Communication
Communication
Communication is key to a successful library program. Create a plan for communicating with students, staff, parents, and administrators to keep everyone informed of what’s happening in the library. Below are a few ways to get started.
Newsletters: Write a newsletter to keep people informed and provide updates on the library programming. There are a variety of tools available, including smore, Adobe Spark, or even google sites.
Meetings: Schedule regular meetings with your school administrators and don’t be shy about sharing your accomplishments.
Infographics: Create infographics of data to easily share circulation statistics and other information efficiently.
Social Media: Use your school’s preferred social media outlets to communicate about events, activities, and accomplishments.
Advocacy also includes creating awareness statewide of the need for licensed school librarians. AISLE will be undergoing an extensive search by school district to count the number of SL’s in the state. This is a daunting task but crucial to providing a snapshot of the number of certified school librarians teaching our students critical literacy skills in the library.
In 2022 we heard about a BIG problem that Keith Curry Lance has had with the data from Illinois in his latest SLIDE national study. There is either missing or incorrect data about Illinois school librarians that was received and compiled by the ISBE and then forwarded to the NCES (National Center for Educational Statistics) of the Department of Education. There were about 480 school districts in the country that had missing or incorrect data. The problem is that 400 or so are Illinois Schools.
The AISLE Board is aware of this problem and trying to find a way to get the attention of ISBE about the problem and correct the problem in future statistics gathering in Illinois.
RAILS has begun a data collection to update this information and gather the correct numbers. Once we have that, the AISLE Advocacy committee can begin to contact districts and their stakeholders to inquire about WHY their district does not have the proper number of certified school librarians and to share information on the benefits of a certified librarian to students and faculty.