Professional Learning

Standards with Artifacts 21-22

Click to drop down for artifacts

I. Leadership:

MTAC ~ TGIF (Exit tickets) ~ Leadership Team ~ Jerry Newberry Grant ~ Environment ~ Podcast ~ NCTies Innovation Award ~ HS Librarian PLT ~ Advocacy ~ Safe Zone Training

II. Respectful Environment with ACCESS:

Learning Commons ~Library Holds ~ Jerry Newberry Grant ~ Displays ~ PRIDE shirts ~ Website ~ 1st Amendment Lessons

III. Content and Pedagogy:

Co-teaching ~ TGIF ~ Student Tutorials ~ Staff Support ~ Jerry Newberry Grant ~ Freshmen/Sophomore Orientations ~ NCTies Innovation Award

IV. Learning:

Co-teaching ~ TGIF ~ Student Tutorials ~ Staff Support ~ Podcast Project ~ Independent Reading Project Collections (Identity Podcast, Black History Month, Strong Female Leads, Classic Remix) ~ Research Pathfinders (top 3 are new) ~ Research Collections ~ Banned Books Week ~ Breakfast Book Club ~ Literacy Week '21 ~ Mackin Via e-content ~ Throwback Thursday Read Alouds

V. Reflect:

Portfolio ~ PDP Goals ~ MTAC Reflection & Evidence ~ Exit tickets ~ HS Librarian PLT ~ NCTies Innovation Award ~ NBCT Renewal (in progress)

Professional Development Plan Goals, Evidence, & Reflections

2021-22

Goal 1: By the end of the 2021-22 school year, we will have developed a culture of reading for pleasure among the students and staff at KHS as evidenced by voluntary participation in book clubs, other reading activities, literacy week, and collaboration with teachers.

Reflection:

We offered a variety of programming from Banned Books Week and Literacy Week to book clubs, speed dating books, orientations with a literacy focus, and promotion of #FREADOM and DEAR time. While the effort was monumental, we're just not sure we're getting the return on actual reading. People walk into our school and see the LIT stairs and know that we support literacy at this school. The library is friendly and welcoming. It's obvious that we haven't given up on encouraging our high school students to read for pleasure. At the same time, we have only a small percentage of teachers who are giving their students time to read outside of programming. We felt that visibility and focusing on getting information to teachers was the way to get to more students. With only about 30% of our staff truly participating in our programming, we believe we will shift our focus next year and try to work on getting students reading and into the library. We are so excited that our efforts translated into funding and that we are getting a large purchase of manga for the following year. As a medium with diverse BIPOC and LGBTQ+, not only will it get our students excited about reading, but they will know that we value their opinions on what they should be able to read. We were also successful with the Jerry Newberry grant, allowing us to bring in more content for our LGBTQ+ students. This year has been a struggle for librarians across the nation regarding intellectual freedom. As advocacy efforts have mounted, I have conducted much research on students' 1st Amendment rights which translated to some excellent censorship lessons during #FREADOM week.

Special Programs

Banned Books Week was our first major bit of programming in September with 30 teachers participating in our "Books uKnight Us" video. Our staff "off-campus" book club started this year and is still going. We started "LC Unplugged" as a way to get kids and staff to destress in the library and form connections. Part of this also included "Take it and Make it" bags to spread the program further. Our latest week was #FREADOM where we taught censorship lessons, had read alouds, and more. We are super excited that we have an off-campus staff book club as well as a student Knit Wit LIT book club where we listen to audiobooks and knit - so much fun and relaxing, too!

Visibility

Visibility matters and we believe that it matters for LITeracy. Our book spine stairs have been a favorite of many staff/students for years, but they also get people talking about books. In fact, one staff member told us that she took the job after seeing our stairs, knowing that this was the type of school she wanted to work in. We have made multiple displays this year and are moving to some permanent displays as well. We are also big fans of shouting out our program on Twitter, from LIT week activities to Black author recommendations. We are all about promoting literacy online. By speaking about literacy rights at board meetings, we have received book donations from three separate donors in addition to getting the Jerry Newberry Grant!

Collaborations

We kicked off the year with 39 LIT focused orientations with @85% of students leaving with a chosen book. This year, we taught 38 literacy-specific lessons and continued with the podcast project with Mr. Dawson's English students. About 30 teachers helped create our uKnighted video and created jamboards to keep track of their literacy week activities during #FREADOM week. We continue to work primarily with English classes to promote literacy with Mackin Via and speed dating as well as theme-specific book lists.

Goal 2: By the end of the 2021-22 school year, we will have encouraged social and emotional health by increasing the support of diverse populations and marginalized groups as evidenced by programming activities and initiatives at least once a month.

Reflection:

We started our year by kicking off Banned Books Week in September which always reminds us that it is our most marginalized populations whose stories come under attack, specifically books with LGBTQ+ and social justice content. We highlighted those stories in a beautiful display, read many in a video, created bookmarks, and promoted checking them out for reading. This led to a partnership with the school's Gender Sexualtiy Alliance to encourage staff to visibly support our LGBTQ+ students with "Proud to be a Knight" t-shirts and "I'm Here" badges/signs during LGBT History Month in October. I lead our county's Gender Sexuality Educator Alliance supported by the Office of Equity and was able to undergo Safe Zone training in November. This translated to leading a session with counselors in April of 2022 which we hope to give the whole staff next year. Geek Week is our student-led PBL where we try to flip the narrative by exposing our young women and minorities to a very lucrative and needed field. Some of the best work I've done with equity this year has to be the advocacy for our students' 1st Amendment rights; I've spoken at board meetings, written and published letters to the editor, led PL on censorship at the county, and taught our students and staff about students' rights to read what they want to read. Libraries are all about equitable access and that starts by having a diverse collection accessible to all.

Geek Week

We made a big effort to encourage our young women and minorities to participate in our student-led Geek Week in November and were thrilled with the partnership with Ms. Giri and Ms. Wright to offer DCG Fest (Digital, Coding, and Gaming Fest) with colleges, business reps, and CTE teachers. Students got excited about the possibility that this field could be an option for them. Over 400 students attended with 7 colleges and 2 professionals represented. We also shared computer science fun with 150 elementary students and 28 high school classes.

Equity

This is the first year I was able to be a member of our Equity team. As the leader of the county Gender Sexuality Educator Alliance, I felt like I needed to be in a leadership position to represent our LGBTQ+ students as a marginalized group in need of support. As a librarian, it is essential that we are able to support all of our students: BIPOC, LGBTQ+, Hispanic students, students of all levels, students of all genders, and more. All of those students need a voice on our Equity team. Safe Zone training is something we hope to offer through Equity next year. I was able to be trained myself in November and train counselors in April. Safe Zone may be specific to LGBTQ+ students, but many of the principles can be applied to all students.

Monthly Programs

We are making an effort to offer something monthly to encourage students to come to the LC and know that we support them. We began with Banned Books week where we focused on LGBTQ+ and social justice content, celebrated LGBT month with PRIDE shirts and advertising our gender neutral bathroom, started LC Unplugged in December as a way to de-stress in the LC, worked with our Hispanic population with prep for ACCESS (sounds terrible but was great for skills practice, tech practice, and relationship building), and brought many groups in during Literacy Week to teach them about their 1st Amendment rights. We also host tutoring in the LC daily and help manage the testing center.

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