SLANSW Summit - March 2024 - Follow Up

As I mentioned back in April, I prepared a blog entry for the School Library Association of NSW (SLANSW) where I reflected on the day.

SLANSW has now posted the entry to its blog.

Please note that you will need to be a member of SLANSW to access the blog. The membership year will commence soon (1 July), and I would encourage you to join if you are not already a member. 

SLANSW Summit - March 2024

On 16 March, I attended the biannual School Library Association of NSW (SLANSW) Summit at Trinity Grammar School in Summer Hill. The theme was: Piecing it together: Voice, choice and connection and focused on literacy.

I have prepared an article for SLANSW that will appear in its blog. In it, I provide a detailed account of the summit from a member's perspective. This entry in my blog will focus on three strategies or approaches that I can apply what I learnt on the day to my day-to-day professional practice and my school library.

1. In encouraging students to read, I should consider the types of readers that exist such as Avid, Proficient, Struggling and Reluctant readers within the school community and propose how I can accommodate them, especially struggling and reluctant readers. Also, I should consider the types of reading, such as Aesthetic and efferent. What type of reading should I be promoting in the classroom? What type of reading supports reading for pleasure.
2. My school has a READ program where students read for twenty minutes a day, four times a week. I believe that student input in how the program is run will be key to its future success and effectiveness in improving student reading (and ultimately) academic results. Given the successful approach of including students in the success of the Just Read Program at Queenwood, I'll need to advocate for student input.
3. I concede that my school library has other pressing challenges that need to be prioritised at present, but I would like to eventually move towards greater curation of resources within the library collections and working with teachers across the faculties to make this happen. In past years at previous schools, I have attempted a library newsletter as a means of communicating with staff, which has its merits, especially with limited time to undertake such a venture, but it becomes a diary of record relating to the library in itself. I would like to challenge myself to also provide library presentations in the event of any professional learning days that comprise concurrent workshops that are delivered by staff.

Is your library collection really ageing?

As a member of the Management Committee for the School Library Association of NSW (SLANSW), I wrote a feature for their blog on determining the average age of books in your library collection.

Being a members-only article, I will not post it here in its entirety, but I will provide you with a link to the Awful Library Books Blog if you want to read up about the process, as it was a source that informed me in preparation of the article

I have found it useful as a starting block to weed books, especially if there are a lot of books to weed. It means that books that are not as old face the chopping block first.

Representation Matters: Embracing Diversity and Inclusion - SLANSW Summit

The School Library Association of NSW (SLANSW) held the first of its biannual summits for 2022 which was provided online on Saturday.

The focus was on embracing diversity and inclusion and attending on Saturday was a must given that in a secondary setting, students are indicating a preference for literature that reflects the world around them.

Two items stood out on Saturday

Firstly, I enjoyed listing to keynote speaker - Will Kostakis (Author), who provided a wonderful overview of his writing career, and the challenges that he has faced in writing literature as his novels such as The First Third and Sidekicks have been inspired by his experience growing up as gay. He had been told that he had to "de gay" the storyline for The First Third. I have read both of those titles and are very well written.

Secondly, Pooja Mathur (Teacher Librarian, The Kings School & ) presented a workshop that helped us to identify suitable literature that can be representative of all students within your school including authors. In our resource acquistion, we had to consider the impact the story may have on the reader and if it improves our understanding of an issue. Also how can we classify it. "Relationships" was recommended. Promotion of literature that is from the "Relationships" genre is straightforward and can be easily applied in my practice.

One matter raised during the day was the amount of censorship or concerns that have been raised about books and how they may "misrepresent" certain groups or issues in society.  Even great and bestseller books have been listed as doing so, even though the intention is to provide an insight into their world but also help society understand their needs and issues in a positive way. I would not be surprised if these concerns are being raised more by the "politically correct" or "woke" groups in our society in terms of outing the faults in books, and not realising the debate and discussion and positive change that has stemmed from the publication of the book.

I am currently a Metropolitan Representative on the School Library Association of NSW Management Committee.

Recommending Books to Students

Last Tuesday, I attended a webinar faciliated by SLANSW focusing on recommending books to students and it was encouraging to listen to see how other teacher-librarians support students in recommending books.

One teacher librarian who works in a secondary Catholic College near Newcastle shared how she is using reading ambassadors to encourage students to read. She has asked 10 students who are passionate readers to be part of her initative. The students have an opportunity to read new books before they are available for students to borrow along with them being allocated to a specific Year 7 English class. 

They also share with other students their favourite books, genres and what they currently read along with their personal recommendations.

I thought the approach was excellent because I have believed strongly that students are more effective at recommending books to their peers than teachers. While as teachers, we may know our students well and their preferences, students like to do other students do. With reading, students are more likely to read if other students read.

It could be something that I would like to do down the track with a group of students because I think it could yield rewards long term.

I was also introduced to the 'book bots' which have been introduced in a number of primary schools. I am hoping they will become available in secondary schools because I think it will simplify the process of choosing a book from the library collection and has proven to engage even the most reluctant readers in reading. I do have a link which explains how a 'book bot' works.