Initiatives, Projects, and Events

Interactive Book Displays

To promote a culture of reading for pleasure, creative expression, and honoring student voices and experiences in the library, I will collaborate with students to create monthly interactive book displays. The Reflections project I developed with my RU 548 classmate Jackie Galton illustrates the basic format. Each month, I will choose a book and create an art prompt based on it for students to respond to. Students will also be invited to share their reviews of the book, and to recommend other books with similar themes for their classmates to read. All of these submissions will be combined to form the book displays, along with copies of student-recommended books from the collection. Displays will be both virtual and physical, and students may participate in either format.

Through this initiative, the librarian will:

• • support the development of digital learning, participatory learning, and technology literacies

  • support, supplement, and elevate the literacy experience through guidance and motivational reading initiatives

The students will engage in digital and participatory learning by contributing to the displays, often using digital tools to complete the creative prompts. Being able to share their own reading interests and explore the recommendations of their classmates will motivate students and elevate the literacy experience.

Educational Technology ‘Matchmaking Service’

Some common strategies for introducing new educational technology to teachers include sending newsletters, making presentations during faculty meetings, and curating digital collections of professional development materials. I think these could all be effective, but it would be even better to offer suggestions based on teachers’ individual goals and experiences in the classroom.

In this initiative, teachers will be invited to describe challenges they and/or their students are facing in the classroom, and I will attempt to match each challenge with an educational technology that could help. I will provide video tutorials, a personalized game plan for implementing the technology, and ongoing tech support.

This program demonstrates “regular professional development and collaboration between classroom teachers and school librarians.” It will increase the technological literacy of both teachers and students. It will also increase good will and strengthen working relationships between the faculty and the librarian, because the librarian’s promotion of educational technologies will be experienced by teachers as a welcome service rather than an imposition.

Creative Reuse in the Makerspace

In this library, the makerspace will be modeled on creative reuse centers (see Bradley & Remolador, 2016, pp. 21-24). Community members will be invited to donate unwanted materials, which students can then experiment and create with while learning practical skills like sewing and refurbishing. This will mainly be a place for students to engage in self-guided inquiry, using the provided materials and digital resources as they wish. However, I would also love to lead a service club where students create items to sell or donate in support of a good cause. In this, I’m inspired by Gina Seymour and her wonderful LibGuide The Compassionate Maker.

This initiative will support an effective school library program in several ways:

• As an instructional leader, I will use the makerspace website to highlight interdisciplinary connections between practical arts, economics, and environmental science as they relate to creative reuse.

• When students look up how to fix and build things, they are establishing themselves as lifelong learners. They’ll often need to find similar kinds of information as adults, and it’s good for them to recognize that the library can help them meet both practical and academic information needs.

• Involving the wider community in the collection of materials to stock the space will be a great opportunity to build relationships and highlight the library’s many diverse offerings.