That's what I'm talkin' about!

Zipping around the Internet and into many inboxes these days is an article in the New York Times. In Web Age, Library Job Gets Update talks about how very different our jobs now are. It showcases school librarian Stephanie Rosalia of Public School 225 in Brooklyn. Thankfully, it's not a picture of her just checking out books, but rather teaching information literacy skills.

You should most definitely take a read! You should also watch the video.

You say you want a revolution? Well, you know...

I am plotting the overthrow of the library world.

More to follow.

CSLA 2008, Post 5

On Friday I went to hear Advocacy 101: Using your voice to give a shout out for your school library program. This presentation was by two TLs from Long Beach Unified, Sandy Patton and Pamela Oehlman. Excellent advice!

As some of you may know, the TLs in that district have perfected advocacy to an art form. They now have TLs at the elementary level and are working toward hitting CSLA's standard for personnel in libraries. This is not by accident.

Some of the pieces that worked for them at the site level:

• Newsletter
• Contribute to daily or weekly bulletins
• Attend social events (even when not assigned)
• Be on School Site Council
• Attend parent meetings

Some of the things that worked for them on the district level included:

• Attendance at board meetings.
• Place action items on board agends.
• TL on the teacher's union board.
• TL on key district committees.
• Provide professional development on district level.

And much, much more. They also recommend Sandy Schuckett's advocacy book.

At the very end, Glen Warren from the Orange County Department of Education offered this quote that he heard:

If you're not at the table, you're on the menu!

Thank those who support you!

I had the opportunity to speak at the Fresno Unified School District Board meeting last night. A group of FUSD TLs were there to thank the school board for providing increased funding for our libraries. Since some have asked, I said this:


My name is Tom Nixon and I am the Teacher Librarian at Tehipite Middle School. I am also the Northern Section Region 3 representative for the California School Library Association. This past weekend I was at a board meeting for that organization and I had the pleasure to tell them that:

In Fresno Unified, teacher librarians are valued for their expertise and are supported by the district administration;

In Fresno Unified, the school board and the superintendent understand that there is a research connection that shows that students with higher test scores come from schools with strong library programs;

In Fresno Unified, the school board and the superintendent get the strong connection between literacy, successful library programs, and having credentialed teacher librarians in charge of those programs;

In Fresno Unified, unlike other parts of the state, that funding for libraries and teacher librarians is steady and that it is a priority of the school board and the superintendent.

This does not happen by accident. Clearly, it is due to the work of the board, of Mr. Hanson, and of our director of school libraries, Karen Tozlian.

On behalf of my colleagues, I thank you for your hard work and for your continued support.

Library Discovery Day, part 2

As I mentioned downstream, I had a library discovery day for my administrators at my school. I should preface this by saying that I am blessed to have a dedicated admin staff at our school. That being said, they were quite surprised by many of the things that I told them.

If you don't tell them, they don't know.

Just showing them what my budget is for new books was rather astounding. How, you might wonder, could they not know? Well, my school is a Title 1 school. Our site plan is very detailed. If you are not in charge of a program, it is easy not to know what is going on.

If you don't tell them, they don't know.

Being good administrators, they wanted to fix this discrepancy between what we have and what we need. Yesterday at our School Site Council meeting, the council voted to approve an additional expenditure for the library. That amount, while not large, did exceed the amount originally budgeted for the library.

Why did they decide to allocate funds?

Because I told them.

Library Discovery Day: You need to advocate!

Today I invited all of my administrators to come visit my library and to learn what I know about it. I had pulled together a short PowerPoint (because long ones are dreadful).

We talked about the age and size of the collection.

We talked about the technology.

We talked about the good things and the bad things.

What I wanted to convey was information. My take is that even administrators often do not know how much has been allocated for the library. If you looked at our School Site Plan, you would know why. It is quite long with many budget items.

Without revealing how much is presently budgeted for books, I can say that it is a small amount. They were surprised at how small an amount.

I got an email later in the day and it appears that the effort was well worth it.

Advocacy works.