School Libraries: Breathe In the Change Together

I love when my reading, listening and learning all converge on each other in a natural and organic way. 

It's my own little happy place. 

My serendipity.

On Friday night I was listening to a OnEd Mentors podcast episode on VoicEd Radio called Thinking About Change as I was making dinner for my children and waiting for my husband to come home for the weekend.

There were many good questions posed and ideas expressed throughout the conversation and I recommend that all educators take some time to listen to it as we are indeed heading into times of change. There is a lot of uncertainty and worry in the air these days. 

What will the cuts to education look like?
What will they mean for the future of our students?
How will we support the needs of our students with less?

And these are all valid worries because without a doubt there will be cuts to the education system and we will have less. 

The only unknown question is-

How will we breathe in these changes and come out the other side stronger?

I have also been working my way through The Library Book by Susan Orlean which details the history of the Los Angeles Public Library and the devastating fire that took place at the Central Branch. I really enjoyed this book as it weaves the history of the library in Los Angeles, the history and role of libraries in our society overall, a look into the mindsets of various city librarians, and how libraries continue to adapt to change as society needs. Libraries have become more that a storehouse of books. Libraries are open and welcoming gathering places. Libraries offer support to new immigrants. Libraries offer a refuge to the homeless. Libraries are places to take risks and learn about new and developing technologies. Libraries are a glimpse into the best of what a society can be.

As I listened to Noa, Mark, and Stephen discuss how we navigate the turbulent waters of change and use the metaphor of remaining below the surface of the water where it's calmer and being able to gaze up at the choppy waves and know we will be okay, I was really struck by how profound and important a belief this is for all of us moving forward. We will be okay. We have what we need to continue honing our best practices, to continue to innovate for our students, to deepen our capacity and empower our students. We can do all of these because we have each other.

Yes, I know that sounds corny but hear me out.

In the summer when the Truth and Reconciliation sessions were cancelled and the Health curriculum was repealed back to the 1998 version people were angry and upset but that didn't stop anyone from continuing their journey to honour the calls to action. If anything I think more people have committed to reading books, having discussions and learning more about Indigenous history and culture to fill in the gaps. The recent #21Things book chat on Twitter is an excellent example of that. In regards to the Health curriculum, by repealing the curriculum and the subsequent "consultation", it has only brought a deeper awareness to the public's commitment to support the  LGBTQ+ community within our schools and society at large. 

If we continue to lean into each other, to talk together, to breathe in the change together, we can remain below the turbulent waves of the unknown.

School libraries are also open and welcoming gathering places. As cuts to professional development opportunities happen we can work together to build our own capacity. After all, teachers are experts in education. We can seek out and lead our own learning opportunities. Right now there are two different book chats happening with the staff at my school- In This Together: Fifteen Stories of Reconciliation and Making Math Meaningful. These books chats are happening in the LLC which then also leads to co-planning and co-teaching opportunities. Our Professional Learning Networks (PLNs) are a vast repository of knowledge. Working together to move everyone's learning forward will not stop because of any cuts to education. We can lean into the change and support each other to innovate for our students. 

Our school libraries offer a place of refuge, a place to build self-regulation skills, to develop a growth mindset, to calm ourselves when needed. School libraries promote risk taking, a maker mindset and innovation. Our school libraries can be places of change. 

We just need to gather and breathe it in together. 

Playing the Long Game: Teaching from an Inquiry Stance

Teaching and learning from an inquiry stance and the benefits it provides has long been an interest of mine, long before I was a teacher-librarian. As a classroom teacher I looked for ways to have my students co-creating their own learning through questioning, researching, problem-solving, design thinking and developing our success criteria. But unless you loop with your class (move with an entire group of students from one year to the next) you don't always get to see the progress the students make as they move on to the next grade.

As this is my second year in the Library Learning Commons and we have reached just about the halfway point (yeah for 100th Day of School!) I feel that I can start to make some observations about the students that I interact with frequently, either when their class comes to the LLC for collaboratively inquiry, those students who have joined the Silver Birch book club, those student who are starting to make frequent use of the Genius Cart and even just casual encounters with students tinkering and playing with the provocations in the LLC.

So far the biggest takeaway from teaching and learning from an inquiry stance is that it involves playing the long game. That is, the rewards come down the road and you have to be willing to be an active participant in the achieving the goals necessary for student success (e.g., 21st Century Competencies) which will take some time and some effort. Ensuring our students are prepared and able to be active participants in their society and to tackle the problems of our world is a long game. It's going take some time. It's not a "one and done" proposition. One can't "do inquiry" and then move on, that's just not how it works. If we expect our students to exhibit a growth mindset, to reiterate when they are solving problems, to be reflective and communicate about their struggles with achieving their goals, then we must also do these things.

Teaching from an inquiry stance is the ultimate iterative practice. 

This year I have had the opportunity to co-teach with a Grade 5 educator on two different occasions and for both of those we have been actively working with the students to co-create the inquiries and use their passions and curiosities to guide the learning. Which makes this co-teaching/co-learning situation unique is that she did loop with her class this year (most of her Grade 5 class were with her for Grade 4 last year when we also co-taught and collaborated together often) AND even more unique is that 5 of her students were in my class in Grade 3 the year before I moved into the teacher-librarian role. This means that these students are well practiced in the art of inquiry learning and have started to teach us a thing or two!

We are currently working on a guided inquiry of Black Canadian History. I say guided because I am also a big fan of Inquiry Mindset: Nurturing the Dreams, Wonders, and Curiosities of Our Youngest Learners by Trevor MacKenzie and Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt and in particular this sketchnote:

Trevor MacKenzie and Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt

We choose the topic- Black History but the students really took off with the inquiry. If you are interested in following along with our inquiry (and believe me, it's awesome!) just click here and visit the "Artifacts from Our Inquiry Process" page.

So what caused all this reflection on "nurturing an inquiry mindset" in students? Well, if I do say so myself I had just about the perfect day in the LLC. I had a class in this morning to read a Blue Spruce book and begin to explore a #makewriting activity that will branch into an art piece. Then the Grade 5 class I mentioned above visited to go deeper with our Canadian Black History inquiry. We are at the stage of starting to narrow down our focus after researching, asking questions, viewing videos as provocations, discussing, asking more questions, reading more articles, watching more videos... (you get the idea!) and after an amazing discussion last week where we asked the students what the end goal of our inquiry might be today we posed this question-

How might we share our learning?

And as well-prepared educators we had a small list (on a post it!) of ideas that the students might be interested in exploring to share their learning with world... however, the students had other plans. In a short 20 minute popcorn session of ideas here's what they thought-

Isn't it just incredible to see?

Finally, the day ended with open making at our new maker space endeavour- the Genius Cart! Student are able to come and explore making with various materials and challenges. Today there were students from Grades 3-5 exploring K'Nex, building tinfoil boats, and building constellations on the light table. And there was a hum. A hum of thinking, a hum of questions, a hum of discussion. Was it a little noisy? Yes. Was it a little messy? Yes. Was it purposeful? YES.

Each student there launched themselves into their own mini-inquiry cycle. They developed a question about how they might construct an object/a boat/a constellation and then tried their first design which in most cases didn't work or they didn't like. But they tried again. We discussed solutions. We discussed failing forward. We discussed, and tried, and discussed and tried. 

We were playing the long game of inquiry and the students knew the game. 

And they liked it.