Last year (2018-2019) I was completing my Librarianship specialist at the end of the school year and one of our assignments what to create a year end report that could showcase the library learning commons to our stakeholders. Last year's report focused a lot on data that I was able to gather and collect to tell the story of our library space.
You can see last year's report and the blog post I wrote about it here.
Unfortunately, I didn't have access to a lot of the data this year
since I was completing the report from home.
I did, however, have the foresight to create an infographic for each month of the year starting back in September 2019. Now I didn't know the pandemic was coming... but I did want to be able to be reflective and proactive each month in regards to our library space and the use of the materials.
My experience with collecting data and organizing it into monthly infographics
was outlined in an article that I wrote for Teaching Librarian magazine.
You can access that issue here.
(Funny story, I was really excited about writing this article because even though I have written articles for other publications this was going to be my FIRST article that would be published on PAPER. And then, boom... pandemic. Teaching Librarian was published digitally.
Sigh. Perhaps I'll be "in print" in the future.)
The year end report for the 2019-2020 school year has been split into two sections-
September to March and April to June.
Pre-pandemic. Post-pandemic.
Traditional school.
Emergency distance learning.
Face to face.
Virtual learning.
I wanted to tell the story of our library space within the walls of the school and how we made the pivot to be able to support the learners within our community as learning shifted to an online environment.
We know the library learning commons model is more than than the space it physically occupies within a school.
The LLC is a mindset.
It is a belief system in the capabilities of our learners.
It is the drive to push learning forward.
It is the love of books and literacy. In all forms.
It is a response to the needs of learners.
It is a safe space and a brave space.
And all of this has nothing to do with the walls and shelves and stuff within the space.
My experience as a virtual Teacher Librarian involved a lot of tech support for educators as they shifted their practice and began to add skills related to technology and distance learning to their repertoire. While many educators had not attempted to use a Google Classroom or other online tools to interact and learn with their students previously, perhaps due to the age of their students... does a kindergarten student NEED to know how to login to an online learning environment? ... many educators grew their pedagogy related with online learning by leaps and bounds.
They pushed out of their comfort zones and challenged themselves to try new things.
They sought out new tech tools that would allow them to connect with their students.
They were courageous in the face of an overwhelming pivot from the norm.
While the year end report tells the story of the library learning commons space, the learners and community of our school; it also tells the broader story of education and the experience of our emergency pivot to distance learning.
My year end report can be found here and I'd love to discuss it with anyone that has questions or is interested. It was made in Canva and then uploaded to issuu to read like a magazine.
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