Back-Blogging: What Happened to ME?

I'm back, with a need to be attended to. I've been "offline" for more than a month. My little counter suggests a few of you continued to check weekly for new postings about the world of school libraries here in Vancouver which was encouraging, but it hadn't been enough to shake me out of the silent mode.


In truth, a rather dramatic fall UP a flight of steel-edged stairs at the District Technology Day on February 15 initially shocked me into slowing down; that, and a sinking sense of what was to come when we got word that 800 of our youngest teachers, a constant source of the energy that propels our system, a good number of whom are working in our elementary school libraries, were given notice of the school district's need to serve layoff notice. Amidst physio and medical appointments and the Olympic fascination and Spring Break and my role as a facilitator with two Teacher Inquiries and SLRCCC (our district's School Library Resource Centre Consultative Committee) and the backlog of other work now overwhelming me ... the blog was set aside.

But the pervasive sense of pending disaster and the rising of the levels of outrage could not be choked down or set aside ... we are now a system so pared to the bone that we have been forced into acts of cannibalism in the apparent goal of educating the young of British Columbia. But I am not fooled and I don't think the average citizen is either.

From silence I am resoundingly back up and ranting. I apologize for going offline and am now compelled to get caught up; let's call that back-blogging! It's blog or cry. You see, in addition to news of the plans for real and drastic system-wide cuts of over $18 m, cuts that would include more than 100 teaching FTEs and 43 non-enrolling FTEs, these latter to include TLs, SPED, ESL, and Counselling jobs, I heard that my job here at the Education Centre, at the heart of All Things Once Bright and Beautiful, is one of those slated to be gone for the next school year. I better write things down now while I am still in "the big chair" and have time on my weekend and you might still have time to be listening.

Thanks, seasoned educator/writer Crawford Kilian, the young and bright communications guy Rich Overgaard at the BCTF, and my so-smart Coquitlam counterpart Heather Daly, also president of the BCTLA, for being amongst the first to respond publicly in The Tyee to the implications for our school libraries. The BCTLA's annual joyful celebration of National School Library Day, accompanied by its Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) campaign, appears destined in 2010 to be Black Day for BC's school libraries. Perhaps we will drop everything to read and remember school libraries as they were, ponder what they might have been.

Perhaps we can join forces with protesting citizens and educators in California, a political jurisdiction which has floundered in dire straits since cutting its own heart out, including its school library programs! You want to see plumetting literacy scores? Check the California rankings! Why, I have asked repeatedly, since being exposed to the notions of John Ralston Saul and Andy Hargreaves, have we always followed blindly such "imported" models -- and crises -- as California's?

You see, Vancouver is being forced to make choices to cut its school library staffing and programs. These are the places in all our schools that provide something for every child: a safe place for the shy or quiet ones, particularly important in a busy and sometimes overwhelming school learning environment; resource-based, technology-rich student inquiry learning opportunities; and books as the foundation for building a lifelong love of reading. TLs are pretty close to offering the kinds of learning opportunities that most closely correspond to any definition of what it means to support 21st Century learning.

School library programs and other areas slated for cuts are utterly determined by the language of Bill 33 that effectively put ratios in place for the size and composition of regular classrooms even as it removed, and continues to fail to provide, ratios that ensure additional "cost" line items in a district budget and a child's balanced education are protected.

In fact, it is the removal of the protection of the ratios that had been assigned contractually for non-enrolling programs and educators, amongst the first acts of the BC Liberal government upon being elected, that is most disturbing. Touting goals of "flexibility" and choice, in fact, ironically, what this provincial government has effectively done is ensure there is flexibility and choice for administrators making decisions about timetabling (read "stuffing") the maximum number of students for cost efficiency into one room even as it systematically removed flexibility and choice for student learning.

Education is a cost item. While it must be cost-effective and districts are to be expected to be striving for cost-efficiencies, no system of education is cost-neutral and no educated citizenry in a developed, economically post-industrial country expects not to pay dearly for it. Programs that provide value-added education for young Vancouverites, items such as the district elementary strings program, music and art electives, as well as much-needed support for special needs, emotionally fragile, or ESL students, and more -- including school libraries -- represent long-term "investments" in the economic and social future of the province. These "unprotected" aspects of BC's public education system, along with the care and support of parents, programs offered by public libraries, sound vision, management, and oversight of schools by trustees and district staff, and the solid work of classroom teachers in our education system, have been a long-term investment in the young of BC. These are the very pillars on which BC's world-class education system acquired its status as the most literate jurisdiction in North America BEFORE Mr Campbell called for that.

These cuts represent extreme short-sightedness, perhaps an eye to the next provincial election and no further. Please don't be fooled. Even as these cuts are made to the kind of learning experiences our children in public education can have, the children in private schools whose costs are funded up to 50% by the public purse, are experiencing no such losses to their capacity to offer full, enriched, and balanced programs with all needed supports to ensure student success.

Consider SD#39 Vancouver's plight to be similar to the role of the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Something is not right in the Paradise we have loved and believed in, that we celebrated so joyously just over a month ago, knowing even then that the party would be shortlived for the youngest citizens of the province of BC and for the young who work to educate them in the public system.

Thank you, Mr Vaughn Palmer, for the note in your recent column (see next blog entry) that makes me wonder how many FTEs remain in the Ministry of Education, compared to FTEs assigned in the past, assigned to other Ministries here in BC, and assigned by other provincial governments to Ministries of Education across Canada, as that would certainly be, as Palmer so adeptly points out, a good measure of the value and priority this government places on the investment of services to educate the young citizens of British Columbia. Please confirm rumours heard here in the field that we here in BC have the smallest Ministry of Education we have ever had and the smallest in Canada. And please, media ferretters of political thinking or lack of it, continue to seek out and make the case that "gravely neglecting" to invest in the well-balanced education of the young of the province is as clear a path to long-term economic and social disaster as would be failing to invest in ways to protect our other resources like water and ways of providing food and work. Casinos, games, stadium roofs, and deals that benefit a few may not fool us much longer.

I am off to a rally at the VAG. It's a simple act of protest on a sunny day here in the chilly Spring of a Paradise Seemingly Lost. It's all I can do to assuage the sense of powerlessness and futility as I ponder my route through the years of passionate commitment to education that feel as though they have amounted to very little. Yes, it's possible to descend into the bleakest of thinking here in the city on edge at the edge on the inside of public education. Just when I think I might have to fall up a staircase and render myself senseless to survive the next few months, I remember, all is not yet lost ... it's simply not over yet. Yes, I'm off to rally for public education. Perhaps we need a massive bake sale or reinfusion of casino grants to better fund the educational options for our children. My goodness, what is really certain is that our choices and flexibility as citizens are narrowed to only the most extreme measures of joined voices and public outcry. Will I be seeing you at the Rally at noon today? I think it's now or never. The times, they are a-changing!

PS: Be sure to check out Vaughn Palmer's column below. And even as I have posted this and checked it over, I see the entry for February 4 warns me to "think B4 U Post" ... I may think again about this blog entry but for now it's posted for all to read the pain -- ponder how to take action now!

News From IASL Conference in Berkeley

Blogging IASL: Impossible

... Until Now, Given the Pace of the 8 days

Oh my! Say that very long and ever so softly with awe in your voice -- that's what they say, apparently, down South when what they mean is, ohmygawd, can you believe it! There cannot possibly be another thing to say about school libraries. I have so much to relay that I will have to do it in installments.

Day 1 of my trip to the "Lambeth for School Libraries" was long; it included two cab rides, a two-hour bus ride across the border, a less than two-hour flight from Bellingham, the airport transporter, BART with transfer, and finally an unexpected late evening 1.5 mile downhill hike from the Clark Kerr Conference Centre to the student dining hall for dinner. I had made it just by 6 pm in time for the first scheduled dinner only to find there was no dinner. Yes, there was some kind of glitch with food services for the first few days so meals -- including breakfast and coffee -- until Sunday would involve this downhill/uphill walk.

(If you want a much cheaper way to go to some American destinations, by the way, be sure to check out Allegiant Air -- and the Quick Shuttle for $25 takes you right to Bellingham Airport. Thanks for this tip, Meredyth!)


Humour -- and a sense that I was here for a reason not yet clear to me -- was going to be my salvation as I hiked downhill that late Friday only to find that the early arrivals had moved on, opting instead for something a little more upscale than the student dining hall... but as with everything this trip, I wandered off onto Telegraph Street and found them after several blocks and one corner quite by serendipity -- one man (James Henri himself) and six women stood out as different from other restaurants I perused from the street! We sauntered back, well fed and too tired to notice the terribly spartan conditions of student housing. I was alone in a huge suite in a section where no others had been boarded, seemingly with no roommate ...

Day 2 began officially after the morning hike for breakfast and coffee; 70 of us boarded a bus boarded a bus bound for the upper regions of the Napa Valley. No commercial winery tour for this group! I rode up with Ray Doiron whom I had taken my first TL course with, Marlene, as well as Diane Oberg and Jennifer Branch (now I could put faces to the names I had cited so frequently), and my new friends, Barbara McNeil, a hot new name in Canadian school libraries from the University of Regina, and Patricia Carmichael, library ambassador of extremely good humour, from Toowoomba in Queensland.

The track into the hills got narrower and narrower. There were places where I thought the headlines the next day might read, "Busload of tourists topple in bus off the mountains of the Upper Napa," but our driver was amazing, delivering us in fine form to the private O'Shaughnessy Winery on a road not even on the maps. Atop the mountain we found a fabulous Spanish style building with many patios and Blanche Woolls, with family, set to host our tour of the winery and lunch. Turns out this winery belongs to Blanche's son and his wife and is not often open for groups -- this was a very special event indeed.

Needless to say, the winery was amazing ... and so was the lunch. I ate with a lovely group from around the world in the formal dining room located in mountain tunnel where the barrels were stored, right next to the wine library (yes, that's where they store the special collection!) ... these wines were sold only to fine dining establishments and to collectors. And they were served liberally so I can assure you, despite the chilled air of the tunnel, they warmed our spirits which were already delighted with the day.




The food was also fantastic ... steak, green salad, potato salad made with olives, artisan breads, pastries... with views of the hills, vineyards, lavendar, and courtyard fountain ... and everywhere beautiful and tasteful art. Oh my!

The bus tour resumed, descended the precipitous mountain track ... but this trip seemed shorter and hotter returning than going!

Our next stop was for tea and the tour of the Bessie Chin School Library at Redwood High School in Larkspur, Marin County, just north of the Golden Gate, TL Thomas Kaun hosting, with cold drinks, iced tea and goodies. The space was spectacular, large with lots of visibility and lots of corners for reading or for assistants to work with students; floor-to-ceiling windows opened onto a lovely courtyard; student art identified the topics of Dewey and captured the essence of important authors, including Margaret Atwood.

Rumours of the demise of school libraries in California are exaggerated ... but not all counties fund libraries as substantially as this one with its collection of over 33 000 titles and over 100 magazines. Check here for more information about staffing, services, and technology and for pictures.

We were back in time to hike down for a late-ish dinner! Those of us lucky enough to go on the Napa Valley excursion decide that what they say about trips to Vegas should go for Napa; the late arrivals and the IASL Executive who attended meetings instead were clearly better off not knowing what a wonderful day they had missed.

Day 3 of the IASL Conference:
Sunday Preconference Sessions and Welcome Reception/Awards Dinner

School library research "giant" David Loertscher and California TL/PhD student Doug Achterman have considered whether or not Teacher-librarians can compete with Google and argue that indeed we can.

Two models for doing business are worthy of consideration in the educational context. The Microsoft model would suggest, "If we build it, they will come." Conversely, the Google model is grounded on the notion, "If they build it, they will use it." The first model centres on the organization itself with skills that are specific to the program while the other is client-centred and inquiry-based, requiring skills for lifelong learning.

School libraries are presently based, Loertscher and Achterman contend, on the same principles as the Microsoft model of controlled learning but need to move to become places where educators and students build their own learning spaces and take responsibility for learning there, the Google model. "It is time to reinvent so that everyone wins." We would begin by having everyone create an iGoogle page!

Loertscher and Achterman presented the concept of the school library as the new "learning commons," a place that belongs to everyone and no one, that is overseen by the TL and that is the hub of the learning community. Other school specialists work there in partnerships that move good ideas to classrooms, showcase best practice, and facilitate the use of new instructional strategies. In this new learning community, the focus is on the users' needs and wants and would see flexible scheduling, just-in-time teaching, learning to learn with content, and books kids want to read.

The New Learning Commons: Where Learners Win (2008, Salt Lake City, UT: Hi Willow), co-authored by David Loertscher and Toronto educators Carol Koechlin and Sandi Zwaan, further develops the model of the school library as learning commons. It's hot off the press and worth the investment. Five lucky TLs will get a copy in September.

So with my first session, I am already challenged to reconceptualize our school libraries as the learning commons. We are, in fact, behind the local universities where just such changes have been implemented. Excuse my big-picture thinking and perhaps heretical considerations, but could we possibly be more than we are already? Could we be more available (virtual) and accessible? Could we work collaboratively with special educators, classroom teachers, administrators, counsellors, and online learning to offer better ways to support students developing as independent learners? Do we allow students to undertake independent learning? Already I am pale and feeling the heat. Like a frail southern "magnolia," I found myself whispering, Oh my!

In the afternoon, this awe-struck conference "newbie" met Debbie Abilock (she of Noodletools, spyder, and Knowledge Quest fame) and California TL Marilyn Kimura. Their session, "Seeding the Oyster: Leadership Through Dialogue," builds in discussion as an advocacy tool that enhances the creation of learning communities that support literacy and collaboration. "As you learn discussion, reflection, and facilitation skills, you will see how nurturing inquiry and intellectual dispositions can see your leadership in the school community," they promised. Discussion group formats such as the Socratic seminar, the Literary Club, and professional book clubs -- aided by picture books and wikki stix -- gave us ample opportunity during the three-hour session to hone our leadership-through-dialogue skills. Much of what we did reinforced the kinds of things we have talked about with Lit Circles, by the way. For more information about The Literacies,these and other strategies, check out the many ideas and links on Debbie's Noodletools Literacies page.

I am thankful too for meeting the IASL Research Award winner Dr Marcia Mardis who had purchased a coffee pot which she shared as the afternoon proved challenging to those who had been up since 6 am and who weren't used to hiking for their coffee. Have I mentioned my addiction before? Yay for Marcia!

Of great significance for Canadian Teacher-librarians was the new Award given at the Sunday evening dinner to Ray Doiron and Marlene Asselin for their work in the area of Technology Innovation with the creation of a ning called iBrary. Check out the members of the ning -- you do know some of them -- just don't ask me what one is! Picture shows Ray accepting the award, Marlene and James Henri, presenter, looking on ... I am not in this picture! We newbies tended to sit further back ... "hatching" new ideas like Gigglewiki and calls to Oprah.


Here's what Marlene's PhD student and Prime Minister's Award-winning teacher Maryam Moayeri had to say on hearing about the award:

Congrats to Ray & Marlene
Congratulations to Marlene & Ray on receiving the inaugural International Association of School Librarianship Technology Innovation Award for their development of iBrary. How cool that we all had a part in it by providing the content through our blog entries, comments, videos, and photos. Yay for 2.0! Double yay for Marlene & Ray. The award will be presented in Berkeley in August and I am thrilled I will be there to see you receive it.

Too exhausted to think about the lack of comfort in my accommodations, although I briefly debated how to get some air into the overly-warm ground-level room, I wedged a chair against the door and fell soundly asleep. I awoke at 3:30 am to discover the chair had been moved ... and someone was apparently in the other room. Then I discovered I would have a roommate as out of the room came a person ... Irenya Kryzanauskiene from Lithuania, rumoured to have faced countless obstacles, including a flight cancelled in Germany and further delays in LA, had finally arrived. My little trip paled beside her journey to tell the story of a struggle for recognition of the importance of school library programs and professional qualifications where school librarians are mostly not teachers. My admiration for her courage and tenacity would grow over the next days. Every night, Irenya and her translator worked together practicing her pronunciations and presentation until well after midnight to prepare her to deliver her paper in English.

While discovering I had a roommate was something of a shock, little was going to keep me from resting ... it was, after all, Stephen Krashen in the morning. Fortunately, for the first time, I wasn't going to have to hike for that essential cup of coffee!