What the Librarian Read- Part 2

Goodbye Reading. Hello Coursework. 

I started my Library Specialist AQ on Monday, April 15th and I'm super excited about it... but I also realize that it's really going to cut into my reading time.

Oh, I'm sure I'll still be reading lots- but it will be articles, posts, and discussions. Valuable of course, but not books of my choosing.

So what did I read while I was still reading books? Here are books 12 through 21 for 2019.

12. This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel

13. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

14. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

15. In Conclusion, Don't Worry About it by Lauren Graham

16. I'll Take You There by Wally Lamb

17. Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson

18. Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story by Jacob Tobia

19. By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz by Max Eisen

20. The House Girl by Tara Conklin

21. In This Together: Fifteen Stories of Reconciliation by Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail

Some thoughts on these books... in no particular order.

Two books that I would consider to MUST reads for all educators and parents right now are Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story and This Is How It Always Is. Both books provide an honest and open look at the heartache and pain that individuals who are gender non-conforming or transgender face. This is a piece of our community that has been ignored, left-out and hurt for too long. When I speak to my daughters about their experiences with a classmate who is gender non-conforming and their utter acceptance of this child and the child's choices in clothing, activities, passions and humanity I believe that we are headed for a beautiful future. e

I want that future for us.

But it will take work and that work starts with reading, and learning and reading some more.


I am ashamed to say that Brown Girl Dreaming and Harbor Me are the first two books I've ever read by Jacqueline Woodson.  A good friend of mine is always raving about her writing and how much his daughter loves her books so I knew I had to give them a try and wow, have I been missing out. In the past few years I have really grown to love books that are written in poetry. The words slide through your head and create these beautiful pictures as you are reading. I'm finding too, that many of my students enjoy reading noels written in this form as there were two of them in this year's Silver Birch selections. Harbor Me was just WOW. The topic. The characters. The depth of the storylines and the connection to the world we live in today. If you have a middle grade reader in your life, get them this book and read it together.

I read In This Together over the course of the last few months as part of a book chat among educators in my school. Once a month we have been meeting to discuss three sections at a time as part of our ongoing commitment to reconciliation and learning more about the true history of Canada in relation to Indigenous people. I found some of the sections in this books to be thought provoking, eye opening and provided me with the opportunity to face my own history and role in colonization. Since it's split up into fifteen different sections, written by fifteen different authors it's a great introduction for those just starting on their journey of unlearning to relearn as we move towards reconciliation in this country.


I am currently working my way through a spy thriller to offset the amount of professional reading I'm doing for my AQ and hoping to regain some momentum with my reading again soon, but with everything there always needs to be a balance and I think for the next little bit reading books might not be in the cards for me...

Maker. Space. Inquiry. Place. What might be the connection?

Maker Space. Maker Ed. Open Making. 

Maker Opportunities. Fab Lab. Maker Culture. 

There are many names and motivations behind implementing 
maker learning with your students. 

The maker movement and its benefits for student learning has been an ongoing focus of the Library Learning Commons transformation over the past two years. The staff at my school have been working to implement curriculum focused maker learning to help both students and other educators see the value of hands-on maker learning as a way to work through the process of their learning, to integrate 21st century competencies into their every day work, and ignite a passion for making and creating. 

Maker Culture: A Place to Start

Last year we created a Maker Culture PLN to develop our understanding of the Maker Movement, to attempt maker opportunities to explore with our students and to share our learning with the staff in our school community. Our learning over the course of the year culminated with an opportunity to "hack the staff meeting". We shared our learning with the staff by creating a carousel of maker stations for the staff to tinker, play, and explore with their grade level teams. 

The stations were well received and many educators began to seek out time to co-plan and co-teach maker infused lesson in the Library Learning Commons. 

Make. Literacy. 

Another attempt to integrate maker learning was through our Forest of Reading program, specifically Blue Spruce and Silver Birch. In the 2017- 2018 school year, both programs were run primarily as classroom based activities. Teachers were invited to share an inquiry bag with their students to spark interest in the books prior to reading. Each bag contained an item or theme word related to the book that could be used as a Minds On for students. Educators and students would then read the book together and explore a maker task or inquiry prompt together related to their reading. 

A collection of these maker inquiry prompts from the 2017-2018 school year can be found at bit.ly/TinkerInTheForest under Archive/2018. 

We adopted a similar program for the the 2018-2019 school year with one small tweak- the Silver Birch program is running as an open book club for students in Grades 4-5 who are interested in joining. Students have been invited to explore their own making interests as they connect to their reading by creating artifacts to share at our Museum of Learning. This has also provided an opportunity to explore badging and the concept of attaching success criteria and goal setting to our making. 

Open Making. Genius Hour. Passion Projects. 

One of my main goals in exploring maker culture and the maker movement has been to provide students an opportunity explore their own maker passions and maker inspirations OUTSIDE of the curriculum. I am a full believer in hands-on learning and the belief that students (and adults!) learn best through doing and so we should look for opportunities to uncover the curriculum through making. 

But I also believe in making for the sake of making. 
Making for the joy of making. 
Making for the learning about making. 
Making for the beauty of making. 
Just making. 

And so the Genius Cart was born. 

Part open making. Part genius hour. Part passion project. 

And as it turns out...part inquiry. 

Behold... the Genius Cart. 

I wanted to provide an opportunity and a space within the Library Learning commons for students to explore making that interested them outside of their classroom activities. After combing through many posts (and of course, Pinterest!) the idea for the Genius Cart was born. 

As educators we love to approach things from an If - Then stance in order to measure or gauge the success of our endeavors to improve the learning of our students. I developed this If - Then statement as way to promote ongoing reflection of the Genius Cart and the success (and failures) as we worked to develop the students' capacity to work in an open making atmosphere.

I launched the Genius Cart by first presenting the idea to the staff at my school and providing time for the educators to explore the cart and discuss how this make opportunity might help to support the maker learning happening in their classrooms.

You can access the slide deck I used for this initial launch by visiting 

bit.ly/GeniusCart . 

Additional slides have been added since that first launch as we reflected and refined the use of the Genius Cart.

And then we launched!

A few observations about this initial stage of the Genius Cart:

• most staff were interested in bringing their entire class for an orientation activity involving a design thinking task
• a few teachers had thought ahead and booked the library space to integrate their ongoing maker activities with the Genius Cart
• many of the students who were coming during our scheduled open making periods did not come with a project in mind
• there was a lot of repeat making based on what had already been explored in class (e.g. structures)
• many, many, many students equate making with using a hot glue gun!
• students needed a lot of prompting to develop a plan prior to making, most wanted to jump in and "see where it went"
• at times the making appeared "purposelessness"- students were not engaging with the materials in order to learn a "maker skill" or to create a product, but mainly to tinker with the materials

Now what?

Moving forward we will be exploring the intersection between inquiry, design thinking and the maker movement during our time with the Genius Cart. To begin our exploration I developed a Zip Line challenge after consulting with another teacher-librarian who explored a similar design thinking in her LLC. Students were invited to work their way through the launch cycle by examining photos and videos of zip lines and sharing their ideas on an inquiry chart. A Wonder Wall documented the questions developed by students were recorded as well.

Students created plans and materials lists for their carrier designs and then we built, tested and shared our success. I documented the process, student observations and discussions as we worked through the iterations of their designs and testing on the zipline. You can see the video and photos I shared with our school community by visiting our virtual library learning commons. 

I'm still working through the qualitative data I collected and hope to share my thoughts and observations around the challenge soon before we head into a second Genius Cart inquiry. Stay tuned...


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I used the following resources/educators to help me with my planning:

Inquiry Mindset: Nurturing the Dreams, Wonders, and Curiosities of Our Youngest Learners

https://www.trevormackenzie.com/

@trev_mackenzie

@rbathusrthunt

Launch: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student

http://www.spencerauthor.com/the-launch-cycle/
@ajjuliani
@spencerideas

Jenn Brown, Teacher-Librarian

@JennMacBrown