Elephant and Piggie do their thing

Finally some book recommendations. Well more like an author recommendation. Mo Willems. I have been reading his books to first graders for the past couple of years and they cannot get enough of them. Funny, terrific story pacing, and wonderful sense of movement make his books perfect for beginning readers. They can be read multiple times, in different ways. The students especially get a kick out of choral reading, where they can act out punctuation forms and interjections.

One of his most popular series of books is the Elephant and Piggie Series. Those are the cuties up above. Don’t believe me? NY Times Bestseller list for its first two weeks. Not to mention the Pigeon series or Knuffle Bunny or … the list goes on.  So when you go to order books this next year (with whatever money you have), just trust me and order a full author set.

Once you have them read, children will be talking about them with you. Children will be talking about them with their friends.  Adults will be talking about them with their children. And adults will be talking about them with their friends. Most importantly, children will be reading them to their children when they’re adults. Yes, I think Willems’ books will one day be seen as classics of children’s literature. And I almost never say that.

I see the district’s rationale: They don’t see much point in paying individuals a full teacher salary to check books in/out and reshelve them. They believe they can pay paraprofessionals (or volunteers) far less to do this job, they claim. And in some cases they’re right.

When teacher-librarians had a sit-down meeting with district personnel, I suggested to my colleagues that we could advocate for our relevancy as information technology specialists. I pointed to emerging state standards based around information literacy and the fact that many of us have our Masters in Library and Information Science. Additionally, the same many of us our now enrolled – at the district’s insistence – in Teacher Librarian credential programs. I was dismissed out of hand.

And I’m not just talking about elementary teacher librarians. In these times, even well-to-do middle school and high school teacher librarians are being asked to shut down. I could even point out more depressing (and older) statistics like 7 out of 8 public schools have no professional librarian for half a day or more OR that the ratio of teacher librarian to student is 1:5,965 in California (2004 – 2005 CBEDS Report and Digest of Education Statistics and Tables and Figures, National Center for Education Statistics).

But there are many reasons to keep teacher librarians – if we are willing to create our “perfect necessity.” I am not going to claim my particular greatness. In flavors of school libraries, I’m more like a strawberry one with some chocolate topping. But there is some movement (at my school). We have a culture at our school that encourages some information technology – we have a dedicated computer lab and individual teachers who teach some software. And I have a principal who would do anything to improve the education of our students.  By the end of this summer, our school will have an individual school website that requires content from all teachers. And we are currently contemplating a full scale move to Google Docs to further school communication and students’ writing process. As you may be able to infer from this anecdotal data, I have the autonomy to suggest and push information literacy.

Now comes the hard part. I need to push and then create. First, I need to identify the technological resources that we need to pursue to make our school itself contemporary, i.e. Google Docs will only be a starting point. Then, I need to collaborate with teachers to develop a meaningful literacy program that will increase information literacy and avchievement. This requires training for teachers and curriculum for students. A school technology committee will be the starting point. Finally, I need to go to other teacher librarians in the district and work with them to create a community of professionals, using professional standards and best practices to form a vital part of the educational process. As long as the district views our work as paraprofessional-like, we will continually be in crisis. In these times, in any times, we need to prove to the powers that be that teacher librarians are a necessity, and that we demand a place in public education.

The new:

I was having a discussion the other day with a friend of mine and I was arguing that children’s books would never disappear in their physical form since, after all, children need books to learn to read. Adult booksellers have had their problems moving their wares, what with a declining book buying public and the online world dipping into their profits.

Well, Big Universe may be proving me wrong. Big Universe puts children’s books online – almost 1,000 titles are currently up and ready for reading. In actuality, children’s books online may make even more sense. The continuous improvement of graphic capabilities is perfect for children’s picture books and since most children’s books clock in around 32 pages, readers can actually get through books without a terrible strain on their eyes – the biggest complaint with online reading.

But let me go one step further. What makes Big Universe really great is that they provide Web authoring tools so that children themselves can produce their own eBooks – at last count, about 8,300. Can you believe what an incredible rush it would be for students to create books online for themselves? Can you imagine the skillset that can be developed with students using Big Universe, not to mention standards met?

One of the things I use to help me buy books are lists. The book jobbers/sellers put together these lists to help me order the same type of book (e.g. picture books for grades K-3). It speeds up the process, rather than choosing book-by-book, especially when I want to increase a section of my library without being too particular. Yes, this can give you some duds, but for the most part, efficiency in ordering is my goal, and so lists are often my best friend.

I do have a few bigger fish to fry. Like Newberry. Consider this opinion (I know its referring to book creators but I feel it holds up well to attitudes of many librarians):

“Awards are important in children’s books. They tell publishers, writers, and illustrators, what is considered to be ‘the best,’ and thus the standards they must strive to attain. … We can’t read every new book that’s released, but we can make a point of finding the award-winners.” – from underdown.org

I have a problem if this is the standard that we must meet in our library. These books are chosen by librarians, adults, who know what’s best for their audience, usually children. This is a rather headstrong approach to collection development. OK, I’ll come out and say it, Newberry is overrated. Where do I get my opinion from? Students. Many times I have recommended Newberrys and the opinion comes back b-o-r-i-n-g. I think this is what we should base our collection development decisions on, our audience. Listen to what students are telling you they like rather than what you think they will like. Yes, I know that librarians must occasionally use their professional discretion. For example, how many copies of Twilight will you buy? Is Twilight a fad book that will pass quickly or is it enduring children’s literature? To me, this is an appropriate place to use your professional judgment.

I just feel librarians cannot force their subjective adult opinions on children’s minds. And with Newberry (and Caldecott and Belpre and King) we run the risk of doing just that. To top it off, one can argue that these awards reflect gender imbalances and critiques of identity that we need to question and discuss before we continue making these our standard in our collections.

As an option consider the Children’s Book Committee awards which takes a more diverse set of opinions to create their “best,” including, of course, actual children.

My school has attempted to rectify the deficiency by having a dedicated computer lab room (it’s only been two years). But students only access the room once every two weeks. Usually this means they’re researching online, playing educational games, or word processing. This is not what a contemporary education should look like. When I think about my own computer literacy, I realize that none of it was explicitly taught to me. It has to do with access and use. (And don’t think I don’t believe in computer instruction.)

I firmly believe we need to advocate for greater computer resources for our students. We need to understand that computer literacy needs to take its place alongside traditional subjects to makeup students’ full education. And we need get individuals and the public on this side (even in these times).

One example is One Laptop per Child which provides laptops to the world’s poorest children. I won’t get into the hows of the program (read it for yourself), but just to say that it’s a philosophy that recognizes the centrality of computer literacy in achieving educational opportunity. It’s founder Nicholas Negroponte was highlighted in a 60 Minutes piece about a year ago. And others are competing with One Laptop. Like Intel. So others are getting the message. The only problem with One Laptop is that they are not for students in the U.S. I’m not advocating against other children from around the world, I’m just claiming that there are models out there for us to follow, creating resources for students.

Check out the video below. While it highlights more affluent students, I enjoy hearing from real students and how they use computers in school.  I think it shows what education should be like for all students.