Empowering school support staff in the school library

It was an enjoyable and informative morning for school support staff / library teams at the workshop last Friday in the lovely library at Kaikohe East School - thanks Elaine, Lorene and Chicky for your hospitality.

Congratulations to our two newest presenters on the block – Liz Christensen from Ohaeawai School and Jenny Puckey from Kaitaia Primary School, and thanks to their schools for giving them the time to share their expertise and enthusiasm with others.  

 
Karlene and Amy at morning tea time, with Colleen from Dargaville catching up with  Lisa Salter on the right.

National Library session 

The focus was on making the most of the school library and making the most of limited time in the library, and an opportunity to think about the library in new and interesting ways.  I shared the resource from Core Ed, based on David Thornburg's article, talking about learning spaces as campfires, watering holes, caves, mountain tops and sandpits - how do / could our libraries create those sorts of spaces and activities?

We also talked about the National Library Services to Schools website http://schools.natlib.govt.nz and spent a bit of time identifiying priorities for the rest of this term / next term for the library. I touched on ways we can extend our personal learning networks, strengthen collaborations in the school and be strategic about those limited hours in the library to make the most impact on student learning outcomes.

 
 Liz (in black) talking to Jo at morning tea time. Kathryn and Delwyn in the background.

Here are some brief notes I took from Liz’s session :

• library wonderwall – place to ask questions and create curiosity
  Wonderopolis http://wonderopolis.org/ is a useful site for interesting questions for children
• withdrawn picture book pages turned into bunting
• series bins with labels – laminated, stuck on with Velcro dots
• reading dogs in the library
• pop up tent
• language / signage around the library
• photos of children reading
• forest – bird song CD from National Library
• student library monitors – in pairs, day a week, photos, party
• hours in the library
• overdues / lost books – working them off
• parents helping with book covering
• rug
• buying books
• library lessons with the visiting classes
• displays
• reading posters
• children’s faces everywhere
• owls – library skills
• Carrot search
• Book talking – guidelines for children
• Story reading every visit
• Book care
• Pick a just right book guides
• Books about school activities
• Special books – pop-ups etc
• Plastic bags for book care
• Swap a book – Duffy
• Book display – children holding book cover
• Games and puzzles
• Dewey signs
• School inquiry model
• Big displays, eg space, rainbow fish, Maui, plant a seed – read
• Arthur’s Emporium – fabric "picnic table cloth" doesn't fray $2 a metre
• Holiday reading – promoting summer reading, sharing reading at the start of the new year – reading role models

Jenny, presenting, with "Wally" avidly listening (It was Kaikohe East book character dress up day!)

 and here some brief notes from Jenny’s session :

Tour of library – photos

• Quotes from children
• Soft toys
• Helpful guides for choosing books
• Guides for how books are shelved
• Book week activities
• Work room organisation - labelled bins for each stage of the process

 New books – processing, Z39.50, barcodes, spine labels, covering, dust jackets

Highly recommend Book Protection Products

• Useful website, also print catalogue
• Very quick and reliable service 
• Good range of products, labels etc
• AND they sponsor SLANZA – deserve our support

Quick way to take off GST from price of book : multiply the price by 20 and then divide by 23 – that will give you the price less GST.

Covering – well worth it – cost of covering a paper back fiction book is about 27 cents per book worth of Duraseal… plus gutter tape, labels, and time, but still well worth it.

School stamps – inside front and back cover of book – also puts on cataloguing page with date of purchase for handy reference, and if picture books have “This book belongs to…” Jenny puts the school stamp there too - otherwise children do!

Jenny also described how she had has a lot of fun with children doing a version of Reading Bingo – based on the resource from Random House but creating her own headings to make it easier for the children.  They write the name and title of the book for each category on the back of the “bingo chart”.

http://www.retreatbyrandomhouse.ca/2014/01/reading-bingo-challenge-2014/

 

Kind regards, Jeannie 

Colleen and Lisa, Zoe and Leeanne, Ora, Joy and Waana  

Adrienne Hannan summary

In the second weekend of March, 2014, SLANZA Te Tai Tokerau successfully hosted the resourceful, multi-talented, high-achieving, Adrienne Hannan from Wellington. 

Adrienne Hannan is the Children's and Youth Services Co-ordinator at Wellington City Libraries as well as a combat medic in the New Zealand Army Reserve. Being a soldier has given Adrienne useful skills and knowledge, particularly flexible thinking. Her talk was a meshing of the two environments she works in. 

Adrienne called her presentation The 10 Commandments of Manoeuvre Warfare, claiming that they are essentially a set of commandments that will enable librarians to achieve success. As the decision makers that our students / community see daily, the librarians need all the information on the running of the library - what the library is trying to achieve, what resources they have and how and when to use them, the history and reasoning of high-level decisions that have been made. This sets the librarian up to make sound strategic decisions without the unnecessary delays of gaining permissions from authority; they can implement the library's objectives and mission, be adaptive, responsive and take initiatives.

Twenty-one people from Northland attended the session to see what librarians can learn from the New Zealand military in the 21st Century. It was an entertaining and engaging presentation, and indeed, the military do have valuable lessons for librarians.

Adrienne Hannan's 10 Commandments of Manoeuvre Warfare:

Focus on the enemy, not on the ground 

·         ground = environment, enemy = students, the flexible element

·         must have policies and practices that are student focused rather than on the environment

·         need to be adaptive and responsive to students, flexible to change as students change

Act more quickly than your enemy can react 

·       be quick to grab initiatives

·         need to keep up to date

·         be an early adopter, adapter, initialiser

·         don't wait for the students' demands to reach a certain level before implementing a new service, policy or platform

Issue mission-type orders 

·         big picture mission, we are doing this in order to achieve this

·         what is our intent, what is our end state, how do we work to get there

·         specifics of people, resources, timeframes

·         communication is key

 Avoid strengths, attack weakness 

·         identify weaknesses honestly, find the gaps in your services

·         concentrate resources on strengthening those areas, fill the gaps

·         work with the ones who will support you

Exploit tactical opportunities, reinforce success, not failure

·         "success should be seen as a culture, not the result of a task"

·         need to create and celebrate successes no matter how small

·         slowly build up a culture of success (Major Slim) 

·         recognise relative successes of different people, who are your pln 

Always designate the main effort 

·        key push to achieve the mission

·         define the school library's mission

·         clearly defined roles of who is part of main effort and who is supporting it

·         strategic planning

Avoid predictability

·         don't let students get bored as they may well stop using the library

·         capture their attention by doing things they won’t expect

·         show you are a mover and shaker of library world

·         change perceptions, be flexible

Support movement with fire 

·         adequate resources for the mission 

·         coordinated mission with those that are moving forward - evidence based practice

·         back each other up and support each other in a co-ordinated way

Command from the front 

·         management is task and object focused

·         leadership is about setting standards, initiatives, influence, visibility

·         emphasis on leadership rather than management

Act boldly and decisively 

·         create environment that people make decisions

·         praise decision-makers

·         be flexible, change tack if it doesn't work 

·         take risks on board, try them anyway, 

·         reinforce success - specific praise

·         be essential, proactive

We finished the session with group discussions on how we may exploit tactical opportunities to reinforce success in our libraries.

Guest Speaker Adrienne Hannan - The Strategic Librarian