Tell Your Story Every Day
Course
Every Day in Every Possible Way [5:09]
Every day, in every interaction you have, you are demonstrating your commitment to students' growth and advocating for the library.
Ideas are collected and articles and all kinds of things are collected in support of all this on a website called Studentsneedlibrariesinhisd.org, that I manage with a friend of mine here in Houston for the benefit of the Houston Independent School District Librarians. Every interaction during the school day demonstrates your commitment to student growth. It's in your bones or you wouldn't be listening to this lesson.
Your passion is a powerful tool. When you make every interaction count, you're not adding advocacy to the to-do list. You are making the regular chores work as advocacy. There's no wasted effort. Every conversation, on campus or off, with anyone aware that you are a school librarian, has the potential to be a change point. Don't be shy.
"If you don't want to be on the menu, make sure you're at the table." That's a quote from a Texas Library Association at a Tall Texan training this summer. Someone tweeted that out and I thought it was such a perfect illustration of what we're trying to do with advocacy for school libraries these days. There's another quote here. "Every day advocacy is never assuming folks know what you do. As advocates for young children, we need to make and take opportunities every day that promote what we do and how we help."
That's from the ALS Everyday Advocacy website, which is another resource to use frequently. Even though it's not focused directly on schools, they have lots of great ideas. There are lots of videos out there these days that you can use to keep your own excitement, to remember how important you are when you get frustrated, and you can share them with your community to engender the kind of support that you need them to voice in your behalf.
When you aggregate small stories over time, those accumulate into almost army tanks that roll over naysayers. But you can't let up. You have to just keep telling the stories, keep the unusual things coming, take advantage of every story of student success, every data point in your arsenal to spread your school library gospel. Remember the tropes, "The students that didn't love to read, but now, they do," but also use the unusual stories that catch attention and stick in memory.
Recently, Sara Kelly Johns, a former president of AASL [m1]and of New York Library Association, I believe, spoke on the radio show that John Hockenberry runs on NPR, and she pulled out a couple of stories from her first couple of years as a school librarian. Those stories really catch people's attention because they have impact and they show the ongoing importance of libraries.
We need data too. Stories make it memorable, but data supports the stories. Compile data from your students' habits. Aggregate it so that no specific student is implicated, but the accumulation of how many people are reading books about science fiction or books about submarines, those are demonstrating that kids are curious readers and learners and that's one of the goals of schools, is to have life-long learning.
Illustrate that data with anecdotes and quotes from your campus community. When you hear something in the hall that supports what you're library is doing, go back and jot it down. Make yourself a note on your phone or on your iPad. Make infographics or even ask your community, students and parents, to make them for you. A few years ago, Nancy Everhart, who was another president of AASL, posted an infographic poster which is still available called 100 Things Kids Will Miss Without a School Library. It has not a number on it. The word "infographic" often suggests that you have to manipulate data and make fancy charts and make pie graphs. You don't. That's the simple answer.
We're going to talk about different approaches to the various stakeholders, different vocabulary that you need to use at various levels of the pyramid, but it's important to remember the core content, those hundred things kids will miss, that remains the same no matter who you're talking to. That's what you need to get across. But how you do it, can feel a little daunting.
So set some goals for how you would consistently get the word out about the impacts you're having on student success. Every day, small goals, just a few minutes, one thing that you do that speaks to someone outside of you, reminding them why your presence on the campus matters. You are never not a librarian.
Dorcas Hand suggests ways to demonstrate the work of the school library program and resources to guide your efforts. From anecdotes to hard data, a rich collection of evidence enables librarians to be purposeful when targeting information to various stakeholders. Gather and share both the expected and unusual stories, and remember that "you are never not a librarian."
View the image of the Advocacy Pyramid in the Resources below and print it, if possible. Mark up the image to reflect on some of your current beliefs, practices, and partners regarding advocacy for the school library.
Some suggestions are to highlight or note:
- current partners and allies;
- groups or people with whom partnerships don't exist yet;
- strengths and challenges for you and your school;
- ideas for evidence that might speak to these groups; and
- areas where you have questions or want to know more.
Advocacy Pyramid
MLA Citation
Morris, Rebecca J. "Tell Your Story Every Day: The Advocacy Pyramid." School Library Connection, September 2017, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1987174?learningModuleId=1987183&topicCenterId=2247903.
Entry ID: 2128155
Additional Resources
About the Author
Dorcas Hand, MLS, is Director of Libraries at the Annunciation Orthodox School in Houston, TX. She earned her master's in library science from SUNY Albany. She is editor and co-conspirator of the www.studentsneedlibrariesinHISD.org website, an advocacy site in support of Houston ISD librarians. Hand is also editor of Independent School Libraries: Perspectives in Excellence. Her work is available on www.strongschoollibraries.com.
MLA Citation
Hand, Dorcas. "Tell Your Story Every Day. Every Day in Every Possible Way [5:09]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, November 2015, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1987174?learningModuleId=1987183&topicCenterId=2247903.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1987174?learningModuleId=1987183&topicCenterId=2247903
Entry ID: 1987174