Good news storiesGOT A GOOD STORY TO TELL? share yours with us! New story added 7 October 2021: ‘Unlock’ the Bookshelves During Break Times: Changing Your Mindset About Holiday Borrowing For many years, in my role as Teacher Librarian, I ceased loaning books in the last week of school each term. This enabled students to return all their library books in Week 10 and gave me time to chase up overdue books. It was my experience that many ‘lost’ books were often misplaced during the holiday period, literally left at holiday locations and never to be seen again. Additionally, in Term 4, I would recall all library resources across the school community, as it was timely for me to do Stocktake, or at the very least, return all the books and shelve them before the end of school for the year. This was the way I was taught to run a school library; these were the processes I inherited from other Teacher Librarians. I was concerned about the frequent loss of our school library resources, which are often expensive and hard to replace, and felt I was ‘protecting’ the collection. In 2019 I was fortunate to become one of two Teacher Librarians at Radford College Junior School Library. We have over 840 students in our Junior School and are very proud of the strong reading culture that has been cultivated in our community. Our students borrow books from both the Junior and Secondary Libraries EVERY WEEK OF THE SCHOOL YEAR. They can borrow before school, at lunchtime and after school as well as during their timetabled Library lessons. In the Junior School Library, we allow students a borrowing limit based on their grade (with some exceptions of course) and in the Secondary School Library there are no borrowing limits. In fact, our students are encouraged to borrow more books than they usually do at the end of each term, particularly before the summer holidays, often up to 10 or 20 books or even more. Our students get excited about holiday borrowing and even bring extra bags in to school to carry their books home in. I’ve got to admit that I was confronted by these practices, and it took me a while to get my head around it. But now I am converted! Why have books on our shelves when they can be in our families’ homes during times where they have more time to read? I understand that simply borrowing a book doesn’t necessarily equate to a book being read, but I do assert that a book that has been taken home has a significantly higher chance of being read compared to the books locked away in our libraries over break times. We are very lucky at Radford to have highly efficient Library Assistants and Library Technicians to enable us to circulate high amounts of borrowing each day of the school year. Not everyone is in this fortunate situation, so here are some practical ways that may help you enable holiday borrowing:
It is our core business as Teacher Librarians to ensure our students are engaged in regularly reading for pleasure. It has been my experience that encouraging holiday borrowing can have a huge impact on a school’s reading culture. In the words of Donalyn Miller, of Book Whisperer fame, “Providing greater book access to students who may not read much over the summer far outweighs the cost of replacing any lost books.” (2014, p. 93) Reference: Miller, D & Kelley, S 2014, Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer's Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ New story added 25 August 2021
New story added 28 June, 2021 Congratulations to the six inaugural recipients in the Round 1 Teacher Librarianship Scholarship Program from the ACT Education Directorate. This program will see up to 25 newly trained Teacher Librarians in ACT Directorate schools over the next 5 years. ASLA has made contact with the recipients to provide mentoring and support. In the challenging times brought about by school closures during the COVID-19 period, all schools' staff are facing major changes. How are school libraries involved? ASLA invites you to share your good news story and tell us how your library is supporting teachers and parents. We will publish these stories here on our website and on the ASLA Facebook page. We will also publish stories of how Teacher Librarians are advocation for our profession. Send us your story. Include images if possible but please ensure appropriate permissions are in place for publication in these spaces. Send your contributions to ASLA Board Member, Natalie Otten. Watch this space to the good oil. Supporting teachers to become qualified teacher librariansNatalie Otten, Teacher Librarian at Evelyn Scott School, Canberra, faced the media in Canberra on 1 February, 2021, proudly supporting the ACT initiative of awarding scholarships for the training of teacher librarians. Natalie was indeed a great ambassador for ASLA and the teacher librarian profession. 'It's a crucial role': Teacher librarians push to boost their numbers in schools Kerry Pope, Head of Library Services at Toongabbie Christian College, NSW, is among the association of teacher librarians calling for higher staff numbers in schools. Kerry believes the heart of a school library - both a student wellbeing space and central information hub - is its teacher librarian. This article was published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 24 November, 2020 West Moreton Anglican College, Karrabin, Queensland.Contributed by Tehani Croft, Knowledge and Learning Resource Manager We started preparing early in our library. In our fortnight library classes from Year 3 to Year 9, we introduced or revisited all our online services and how to access them from home or school. St. Peter's College, Clyde North Campus | Cranbourne Campus, VictoriaContributed by Joyce Sendecky, Head of Library, Digital Technologies Teacher There and back again: ‘Flipping’ the Reading Program to remote mode | Upcoming events |