Professional Development and the School Librarian

When I think about the professional development offered at the two schools where I have worked over the last 15 years, I struggle to recall anything truly helpful for my role as a school librarian. Sure, there has been some PD on mental health and on special ed supports that has given me insight into working with special populations, but - by and large - school specialists in library, art, music and P.E. are ignored in school and district professional development. This has caused me to actively seek out opportunities to connect with other librarians for professional growth. (More on that below.) So, this week I was intrigued to read the January 2025 School Library Journal article by Andrew Bauld entitled Grassroots PD: school librarians create their own professional development. 

(Bing AI image generator prompt: digital art high intensity
school library professional development; 29 March 2025)

SLJ Jan 2025 cover

Bauld's focus is on the large-scale PD opportunities that leaders in school librarianship have actualized. For example, K.C. Boyd -- School Librarian of the Year in 2022 -- offers an annual free conference called Boss Librarian and Friends, in which thousands of librarians come together, virtually, over four days to learn best practices from each other. Bauld also identified PD opportunities outside the conference format, including the School Librarians Unite podcast by Amy Hermon and The AI School Librarian Newsletter by Elissa Malespina.

In effect, Bauld's article highlights what librarians tend to do best: seek, discover and create resources; establish and foster community; and share and learn from each other as life-long learners. Bauld acknowledges that the best PD for librarians is developed and shared in community with other librarians.

My action items after reading this article are as follows: 

• 

  Wal_172619. Pixabay, 6 Nov 2020. https://pixabay.com/
  photos/book-read-literature-reading-5717481/

  Read Joy of Reading by Donalyn Miller and Teri S. Lesesne to understand the steps of creating a school culture of reading;

• Visit library20.com to peruse its collection of free, virtual library events and trainings - I've already registered to join and am awaiting approval;

• Register for K.C. Boyd's next Boss Librarian and Friends conference. I joined her Clubhouse app and requested to follow her on Instagram.

In Oregon, there was a consortium of schools that worked together to buy library resources, such as digital books, the library management software, and even supplies for covering books. Through this organization, I was able to attend annual library-specific PD where we got demonstrations from Kapco on repairing books and protecting paperbacks with its Easy Cover II book covers. We heard about successful, low cost visits with local authors. We shared lesson ideas and discussed how to pace and plan out the year. We learned about new tech tools and shared tech kits that we could reserve to use at our schools. This was highly useful, applicable PD.

Here in Massachusetts, I have a much broader selection to high-quality library PD through the MSLA. The listserv itself is a form of PD, with daily inspirations from the network of super informed librarians, and the annual conference offers sessions on everything from legal actions when faced with book banning to examples of how to incorporate AI tools in the classroom to example lessons on news literacy. Additionally, the Collaborative for Educational Services hosts a monthly PLC for school librarians during which we share highlights, problem-solve common issues, discuss best practices for advocacy and administrative support. I have also been able to engage in CES's excellent PD event Transforming Education for Social Justice Conference. My school has also granted me time and money to attend two ACCEPT Education Collaborative PD sessions: one entitled Explore! Collaborate! Create! An interactive day for Librarians and one called How to Provide Effective Support to Students with Disabilities in the School Library. 

Bauld, Andrew. "Grassroots PD: school librarians create their own professional development." School Library Journal, Jan 2025, pp. 23-27.

Top 5 Tech Tools for the Classroom

 

I am what social scientists call a 'digital tourist' - I wasn't born into a 24/7 connected society but find myself immersed in it everyday. I am trying to maintain my outsider perspective on technology so that I can notice my own addictions (news scrolling - bah!) and delights (reminders of photos I took this week 20 years ago!), while also appreciating all the conveniences and guarding my boundaries against the unhealthful nature of being always-available. 

I carry this lens into the library every day. Is this lesson on genres enhanced by an interactive slidedeck, or is it just as effective without technology, and unnecessarily forcing children to stare at a screen?  Can we present our research on posterboard or is it better to have kids perfect their PowerPoint skills, as that is what is increasingly expected of them for higher education and the workplace? 

Technology is here and there is no use fighting it, and - often - it does make a lesson clearer and more engaging. Here are my top 5 tech tools for use in the classroom:

Infusing FUN into Library Lessons

"... putting play at the heart of a school results in students experiencing choice, wonder, and delight in their learning." (Mardell, p. 1)

I've spent this week reading A Pedagogy of Play: Supporting Playful Learning in Classrooms and
Schools and thinking about ways in which I can encourage playful learning in the library. Like most school librarians, I teach multiple grade levels while also shelving books, developing the collection, managing a budget, collaborating with teachers, fielding parent emails, tracking down lost books, tending to my book hospital, running reading incentive programs, promoting the library, participating in committees and conducting small group reading intervention support. 

It's ... a lot. And it's relentless. And it's also delightful because I'm always busy and always connecting with kids and families and the entire school staff. I appreciate that this work is meaningful. I get to find books for grieving students who are trying to process loss. I get to provide space for overwhelmed kids during lunch or recess. I get to teach skills and tools that students will use for the rest of their lives. It's a privilege and a huge responsibility.

Teaching news literacy, copyright law and research skills has never felt more urgent than it does today in this age of misinformation and AI generated content. Though this work is serious and urgent, reading A Pedagogy of Play has reminded me of the importance of delivering lessons in an environment where kids are engaged and willing to take risks. Here are some tools that might allow you to do just that.

Gale published a series of escape rooms that require students to engage with the databases. I've done these with 4th and 5th grade students - usually during MCAS season to add a little levity to the long days of testing. You can find them here, along with a wealth of other activities (filter by doing a product search for escape rooms). I haven't tried it yet, but there is also an escape room template that you can customize for the topic and/or skills development of your choice. I'm looking forward to trying the Poetry escape room in April! 

Speaking of escape rooms, I did develop a Google Sites escape room as an end-of-unit assessment for 4th graders after teaching them about copyright law and writing citations. Because I was able to drop in their GenEd teacher's names, books we have  in the library, slides from my lessons, etc., the kids thought it was super fun. 

Teaching kids to find books on a shelf and/or put books away? Gamify practice before they try it in the stacks by having them advance through Mrs. Lodge's Shelve It game. Then, challenge kids to find specific titles on the shelves. You can slip phrases of a poem into each book before hand and then see if the kids can put the poem together once all the books have been found!

Though competitive digital quiz resources have been around for a while, they are perennial favorites. I use Kahoot all the time to refresh kids on content they learned the year before: databases, genres, research method, etc. Quizlet Live and the Jeopardy-like Categories games are great for assessing vocabulary

learning (for example: news literacy terms like rumor, speculation, clickbait, misinformation, disinformation, confirmation bias, etc.). My son loves the Don't Look Down game in Gimkit, saying, "You're learning, but it doesn't feel like learning." Students have to answer questions correctly to "fuel" their character in a dangerous race up to a mountain summit. And Breakout EDU has both quick Lock of the Day puzzles and longer breakout rooms that you can customize to fit your unit content. All but Breakout EDU are free for educators, with premium options available for a cost.

I highly recommend Book Creator and Canva as creative and playful research presentation tools. While neither is a game, the platforms are fabulous for collaboration and developing visual literacy skills. Students love them! My 5th graders this year had a unit on infographics - interpreting them, analyzing effectiveness, identifying key points - and then researched a Black history month trailblazer and worked in partners to create an infographic on Canva. Here are a couple of examples of their results.

During the same month, I had 4th graders working on their citation skills via a Book Creator project where they were illustrating a quote made by a famous Black history month hero. While I adore Book Creator's comic book layouts, newspaper template, and magazine format, for this project, each pair of students created a page that required the quote, a photo (with citation), an interpretation of the photo and at least one other visual element laid out in a collage. Even though this was essentially an assessment of their citation and research skills, there was tremendous excitement around the creative process. The students loved presenting their work to their classmates and took a lot of pride in their results. After its completion, I sent a digital copy of the book home for families to see the work we have been doing in the library.

Finally, there is so much to be said for having an array of old fashioned family games and crafting materials available for library rewards days. I like to tie these back to the library by creating inspiration from books. For example: 

• LEGO bricks alongside books about the design of medieval castles
• balls of yarn and books on finger knitting
• origami paper and origami instruction books
• board games and books like Family Boredom Busters and How to Play Chess
• puzzles and I Spy books

(Image created on Canva)

I leave you with a final thought from the book, which really struck me as true. 

"Activating and cultivating playful mindsets in which teachers and students view school as a place to lead learning, explore the unknown, and find joy in learning is central to playful learning... Playful mindsets are activated (or deadened) by how learning experiences are structured." (Mardell, p. 21)

Here's to more playful intention in the library!

Work cited: 

Mardell, B., Ryan, J., Krechevsky, M., Baker, M., Schulz, T. S., and LiuConstant, Y. (2023). A pedagogy of play: Supporting playful learning in classrooms and schools. Cambridge, MA: Project Zero.

Social Media for the School Librarian

My Pinterest is full of beautifully decorated libraries and fun bulletin boards. My Instagram is reel after reel of library book suggestions and anti-book banning advocacy. My YouTube is stocked with helpful videos I can use to teach media literacy and digital literacy. My bookmarks take me to listservs and blogs that help me make my lessons more standards-based and engaging. While I sometimes feel like I am operating in a silo, my digital library PLC is rich and crowded! Here are some suggestions for people to follow on social media:

@Maistorybooklibrary (Instagram)

(photo credit: @Maistorybooklibrary)

https://www.instagram.com/maistorybooklibrary?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Maya Lê creates interactive read aloud videos and reading resources for young children. I admire the helpful book lists on a variety of timely topics, but more than that I admire her fierce advocacy for making sure every person’s story is on the shelves. Lê puts a lot of research and thought into her beautiful posts and she demonstrates absolute confidence in standing up to book bannings, hateful lawsuits targeting “other”, and recent executive orders. I aspire to be Maya Lê! 

Colby Sharp - (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and X)

(photo credit: https://nerdybookclub.wordpress.com/)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWlO9Px0e0kpORVcPRvJDCg

Book-loving 5th grade teacher based in Michigan. Videos include author talks, book talks, book lists, and tips for read alouds. Useful for understanding best recent releases and popular titles for the 11-and-under set. Sharp’s enthusiasm is infectious! 

Diana Rendina - (Blog and Pinterest)

http://www.RenovatedLearning.com

Rendina’s accounting of overhauling her library space is detailed in her book Reimagining Library Spaces. It is also on Pinterest and on her blog. Her pictures, need/solution descriptions, and step-by-step directions offer a lot of inspiration. I appreciate her budget-consciousness and the reflections on what worked and what needs improvement. Great source of inspiration for thinking about library spaces.

Mrs Readerpants (Blog)

https://www.readerpants.net/

This is a fabulous resource for the realities of elementary school librarianship and offers both hope, tangible suggestions, inspiration and reassurances. As someone who started out in librarianship with zero training, I appreciate her checkoff lists of what to do when opening a library, weeding, planning lessons, etc. Her suggestion that children “read off” their lost book fines is brilliant.

The Adventures of Library Girl (Blog)

(image credit: librarygirl.net)

https://www.librarygirl.net/blog

I learned about Jennifer LaGarde when going through some slides from the MSLA conference. Her books Fact VS Fiction: Teaching Critical Thinking In the Age of Fake News and Developing Digital Detectives show her focus on digital literacy, a topic that is front and center on my mind in this age of disinformation.There are all kinds of resources here (posters/infographics, slide decks, videos) to help librarians teach digital literacy in their classrooms. There is library gold here!

@TheBookWrangler (Instagram)

(image credit: @TheBookWrangler)

https://www.instagram.com/thebookwrangler/?hl=en

Mike Rawls specializes in KidLit curation, but there are great resources here for starting a school-wide book club, displaying Newbery winners, advocating for LGBTQ+ books in libraries, etc. He also has a huge freebies collection of gorgeous posters and bookmarks and more linked in his bio. This site is another win for me from a conversation at the MSLA conference!

@mrsjinthelibrary (YouTube)

https://www.youtube.com/@mrsjinthelibrary

This is a little dated, but there are plenty of good ideas in Mrs. J’s videos for elementary school librarians. I particularly like her video on teaching graphic novels and comics to early readers. Other helpful videos include preparing for back-to-school-night in the library, setting up your library in 5 days, posting to SeeSaw or Google Classroom, and the 6 essentials for a library website. 

@MissMoeTeaches (Instagram)

(image credit: @MissMoeTeaches)

https://www.instagram.com/missmoeteaches?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Lisa Moe’s “magical library” is full of tech-centered literacy that helps her middle school students embrace life long learning. She models collaboration by having frequent guest speakers (in person and virtually). She is a frequent speaker and attendee at conferences centered on the future of education. She has a can-do attitude that pushes her to tackle all kinds of challenges with her students. This will be a helpful resource when tackling ‘next-level’ projects.

New EdTech Classroom (YouTube)

https://www.youtube.com/@NewEdTechClassroom 

Sam Kary produces videos on YouTube with the tagline: everything you need to know about teaching with technology. He walks you through the uses of various tech tools: Diffit, Pear Deck, NearPod, FigJam, etc. I'm grateful for the professionalism of his presentations and the no-nonsense way he presents the uses and benefits of the various tools. This is exactly what I need to evaluate whether it's worth my time to invest in learning a new tech tool!

Reflections on the 50 & Fabulous MSLA Conference

I attended the MSLA Conference this past Sunday and had an information-packed and inspiring day. It was fabulous to see familiar faces and to finally meet some folks whose names pop up on the MSLA listserv and whose work I admire. In between sessions, there were vendors to visit and conversations to be had with fellow librarians and students. We discussed book recommendations for particular kiddoes, reading motivation programs, book fairs vs. book swaps, and more. It was thoroughly exhausting in the best way!

Here are my take-aways and reflections on the sessions I attended:

Keynote

Featuring: Kwame Mbalia

Memorable moments:

·       Has his own imprint: Freedom Fire (with Disney)

·       “Milestones need to be celebrated”

·       “You will always have an audience of one”

·       “Why don’t we have book character crossovers anymore?” (Nancy Drew / Hardy Boys)

·       His HS librarian Polly Partain (sounds like a superhero name) – “She collected antisocial ducklings.” Through her, he discovered horror genre. Goosebumps, Fear Street

·       “When you receive the right book at the right moment, what a profound impact that can be.”

·       Lover of romance novels. “There should be more Neanderthal romance.” (Clan of the Cave Bear shout out!)

·       Wanted to write a book where a library is the centerpiece; where the library is Narnia or Middle Earth. First book: The Floating Library of Timbuktu. Middle grade/YA crossover – it’s what got Kwame an agent.  Never got published.

·       Does his writing in local library.

Actionable items:

·       Kwame’s reflection on his time in San Francisco and not being able to communicate with the Spanish speaking population reminds me that I need to order ASL dictionary and book(s)

·       Look up “Library Wars” – Manga

·       Order Mbalia / Entrada Kelly co-written YA romcom: On Again Awkward Again / April 15 publishing date

·       Series recommended to Mbalia: Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

 

Student using AI to develop a research inquiry question (with hallucinations!) developed on Canva dreamlab

AI and the Research Process

Featuring: Laurie Taylor and Molly Wong

Memorable moments:

·       AI has ethical considerations: environmental, bias, misinformation

·       We need our students to experience the friction of learning. AI strives to get rid of the friction. Some students need the friction lowered a little bit in order to succeed.

·       “Use AI in a guided way to reduce friction and facilitate learning”

·       A suggestion of where to use AI in research is in Gale’s topic finder: eases process for finding topics to write about. Can energize HS students at start of research process.

·       Diffit Helps narrow down broad topics. Free. Designed for teachers. Generates scaffolding for different reading levels/grade levels. Translation feature. Helps with building a good research question.

·       Right Question Institute – helps students craft open questions to guide research. (reduces friction)

·       Flint AI – K-12 school. Crafting a research question. Teachers can moderate how students are using the AI. Free for up to 80 users. Molly’s school is moving forward with this tool next year.

·       “Make sure any AI tool you use is transparent about its sources. Because it’s not transparent about its sources, don’t use ChatGPT.” Generative AI should have/include in-text citations and bibliographical info.

·       Perplexity and Perplexity deep research – for 13+ year olds. Can choose sources (academic vs. web vs. social)

·       JSTOR Beta – AI summary appears at the top of the article. You can ask what are the three most important points? What sentences back up these points? Powerful for providing keywords to search.

·       In my turn and talk conversation with PJ Feynmen, she explained her middle school’s commitment to the CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) method for middle school research. Where students get stuck is thinking they’ve provided evidence for the claim when they really haven’t.

·       MLA style guide does guide through the process of citing AI

·       “Use Boolean search for AI tools. Be bossy.” – Molly Wong

Actionable items:

·       Sign up for The AI school librarians newsletter

·       Look into book: Guided Inquiry Design

·       Try Diffit to translate lessons into Chinese for 3^rd grade ELL student. Test translation tool with native Chinese teachers before using school wide or with parents.

·       Sign up for Right Question Institute

·       Try using Perplexity to synthesize long emails!

 

 

Killer Underwear Invasion: Adapting Media Literacy in the age of misinformation

Featuring: Jen Mason Stott and Sarah Blout Rosenberg

Memorable moments:

·       Elise Gravel book intended to teach about misinformation, disinformation, clickbait, conspiracy theories, etc.

·       Media literacy scope and sequence for fourth graders. Makes them very skeptical about websites!

·       Stott and Rosenberg have received feedback from parents that their kids are super engaged by this series of lessons and are eager to dig into it with adults. Net: this is great for creating lessons that have impact on everyday life.

·       Have student readers “act” the characters. Go through book chapter by chapter – one chapter per lesson/week with discussion and activity breaks.

·       Consider complementing this lesson with the story of Tony Sarg and his Nantucket sea monster hoax of 1937. Darcy Pattison published a book in 2017 that covers this fake news story.

 

·       Example activity: Challenge the students to come up with their own clickbait headline.

·       Commonsense has a resource called “Avoiding Clickbait” that can be used as an activity for the chapter that is dedicated to clickbait.

·       “Chumbox” is the term for those clickbait ads that are numbered lists (“I’m a doctor and these are the 10 vegetables you should never eat again”)

·       Stott and Rosenberg talk students through the birds aren’t real conspiracy theory.

·       Confirmation bias – hard to teach 4^th and 5^th graders, but recommended KQED video Why Do Our Brains Love Fake News?

·       Audience member recommended the Crash Course media literacy resources; Sarah cautioned that it was a bit dated but still good for upper middle and high school. Other audience source suggestions: The Sift and Rumor Guard and Checkology from the News Literacy Project.

·       Another complementary book: Facts vs. Opinions vs. Robots by Michael Rex.

Actionable items:

·       Get the Pear Deck extension! This is such a cool, interactive presentation platform.

·       Incorporate The Killer Underwear Invasion immediately into 4^th/5^th curriculum.

·       Use information in slide deck in upcoming 1^st grade graphic novel unit!

 

Busy school librarian experiencing imposter syndrome created with Microsoft Bing Image Creator

School Librarians and Imposter Syndrome: Why we doubt ourselves and why we shouldn’t!

Featuring: Jen Varney

Memorable Moments:

·       Feelings of incompetence despite all the evidence to the contrary.

·       We tend to chalk up our accomplishments to “good luck”, “being in the right place at the right time” or something else outside of our actual hard work.

·       Pay attention: recognize when it happens.

·       Imposter syndrome is 100% real but is not considered a mental disorder.

·       Imposter syndrome is a reaction to an event.

·       “Don’t try to fight the feeling or discount it. Accept and notice the thoughts as they occur.”

·       It is often the result of critical parents.

·       “Know what your triggers are and prepare for them.”

·       Be cautious of the negative feedback loop. “When I have to call the office for help, it shows that I can’t do it myself.”

·       “Librarianship is a service profession and a feminized profession.”

·       Something that wears on librarians is our constant need to do advocacy work. No one else in education has to advertise what they do with cute posters.

·       There is emotional labor that takes place in the library.

·       ChatGPT top 5 characteristics of successful business managers / medical doctors / lawyers: leadership, decision making, empathy/compassion, adaptability/flexibility, attention to detail, time management, persuasiveness/negotiation skills. This is all true in librarians, too.

·       Audience participated in exercise to list the day to day responsibilities of a school librarian.

Actionable items:

·       Give yourself grace – hold onto the fact that so many librarian heroes were there in the room. Everyone feels like an imposter sometimes.

·       Track triggers – that phone call or drop-in when you don’t immediately have an answer or an idea for a perfect fit book.

·       Look up Michelle Reale book: Meeting the challenge of teaching information literacy

 

Demystifying AI – cans, can’ts, coulds, and shoulds

Featuring: Zak Kolar

Memorable Moments:

·       Librarians recommend using Claude.ai because of the source citations and built in privacy for users.

·       Cans and can’ts: Large language models and Computer vision

·       Large language models: AI operates without context. “It’s like the person at book club who didn’t read the book but listens and makes a statement that paraphrases others.” But there’s no conviction / no understanding / no emotion.

·       Don’t use AI to generate info about a topic you don’t know enough about, because you won’t know what’s wrong in the generated work.

·       Apples/bananas test (sorting a yellow apple into the banana category because it was only trained to recognize red and green apples) demonstrates the limitation of computer vision. AI systems are only as good as the training data.

 ·       Coulds and shoulds: Mistakes, biases, pitfalls, and impact

·       Training data can be skewed. (smargets example)

·       “AI only knows the world that exists in its training data.” (Volvo kangaroo example, Tesla truck fatality example)

·       Name bias in ChapGPT – impacts what people see (ads, posts, video recommendations, etc.). Someone with a typically male name gets “male” product recommendations. Someone with a typically female name gets article links to recipes.

·       “People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world. But the real problem is that they’re too stupid and they’ve already taken over the world.”  Quote by Dr. Melanie Mitchell

Actionable items:

·       Consider taking 5^th graders through Zak’s slide deck to communicate the limitations of AI.

·       Read Zak’s highly recommended books: Building Democracy for All by Robert Malloy and Torrey Trust (Umass professors) and AI Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor

          

 

 Author panel

Memorable quotes:

       ·       “Dilute the aspirin in the orange juice” – hide your important messages in a great story. (Wrap it in something sweet so they can’t taste the medicine.) – Joel Christian Gill

·       “We access the universal through the hyper specific.” – Roshana Chokshi

·       “Sharing stories is at the root of who we are.” – Joel

·       “Most of what we think of as American history is what I call fan fiction.” – Joel

·       “Hope is better than cynicism and optimism. It requires active participation.” - Deborah Farmer Kris 

·       “It’s a really hard time to be a queer kidlit author.” – Kate Fussner

·       “Pop culture changes things.” – Joel

·       “Hope is a fighter.” – Joel

·       “Noticing goodness in other people inspires awe.” - Deborah

·       “Chase delight.” – Roshana