardcore data and undoing data driven. It's difficult to say this, but doing data driven instruction, which is, you know, it's going to matter in the long run, in terms of policy. Yep. So we really are, you know, part of the whole school community. And in terms of so many different ways that we make a difference. And what is it for? It's because we want to make sure that your students, you know, achieve to the greatest amount, you know, possible. And that your school's mission to that effect can really take place in the library. And quite frankly, we're all over the buildings. And that's what our students expect. And that's what you can expect, you know, from our programs. And with that, I think we will, hopefully, you know, you're excited about it, know that there's, you know, folks out there. And we suggest, get your very best classroom teacher, they're probably the best ones to become teacher librarians. Well, thank you. Thank you, super educators. So we thought we'd wind up this with an interview of an actual person that's actually in a program. And we have Kendra Rose with us this afternoon. And I'm just going to ask her a couple of questions. And Kendra, introduce yourself and your school. Yeah. Hi. Thank you for having me. This has been so amazing and inspiring. I am a teacher librarian at Terralinda High School in San Rafael, California. And how did you get, how did you get from talk about your experience, what you've done across the years? Yeah, I was an English teacher here at the same high school, Terralinda, for 12 years. I taught all different levels of English. And I was, I went to another district for one year, and that district had a teacher librarian at the school that I was at. And I had never heard of a teacher librarian before. I had never been able to work with one. But as an English teacher, working with her was such a great experience. And I knew immediately that that is what I wanted to do. I had been an instructional coach as well for about three years. And I reached out to my old district, my original district, and kind of proposed this idea because they didn't have a librarian or a teacher librarian. And my old principal was really interested and she made it happen and created that position for me. So I transitioned from English teacher and instructional coach into this role of teacher librarian last year. I was able, I was the only one in the district last year, but was able to, I think, make enough of an impact that this year, we actually, our district hired an elementary teacher librarian for the elementary district and another high school librarian for our neighboring high school. So this is very different than being an instructional coach because you're much deeper into all kinds of learning and that sort of thing. So what do you see in the future, your future, as well as being a teacher librarian role change? I actually think that I'm able to do more coaching as a teacher librarian than I ever was as an instructional coach. I think often there was a bit of a barrier between me as a coach and teachers. There's sort of a perception that you're judging or evaluative in some way when you have the title of instructional coach. And as a teacher librarian, I've had like really authentic collaborations with teachers. I'm lucky to be working at a school where I taught so I know the teachers and I have those relationships with them and I'm doing really interesting like co-taught lessons and I'm not just watching them and telling them what they should be doing. I'm doing it with them, modeling and kind of like, you know, in the classroom with them. And I think that that's been so much more effective as far as like actually changing teachers' ideas and practices than I ever could be as a sort of traditional instructional coach. Well that's absolutely wonderful Kendra. We wish you a great career, do exactly what you're doing, keep improving and working and thank you so much for being a great student and like so many others in our programs. And so that ends our program tonight except Dr. Chow I think would like to say good evening to you. I just want to say again thank you so much for joining us. I want to thank all of our speakers and panelists for kind of reaffirming how essential school libraries are. Let's give them all a round of applause for their time and efforts especially Dr. Loitcher for organizing this. You honor us with bringing such expertise to the table. Just want to I guess final thoughts. All children deserve access to high quality reading material and clearly what you heard tonight just reaffirms how essential school libraries are and how much of a core component and driver of innovation and building community that they are for schools and teaching and learning. The reading material access to digital literacy skills, preparing teachers for advanced technology and also digital literacy skills to both enhance teaching and learning and also teaching the needed information literacy and privacy skills that students are going to need to flourish and protect themselves with the onset of AI and virtual mixed and augmented realities. Again I want to thank all the teacher librarians, all the distinguished speakers for sharing their amazing work and expertise and wisdom with us tonight. All slides and recordings will be made available approximately two weeks at the high school website as well as probably David through live as well. Yes everyone everyone will get a notice when the recordings are available and share them with your friends etc and other board members and administrators and we hope you enjoy all of the resources that are available to you on those. Thank you David. I just want to reaffirm those will be fully transcribed as well. That's also part of our commitment to sharing this knowledge and expertise and also I must thank of course our wonderful staff so Alfredo Okintar, Vivian Zuo, Yori Takanaga and Nicole Pervious for all of their work and marketing and support and also Dale David who will be handling the post-production of our YouTube recordings. So please also keep an eye out for the global library 2.0 on school libraries that will be hosting in the fall where many of the speakers tonight will actually have more than three minutes actually 30 minutes worth to share their work and best practices and again all of that will be recorded and transcribed too. So with that being said thanks again for your time, thanks for your community, I'm really excited I'm sure everyone else is as well and I bid you a great good evening.