AASL Standard 1

1.1 Learner Development: Candidates demonstrate the ways learners grow within and across cognitive, psychomotor, affective, and developmental domains. Candidates engage learners’ interests to think, create, share and grow as they design and implement instruction that integrates the National School Library Standards.

1.2 Learner Diversity: Candidates articulate and model cultural competence and respect for inclusiveness, supporting individual and group perspectives.

1.3 Learning Differences: Candidates cultivate the educational and personal development of all members of a learning community, including those with diverse intellectual abilities, learning modalities, and physical variabilities.

1.4 Learning Environment: Candidates create both physical and virtual learner-centered environments that are engaging and equitable. The learning environments encourage positive social interaction and the curation and creation of knowledge.

IMPACT ON STUDENTS AND CONNECTION TO BEST PRACTICES:

"Motivation is a key component in learning" (Small et al., 2012, p.6).

Students learn best and are more engaged when they are involved in what they are learning. When we formulate lessons to allow students a higher level of power over their learning, they often have a larger motivation to be involved and, as such, retain more of the information. When we consider the idea of learning through interests, it seems like a no-brainer. Just consider the 5 year old obsessed with dinosaurs who soaks up every piece of information given to him. That desire for knowledge encourages exploration which turns into inquiry which leads to assimilation of knowledge, inference, and reflection (Callison & Baker, 2014).

This style of education is what we have seen encouraged as best practices while at UNCG. The constructivist teaching of John Dewey show that that students learn best through experience (Stripling, 2008); they are more engaged when they have a say in what they are learning. Research suggests that inquiry-based learning helps students understand concepts on a deeper level, helps them develop critical thinking skills, and gives them a sense of accomplishment (Northern, 2019). At the same time, each student comes to the classroom with a different background and set of skills. For us to have the most impact on student learning, it is important to address those differences rather than forcing students to conform to a single mode of learning.

I had never heard the concept of essential questions with regard to students prior to this program. But it is evident through readings that we have done that essential questions are vital for developing critical thinking skills (Levitov, 2016).

Tomlinson and McTighe break down a number of reasons why teacher responsiveness is important, but the two that stand out most to me are the need to make the material relevant to the students and to support different levels of readiness to learn (Tomlinson & McTighe, 2006).

Through my experiences during LIS 693, I came to see just how important understanding where your students are coming from and making sure that the library was a safe space. Many of the children that I worked with came from family and home situations that were less than stellar. While there were always goals in mind, making sure that they felt at home around the books and excited by the selection process, especially during the pandemic, became more important at times than making sure that they did an author study.