Current Status:

• Our librarian:

  • Maintains active membership and participation in several state-wide and international library & information-literacy focused organizations and networks to maintain consistent personalized professional learning.

    • Networks/organizations include: WEMTA (Wisconsin Educational Media Technology Association), LM_Net, ISTE, WI DPI School Libraries PLC (Professional Learning Community).

• Our libraries:

  • Provide current professional development materials to staff through books, articles, online resources, video tutorials.

  • Individual work with staff to promote new resource and technology use and integration into classrooms to enhance student learning outcomes.

Current Status:

• Our district is very fortunate to have implemented a 1:1 device program for all students in grades K-12, beginning with the 2020-2021 academic year. JK students have access to devices within their classrooms.

• Provide content filtering and 24/7 monitoring with alerts sent to IT staff and administrators, & teachers for all district-owned devices.

• Library staff provide IT assistance with troubleshooting & repair of student and staff devices.

Next Steps:

• Investigate potential sustainable funding models for the purchase of new 1:1 devices to replace aging or obsolete equipment.

• Ensure equitable access to devices & resources outside of the school day and outside district buildings for all students.

• Academic resource creation for students to easily access content on-demand, 24/7.

Current Status:

• Continue to promote use of OER (Open Educational Resources) and other high-quality research databases, such as the DPI-provided Badgerlink subscription resources.

• Careful & deliberate curation of print and digital resources to ensure diverse, high-quality library collections.

  • Strive to achieve a more diverse collection of high-quality materials that actively, fairly, and accurately potrays BIPOC, LGBTQIA, and people of all backgrounds by actively seeking opportunities to grow the collections in these areas.

• Gradually increase the number of digital resource subscriptions provided in order to enable 24/7, on-demand access to reliable, trustworthy information.

• Current curricular initiatives along with the needs of students & staff drive the focus of library collection development.

• Resources selected for inclusion in the library collections based upon long-range library plan and the learning goals of the district.

• The majority of the library department's budget consists of monies received through the state's Common School Fund.

Current Status:

• The Howards Grove community is very supportive of the school district in general, and always supports library programs and initiatives to a high degree.

• Books & Breakfast, held four times a year before school in the Northview Elementary Library for adult caregivers and students, remains a popular program. Average attendance at this program is generally 150-200, but has seen over 250 attendees.

  • The Howards Grove PTO has been one of the biggest supporters, providing both volunteers and monetary donations, to the program since its beginning.

• The DIY Tiger Den (Middle School Makerspace) was outfitted with supplies and equipment entirely by the Howards Grove community and would not exist without community support and donations.

• In May 2020, the DIY Tiger Den was the recipient of a Kohler Foundation Grant.

• An annual Middle School Book Swap, average attendance between 50-100 students & parents/community members, provides an opportunity for participants to receive new reading materials at no cost to them.

  • The Howards Grove PTO provides monetary support for this initiative on an annual basis.

Next Steps:

• Cultivate new relationships & leverage exisiting relationships with local businesses & community members to provide ongoing support for Northview's Books & Breakfast, the Middle School Book Swap and the DIY Tiger Den. This support may be donations of food & materials or monetary in nature.

• Solicit volunteers (staff, retired teachers & community members, etc.) to offer programming for students in the Middle School Library's DIY Tiger Den (in a post-COVID-19 environment).

• Continue to seek out local grant opportunities that will enhance learning opportunities for students and develop long-lasting relationships with the foundations and community members supporting these grants.

• Maintain exisiting positive relationships with community members and the Howards Grove PTO and seek out additional opportunities to grow these relationships further.

Current Status:

• Students in 1st-5th grade are instructed in basics of digital citizenship.

  • Digital citizenship curriculum covered includes:

    • Responsible & ethical use of technology

    • Personal responsibility in the digital world

      • Keeping personal, identifiable information private

    • Navigating safely online

• Continue unpacking & implementation of WI ITL (Information & Technology Literacy) Standards and AASL (American Association of School Librarians) Standards for the 21st Century Learner with students PK-12.

• Ongoing work with IT department to ensure:

  • Student devices & data are secure

  • Students & staff adhere to district network responsible use and acceptable use policies

  • Staff possess tools & training necessary to adhere to privacy best practices, copyright & fair use guidelines, and to provide students instruction on basic tenets of privacy.

Current Status:

• Library staff collaborate with teachers daily to promote use of library materials and ensure library lessons tie into grade level and content area curricula.

• Our librarian meets & communicates with other area school/district librarians regularly.

Current Status:

• Space:

  • High School Library:

    • Redesigned as a Learning Commons during the 2016-2017 academic year.

    • The library includes flexible seating & work areas and plenty of space for students to work collaboratively or solo.

    • The library is a bright, inviting space available for students to use throughout the day.

  • Middle School Library:

    • Physical layout, furniture, and fixtures rearranged to provide students ample work space.

      • Tables, chairs, comfortable seating, and shelving fixtures from the High School Library replaced furniture and fixtures original to the building's construction in the 1960s.

    • Extensive culling of the fiction section of the library collection conducted in Fall 2020, providing more room for additional resources to be added to the collection and ensuring the exisiting collection may be accessed more easily.

    • The DIY Tiger Den has been a welcome addition to the library space & utilizes shelving and storage once used for the library's AV materials and reference section collections.

  • Northview Elementary Library:

    • The majority of the furniture & fixtures in the elementary library space are aged and outdated. They are not conducive to a 21st century learning environment and do not allow for flexible use of the library space.

    • Students enjoy using the 12 wobble stools incorporated into the library space in 2016.

    • The large screen Newline interactive panel used in the library for instructional purposes has enhanced the efficacy of our library lessons, allowing for more interactivity and on-demand learning.

• Time:

  • The librarian splits her time between the district's three libraries. She spends approximately 2.5 days each week at Northview Elementary, teaching lessons to students in grades 2-4. The remaining 2.5 days are divided between the Middle and High School libraries, assisting students & staff and performing administrative library tasks (collection development, budgetary work, professional development, etc.).

  • A full-time library assistant staffs each library: providing research assistance, shelving, cataloging, supervision of students, and instruction.

Next Steps:

• Investigate, plan, and implement possible updates and/or a re-design of both the elementary school and middle school libraries to make the spaces 21^st century-learner friendly.

  • Provide furniture & shelving fixtures that move easily and allow students to collaborate and explore.

  • Give students multiple flexible seating options, including countertop-height tables and cafe stools as well as lounge furniture to promote meditation and mindfulness practices.

  • Incorporate more STEAM activities and equipment in the middle school DIY Tiger Den.

  • Collaborate with other school/district librarians regularly to obtain new ideas for creating/maintaining 21^st century learning commons spaces.

Current Status:

• The library curriculum for grades JK-5th grade teaches information literacy, digital citizenship, and technology literacy.

  • Information literacy focuses on teaching students independent use of the library to retrieve desired items as well as online information retrieval for a variety of purposes.

  • Digital citizenship centers around the ethical and responsible use and creation of materials, in addition to the treatment of others, in digital/virtual environments.

  • Students learn about technology literacy through exploration of various devices and programs available to them for learning purposes.

• Google Classroom and Google Apps for Education are used district-wide as teaching and outreach tools to instruct students and disseminate relevant library resources and information to students. The library uses Google Classroom to share resources and provide research assistance to students, as well as to cover curriculum.

Next Steps:

• Continue work to unpack & implement the WI Information & Technology Literacy (ITL) Standards district-wide.

  • Work with staff district-wide to determine which WI ITL Standards are currently being met and develop a plan to incorporate those standards not being addressed into existing curriculum.

  • Outreach and collaboration with grade level and subject-specific teachers to increase the number of information literacy skills lessons taught on the middle and high school levels.

• Create & implement new digital citizenship lessons for Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grades.

• Continually revise library skills curriculum (kindergarten through fifth grade) with an increasingly technology-centric focus in mind.

  • Utilize resources available through Future Ready Schools, ISTE, WISELearn, WEMTA and others as models for curriculum revision & improvements.

  • Investigate both free and paid digital citizenship curriculum programs (ie. Creative Common’s Digital Compass/Digital Passport) to pilot & integrate into existing curriculum