In the spring of 2017, my admin approached me about being part of the transition from a traditional library space to a Library Learning Commons by taking on the role of teacher-librarian for our K-5 school. I was a Grade 3 teacher at that time. I will be completely honest and say that while I had always hoped to one day be a TL, at that exact moment in my teaching career I had been doing some exciting work with guided math and math spiralling and wasn't sure that I was ready to leave the classroom. After some serious though and discussion with my husband I decided to agree to the transition and haven't looked back since.
In preparation for this transition I created an action plan to share with my administration at my school. One of my wonderful friends and inspiring teacher-librarians, Jenn Brown, helped me to create the action plan and pointed me towards a number or resources that would help with the creation. I also enrolled in a Librarianship Part 1 AQ and began to read any number of PD books I could get my hands on!
The big goals for the transition to a Library Learning Commons were:
-increased student access to the library collection and an updated collection that was more culturally relevant for our community
-a shift in the physical design of the LLC space to accommodate a variety of learning opportunities
- introducing a maker mindset to the stakeholders within our community and using maker learning to promote an inquiry mindset
-working with educators to develop our understanding of collaboration (e.g. co-planning, co-teaching, co-assessing, teaching from an inquiry stance)
With all this in mind I sat down with Jenn's example of a Three Year Plan for Creating a 21st Centure Learning Commons and began to adapt it to the needs of my school community. Jenn and I had many conversations about the direction in which to head first and we both felt that shift to a "free flow book exchange" model was the biggest priority in order for many other pieces to fall into place. This also meant the physical layout and signage of library needed to be addresses so that students could be self-sufficient when in the LLC for book exchange.
Once the free flow book exchange model was introduced to our school community, orientation periods for the classes were scheduled, time for students to practice using the self-serve checkout system was given and slowly but surely, everyone began to feel more comfortable with the new vision for our LLC.
Now that we are a few months into our second year of the transition plan I have gone back over Year 1 to see what we have accomplished and where we still need to grow. I updated the Year 2 section of our plan using Leading Learning and the Peel document- Empowering Modern Learners to guide our vision. As a school community we are currently developing goals for further exploration and understanding of maker ed learning and using documentation strategies to promote student learning. Both of these goals will be reflected in our future vision for the LLC.
If you are interested in seeing the Three Year Plan for Creating a 21st Century Learning Commons that I have been working from, please click the link below and don't hestate to contact me with any questions.
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