Breakout sessions:

Translation in the Library: An Issue of Equity

Presenters: Maria Falgoust, Amy Ribakove and Stephanie Gamble

Lower, Middle and Upper

Description: As we are collectively striving to curate collections that are diverse, equitable and inclusive, let's consider works in translation. Did you know that in 2019, according to Statista, the top four US publishing companies published 98,800 new titles--a mere 737 of those titles were published in translation, fewer than 1% (0.74%)?  

In this session, we will share strategies, tips, and resources for how to find the best translated books for Pre-K - 12th grade in addition to our personal experiences promoting translated titles to our communities through programs and events.

Together we can bring more awareness to the importance of including translated works.

Creating a Culture Kids Love

Presenters: Cindy Wray & Margaret Rhoades

Middle & Upper

Description: Looking for ways to engage with your school community? Wanting to try something new? Join Margaret and Cindy to go through a bevy of activities they’ve found successful in their middle and upper schools.

Let Them Help: Students Behind the Desk

Presenter: Kimberly Senf

Upper

Description: Overview of the Student Library Volunteer program that allows students to gain real-world experience working on daily library tasks. The presentation will go through the recruitment process for student volunteers, the training process, the variety of tasks they are assigned, mentorship within the group, lessons learned and next steps for future years. The work that the library volunteers have taken on has evolved over the years and has become an integral part of the Middle and Senior Library at Elmwood. The students gain hands-on experience working in a library, take great care and pride in their work and they bring new ideas to the space. Attendees will leave with a framework of how to implement their own version of a student library volunteering program with tools to recruit, train and celebrate the work that students take on in the library.

School Librarians as Instructional Coaches

Presenters: Kate Turnbull and Chris Young

All

Description: After a rebranding effort emphasizing teacher support and professional learning and completing a certification in instructional coaching, we were able to expand our menu of services to include help with lesson planning, modeling instructional strategies, providing observation and feedback, and coaching support. The library has become a place where teachers learn from each other, showcase their strengths, and stay current with mind-brain education. By adapting our practice and supporting our principals' goals for faculty growth, we have created allies within school leadership and developed relationships with colleagues that have helped our program thrive.

Mentoring: A Guiding Principle

Presenters: Jody Stout and Patricia Vermillion

Lower

Description: Fourth grade students mentored kindergarten students in book selection, reading comprehension and decoding, as well as research. Older and younger students formed bonds based on an attitude of curiosity and a love of learning. The project was inspired by a philosophy of mentorship, established by the school's retiring librarian and taken-up by her mentee--the school's new librarian. The determination to support others with resources, knowledge, and inspiration is a philosophical mission that the school’s library program has taken-on to create a network of relationships between experienced librarians and learning librarians, librarians and faculty, and among students.

Lower School Chat

Host: Claire Hazzard 

Lower

Description: Join Claire Hazzard, K-5 librarian to talk about LS library issues! Participants will be contacted prior to the conference to collaborate on a list of discussion topics!

What Makes a Comic a Comic?

Presenter: Bram Meehan

All

Description: Graphic novels are more in demand than ever and are only growing in popularity. Discover what makes comics so unique and how to talk about and recommend them in a fast-paced, hands-on workshop.

Bio: Bram Meehan provides creative direction and graphic design for marketing communications and institutional branding, and lettering, logo design, and production for comics. He serves on the board of 7000 BC, a nonprofit supporting comics education and comics creators, and has developed and taught college courses on comics creation as well as student and teacher workshops for schools and libraries. See his work at bramletters.com and brammeehan.com.

Revitalizing Your Library Volunteer Program: Strategies to Elevate Volunteers for Community Building

Presenter: Sara Franks

All

Description: Volunteers are the lifeblood of the Collegiate Libraries, helping to run things day-to-day and creating space for librarians to focus on long-term projects and larger goals.  This session will explain how we have empowered volunteers for a range of projects and how we build a real, meaningful community around volunteering that has made our programming, our collections, and our relationships richer and more visible across our school.  Attendees will leave with a bag full of new tricks to revitalizing a volunteer program in order to leverage good work to make it great.

Scope and Sequence Group Chat

Host: Christina Pommer

All

Description: Meet with colleagues to discuss your in-progress and/or finished scope & sequence! Please note that this is not a 'how-to' session, but a collaboration session!

Design Thinking Meets Books: Novel Engineering

Presenter: Tomisha Johnson

Lower and Middle

Description: Elevate student engagement with literature by challenging students as design thinkers and makers in Novel Engineering. In this presentation, librarians will demonstrate how students in grades K-6 used existing classroom literature--stories, novels, and expository texts--as the basis for engineering design challenges that help students identify problems, design realistic solutions, and engage in the Engineering Design Process while reinforcing their literacy skills. Resources from the Novel Engineering initiative from Tufts University will be shown as well as examples from projects that elevate literacy by immersing students in inquiry, reflection, and communication while constructing prototypes to solve a problem presented in literature.

Research Process as Product

Presenters: Sara Kelley-Mudie and Sadie Weinberger

Middle and Upper

Description: Students are often so focused on what they’ll need to create as a result of their research that they lose sight of the process. It’s also very difficult for students to focus on the skills of research when they’re trying to develop new content knowledge. For this project, we decided to put the focus squarely on the process of research, and asked students to reflect on the choices (refining questions, choosing search terms and strategies, note taking, etc.) they made throughout their research process. This focus on metacognition helped students develop strong research skills they could apply in future research tasks. 

Conversation with a Comic Artist

Presenter: Skylar Patridge

All

Description: Skylar is a freelance artist, comic artist, illustrator & designer. She has worked for a variety of comic publications including Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, Vault, Titan, Scout & Black Mask. She has also contributed sequential art & spot illustration for a host of books & anthologies. She attended Western Illinois University where she graduated with a BA in Graphic design. Skylar currently lives & works in New Mexico with her partner, two spoiled dogs & one gremlin of a cat.

What Happens When a Superhero Librarian Gets Tired?

Presenter: Jen Dawson and Laura Marmorstein

All

Description: You are a Superhero...You do it all - run the library, teach classes, run a makerspace, host after school activities, supervise study hall, run tech defense for faculty, coach, put out fires...sound familiar? What happens when you get tired? This presentation will focus on ways to bring energy and joy back into your job with tricks and tools you can use today!

The Power of Picture Books in SEL

Presenters: Claire Hazzard and Jeanette Vilagi

Lower

Description: Two lower school librarians share how they use picture books in the context of the social-emotional learning frameworks at their school. Claire Hazzard will talk about the Toolbox, and how books support the delivery of this program, and Jeanette Vilagi will share how children’s literature was the foundation for the wellness class that was created during her school’s year of distance learning.  We’ll share book lists as well as one example of a flexible monthly plan for using picture books to grow students’  awareness of their own feelings as well as those around them.  

Flipping It: Information Literacy

Presenter: Patricia deWinter

Middle

Description: In collaboration with a tech teacher we challenged our students to "teach" an information literacy topic using a tech tool of their choice. Our fifth and sixth grade students worked in pairs or small groups to create a presentation on a topic they selected from a "Choice Board." The students could also select their own topic once it was approved. Topics included Digital Diet, Source Literacy, Ethical Communication Online, Finding Credible News, Website Evaluation and Detecting Bias and Misinformation in the News, and Privacy/Sharing Online Safely. Next the students determined which digital platform they would use for presentation:  IMovie, Stop Motion App, Chatterpix, Podcasts with GarageBand or other platforms approved by Mrs. Read, or by me. 

All resources, handouts, and rubrics will be shared with attendees.

Note Taking for Comprehension: Using Visual Notes to Clarify Understanding

Presenter: Tasha Bergson-Michelson

All

Description: When students take notes, how do we assure it leads to learning? Teachers, particularly concerned with plagiarism, identified reading comprehension as the core issue. When students simply parrot words from texts, their understanding is greatly inhibited. 

We began teaching students to take hand-drawn notes. First in science, then history, and later English, our students explored how sketching concepts helps them check for and support reading comprehension. Over four years we have expanded this method into high school, as well. Join this hands-on session to explore teaching approaches, analyze samples of student work, and try different methods for note taking for ourselves. 

Completing the Circuit: Igniting Teacher/Librarian Collaboration with Text Sets

Presenters: Rachel Patton and Katie Proctor

All

Description: Robust research details the transformative power of collaboration between educators. However, as the dust settles on the covid-19 pandemic, it can be hard to know where to begin and how to initiate cooperation. Katie (published author and 5th grade literature teacher) and Rachel (teacher librarian) share pathways to meaningful teacher/librarian collaboration. In this presentation, they will share tangible ways of collaborating across content areas to “complete the circuit” for learners. Katie and Rachel have worked together to create innovative text sets, maximizing opportunities for students to inquire, engage, and connect with materials and to share their knowledge.