Newbery Awards!

By Hannah Mermelstein

St. Ann's School

On Friday, December 1, more than 100 students, an access*

of librarians, and Adam Gidwitz gathered at Brooklyn Heights Montessori School to celebrate the Newbery, mock and otherwise. The students came from five schools with Mock Newbery groups: Brooklyn Friends, Brooklyn Heights Montessori, Packer, Poly Prep, and Saint Ann’s. We heard from Adam Gidwitz about his sleepless night pre-Newbery announcement last year, his watching the clock as he ate pancakes with his one-year-old at 6 am, and the phone call that (eventually) came, informing him that The Inquisitor’s Tale had won a Newbery honor. As is typical with Gidwitz, the students were enthralled and amused, and we probably have a few more aspiring Newbery winners out there now, although Gidwitz was quick to say that a book does not have to win an award to be great!

Transitions

By Karen Grenke
The Town School

As the school year gets underway, I've been finding myself closely observing all the transitions around me. From the mundane (students transitioning between classes - oh, the noise, the fun!) to the sublime (the radiant fall leaves upstate), I feel surrounded by change. I suppose I'm paying special attention because this year I find myself in the midst of professional transition as I change jobs from one school library in Brooklyn to another on the Upper East Side.

As much as I loved my previous library it was indeed time for a (here's that word again) change. I was one of the first librarians at the school and I built over 80% of the collection. I moved the library twice and packed it up by hand both times. To say I was attached to that library is an understatement. So it was with some amount of trepidation that I packed up my own boxes and left. And boy howdy, has it been reinvigorating! Here are a few of the things I've noticed.

A recap of the December HVLA + NYCIST meeting

Since 2014 HVLA has partnered with NYCIST (New York Consortium of Independent School Technologists) to host meetings that bring our two groups together. Collaboration between librarians and technologists is increasingly vital for any school that wants to innovate and remain current with the constantly changing information and technological landscape. These meetings have been a wonderful way for our two departments to share and learn from each other outside of the busy school day. Our most recent joint meeting took place on December 1st at my school, LREI - Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School. Saber Khan, Director of Educational Technology at The Browning School and current NYCIST President asked our library and ed tech department invited us to host and we planned an a quasi-unconference style afternoon.

Before I give you an overview of the meeting, some background: Karyn Silverman, High School Librarian at LREI and I led a workshop called, "It's LIT: Librarians and Tech Integrators in the Future" at last January's NEIT (NYSAIS Education & Information Technology) Conference. Our goal was to have a productive brainstorming session to understand where we are now in order to map out the future. We came away from that hour with a Venn diagram of our roles in the education ecosystem of our schools.

The "beautiful" Venn diagram we created during "It's LIT" at NEIT16.

Those of us who attended this session felt like we had created a solid foundation for future conversations about collaboration between library and ed tech departments. This was the first thing that came to my mind to frame our conversations on December 1st.

The next step was to gauge what attending members wanted to discuss. In the RSVP we asked, "Librarians/Technologists what would you like to discuss with technologists/librarians?" We also wanted to know if anyone had stories of successful collaboration that they wished to share. Based on these answers, I created a word cloud to visualize our questions and ideas.

As it turns out, "research" was the word that bubbled up as the most cited topic for discussion. Using the word cloud, as well as the full responses from members, we came up with four main discussion topics that seemed to address the various interests of attendees: research, information/media literacy, STEAM and design thinking, and equipment (1:1, fixed resources, etc).

After some snacks and mingling, introductions and announcements, we broke out into four groups to discuss our main topics. I joined the information/media literacy group and we had a great conversation that generated ideas as well as questions and resources. Matthew Moran, Director of Technology and Innovation at Dwight School created a Google doc with our notes. Feel free to take a look, use and/or add resources.

Before we parted ways, we had a quick share to wrap up. Listening to each group, I was struck by how we all approached these topics with various professional experiences, but we were meeting on common ground because both librarians and technologists have roles to play in developing curricula and programs for these issues. As Sarah wrote last month, our departments are stronger when we learn together and from each other. Keep an eye out for future meetings with NYCIST and please invite your ed tech counterpart if they aren't already on the NYCIST listserv. The upcoming NEIT conference at the Mohonk Mountain House is also a great opportunity for professional development with fellow librarians and educational technologists from New York. 

—Joy Piedmont, LREI

Collaboration Can Be Easy (and Fun!)

Collaboration between teachers and librarians can happen for a multitude of reasons.  Sometimes the path to collaboration is difficult to envision and time consuming to facilitate (though still really important!), and other times an opportunity presents itself that seems obvious and you wonder, why haven't I done this before?

Our sixth graders have read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry for many years and their English teacher decided they needed more background to fully understand the time period and some of the issues in the book.  This immediately led me to part one of the collaboration where I attended a workshop about new books with this English teacher and then made some recommendations.   She then selected Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine as a book pairing for their English curriculum.

The second part of the partnership involved designing a new cross curricular project. I teach an independent reading class to sixth graders where kids are encouraged to think about who they are as readers so that as they get older, they will become purposeful, self-sufficient book selectors.  This was the perfect opportunity to talk about one strategy for successful readers:  If you need more background information about something else you are studying, choose a related book to fill in the gaps in your knowledge.

In collaboration with the English teacher, we designed a project where kids will get to choose a book to read on their own and then draw a connection between Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry or Lions of Little Rock and their selected book.

Although they were welcome to make their own selections, I have been recommending some books to the sixth graders.  Here's a sample of what I have suggested:

Nonfiction:

• Getting Away With Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case by Chris Crowe

• Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice by Phillip Hoose
• We've Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March by Cynthia Levinson
• Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans by Kadir Nelson
• Marching for Freedom by Elizabeth Partridge
• Courage Has No Color by Tanya Lee Stone
• Little Rock Girl 1957: How a Photograph Changed the Fight for Integration by Shelley Tougas

Fiction:

• Lunch-Box Dream by Tony Abbott
• A Thousand Never Evers by Shana Burg
• Mississippi Trial, 1955 by Chris Crowe
• Bud, Not Buddy/The Mighty Miss Malone by Christopher Paul Curtis
• Seeing Red by Kathryn Erskine

• No Crystal Stair by Vaunda Michaeux Nelson

• Sugar by Jewell Parker Rhodes
• Paperboy by Vince Vawter
• One Crazy Summer/PS Be Eleven by Rita Williams-Garcia
• Crow by Barbara Wright

Building relationships is often the most important part of collaboration, so it's important not to overlook any meaningful chance to connect with other teachers.  In the hunt for the perfect partnership, don't miss one that is right under your nose!