Week 1 of the Update Road Show:
The Last Chapter
Am taking a break from serious, ponderous entries. Am set on capturing the images of the work TLs do and the beautiful places and spaces they have created for reading and student learning. Send in your photos please.
MK and I on the road delivering the annual round of Update sessions, ironically called The Last Chapter. Am doing the pieces about curriculum and directions for School Library programs, the new Points of Inquiry model hurried to these sessions for response and September implementation, maybe. Will deliver paper on this Inquiry model at the "Treasure Mountain" summit session of the CLA/CASL Conference, with Carol Koechlin and Dr David Loertscher, in Edmonton in June (hopefully not dates that conflict with job interviews). Will be joined on this excursion by Pat from Gladstone and Heather from Coquitlam. News about this forthcoming.
Will be busy applying for jobs ... and wondering how the TOC list might be. Ain't this a shame! Am worrying about news that some secondary school libraries here in Vancouver will have closures for the very first time that anyone can recall. Sorry, Dr Haycock, so so sorry. Where are you when we need you?
(It's May 2010, 9 years since the Haycock Report delivered Strategic Directions for Vancouver school libraries, all of which remain valid for programs and delivery of resources and services and most of which have continued to drive us to best practice and sustainable programs. One "direction" had recommended the creation of the TL consultant position and the School Library Resource Centre Consultative Committee made up of "stakeholders" in our programs, including parents. Not one "direction" intended to see erosion of qualified staffing, services, and resources to school libraries, the only programs in schools that provide direct support for reading and inquiry-based learning to all teachers and students in our schools.
It's ironic that, as technology enables inquiry-based learning, the experts in using resources and inquiry to integrate technology with teaching and learning, both as a tool and a resource, are being cut. This is expedient only in the short-run. No mentor or consultant can be in schools and available for all classes just exactly as teachers and students need the support -- that is, for scaffolding and providing the just-in-time learning we know is associated with becoming tech-savvy -- so well as the school's teacher-librarian who, when given adequate time to do the work, is quite simply only further ahead on the digital immigrant-native continuum for learning about the possibilities that technology enables with learning than most of his or her colleagues. I, like the blogger I have linked, am no fan of the Prensky metaphor that uses the binary opposite construction of digital expertise as immigrant vs native but do like blogger Don's expanded notion of our being shades in between, with roles better described as refugees, explorers, recluses, and so on.
Yes, no more ponderous outpourings. Read on for the joyful aspects of this work called school library.)
What's out there? Take a peek.
Here is our French Immersion stopover.
Great interior design and furnishings.
Above, graciously hosted by Chatelaine TL Elly.
Isn't this annex school library beautiful.
We need to think about the wonderful model for annex TLs and their work that Karen has created here. She is right at the hub of her little school, all things to all classrooms.
We also enjoyed catering from Karen's Kitchen.
The Annex Stop:
Intense Interest as MK delivers the goods.
PS:
Have you signed up? Get your new Inquiry model, Gardening Tips from MK, and inset items to be added to your the brand-new SL Operations Manual.
See the rest of you soon.
PSST:
Read next blog-posts on:
- a hot new video clip of other lively events in the City on Edge. What creative things did your school engage in during The Big One at Two? Start planning your Gotta Keep Reading Event for next year (and if this doesn't make any sense to you, you have fallen behind on the blog readings; see earlier posting about Oprah, the Black-Eyed Peas, and the middle school reading and dance team!)
- Kam at work on the other road show, the one TLs host for tech integration with teaching and learning. Thanks to Bruno, Pat, and Kam for their leadership roles at both TL Studio at Kerrisdale (the last session for this year was to be May 26 but is now cancelled) and at Digitally Yours at Gladstone. For my part, as required, I would do a quick review of blogging and an out-of-the-hat "sandbox" look at blogging for field news and views as well as wiki-building.
- a song I like and a line I like: The High Road may or may not be about education but you have got to love a line like "Come on and get the minimum" when you are looking at such deep cuts to public education as we are experiencing here in BC, cuts that eliminate and/or curtail delivery of programs and services in school libraries, music programs, arts and other elective choices, and special education and counselling.
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