In this article in Knowledge Quest, Kristin Fontichiaro (University of Michigan) and Wendy Steadman Stephens (Jacksonville State University) suggest 40 ways that school librarians can maximize learning in a time of uncertainty. A selection:
- Realize your leadership potential – what Ewan McIntosh describes as “agile, whole-school interdisciplinary work that is needed to create the exceptional learning experience our young people deserve.”
- Define success by the impact you make, not by how busy you are, leaning into the influential, urgent, critical tasks in your building role.
- Replenish your “surge capacity” by carving out time to connect with others, exercising, practicing hobbies, and living your faith.
- Retool your website so it works for students who are learning remotely.
- “Go spelunking” into a database to find advanced features, tuning into webinars, and updating assignments with new tools.
- Reconsider punitive overdue policies – for example, letting items auto-renew, permitting students to renew on their own, and ending fines.
- Adapt online lessons for offline students, partnering with special educators to keep lessons accessible for students with learning differences.
- Do a diversity audit of your collection and adapt selection criteria to reflect the richness of a global society and a multicultural community.
- Remember that parents are watching, with some ready to pounce on cultural differences between home and school; anticipate these conflicts and mediate a new level of family involvement in the curriculum.
- Consider taking on the role of supporting families as they master virtual connections with the school.
- Tune in to school board and public library meetings.
- Teach students how to explore multiple perspectives on the news, including Freedom Forum’s collection of front pages.
- Curate e-books available to students at home, creating “bookshelves” of hand-picked titles.
- Explore how you will address widespread misinformation and disinformation – for example, by using Rand Corporation’s Media Literacy Standards to Counter Truth Decay.
- Explore and share Google Scholar, a powerful search tool to find scholarly papers.
- Evaluate your media diet and that of your school with tools like Ad Fontes Media and AllSides.
- Build in some time for students to wonder, using digital resources like livecams or remote locales, Google Arts and Culture, and digitized museum collections.
- Do one thing you’ve put off. “You’ll feel relief and accomplishment,” say Fontichiaro and Steadman.
Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #905 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.
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