Thoughts on Day of Tears

Since I have all this free time not reading HP7, I did read Julius Lester's Day of Tears. Quick, easy, but not fun read. I wonder if it might be a hard sell for middle schoolers. The subject matter may entice some of them. I get lots of kids wanting to read about slavery. The format is what I found off-putting. While I appreciate the shifting viewpoints, it is hard to get into the story or connect with any of the characters. I was at least halfway through the book before I had any emotional connection to it. But the choppy narrative style might also appeal to some kids. There is something almost blog-like about the various voices. What do you all think?

Discussing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Reading the Deathly Hallows during the summer, we won't have a real time opportunity to discuss it prior to the start of school. So, let's make use of this online forum. Please do sign your name, as I'm intending this blog to be for the staff of our Berkeley school libraries, but to make it easy to post to I'm taking off the need to register to post.

CSLA: Collaborate with Math Teachers

Every so often a workshop comes along that makes you slap your forehead and say "Now why didn't I think of that?!?" This was one of those workshops. I have long felt that math teachers are the most underserved department in terms of the school library. Yes, I have books about math. I have encouraged them to bring kids in to see a practical application of decimals in the arrangement of the Dewey Decimal System. But, research? What does that have to do with math? Peter Milbury, LMT, and David Sours, math teacher, from Chico High beautifully sythesized math and research with their lesson on statistics. (DUH!)

Their assignment involved kids selecting a variable that changed over time then plotting the changes on a graph and predicting future trends. The librarian made a website linking to a number of statistics-rich sites. The math teacher taught about plotting variables and methods of graphing. Together they coached the kids through inputting the data into spreadsheets and creating graphs. And the kids finally imported those graphs into Power Point (mostly peer coaching with little teacher input) and presented to the class.

While I would probably not use Power Point or Excel, I could see my math teachers enjoying the application of math to real information. I also really liked their clear rubric which broke down every part of the assignment day-by-day with ample details such as 2 points for eye contact during the presentation.

All can be found at http://melvil.chicousd.org/online/collaborate-mathematics.html

The Standards Puzzle: Piecing It Together

The Library Media Teachers of Santa Cruz City Schools did an impressive job presenting their extensive collaboration around the Standards. This collaboration is not just with each other, but also with their classroom teachers at every grade level. In other words, not just around Information Literacy Standards, but their intersection with Content Standards K-12.

Another impressive element is that they already have the bulk of their work available on the Web! The Friends of Santa Cruz School Libraries site, http://foslsantacruz.org, hosts their well-articulated and documented work, and I think can serve as a great model for our endeavors in Berkeley. What do you think?

Opening Session - David Mas Masumoto

From the initial "Leave no peach behind" quip, through the myriad of images invoked through gentle yet animated readings and stories told, to the lingering taste of precious peach jam, David Mas Masumoto was an absolute delight as the keynote speaker of the Opening Session.

"What is perfection?" Mas asked, reflecting both on the relentless drive for dry test scores that leaves too many real children behind, and the continual push for blemishless fruit that too often leaves flavor behind. It was a grounded observation, befitting him as a farmer/author/artist, and us as an audience, librarian farmers and cultivators of readers and thinkers (at least so we hope!).

"What is information?" was another well-posed question, for which he had an answer that I found myself repeatedly returning to throughout the weekend and these days thereafter. He posits that information is really a story. That facts and things learned really only transform themselves into information when they become linked with an emotion, a memory, and become a bit of a story that then resides within the person. This is what renders it useful, which is really what information is about--something that is useful enough to keep around to be used again at another time.

I found this interpretation of the significance of information, especially in our "information age", very insightful as well as poetic. I immediately thought about historical fiction, and how much more we retain when facts are rendered via a story, especially one with dialogue, rather than straight prose. But I thought also of emotions that are laced into deep scientific study, learning a martial art, or acquiring a new language. All of this knowledge is stengthened when there is a story that matters to the learner about why they are learning it, or that a story evolves out of the learning.

When Mas left us with the aroma and flavor of his organic peach jam, cleverly hidden in small jars throughout the conference room, he cinched the experience into our memories. The information I came away with? That coming together as school librarians, as gardeners of ideas and knowledge and growth, is a wonderful chapter in an ongoing story, and the role of each character is important. Though not new information, it is a critical component, and always worth revisiting, especially in such a delightful manner.

Welcome!

Not that long ago at the California School Library Association Conference, many of us spent days together dialoguing about literacy, libraries, schools and our roles in weaving it all together into a strong fabric to nurture and further a lust for learning. The initial path of this blog is to try to create a common forum for us in the Berkeley Unified School District to share what we learned and have the means by which to continue the dialogue virtually in between the times we meet in real time.

My hope is that each workshop or session attended will have an initial post that is clearly titled. Additional comments from others who attended the workshop/session, or questions and reflections from non-attendees, will be posted as comments to the original post, rather than as a new post. Whereas the archive of a blog is usually just a chronological one, if we title our postings accurately it will function as an online database of our professional development.

At least, I figured it was worth a try. In the long run, a wiki would be a better application, but we can always camina ese camino cuando lleguemos (walk that path when we get there).