Tell Your Story Every Day
Course
Student & Parent Voices Echo Loudly [5:25]
We need to look at parents, students, and the nearby community because they're also really important to you. If we can convince our parents to step up, individually and collectively, it certainly helps us tremendously.
Traditional library resources are certainly at the core of what we do, but a couple of years ago, I served on the ASL National School Library Program at the Year Committee and, in that capacity, I visited Swan Valley High School library in Michigan where she keeps peanut butter and jelly in her drawer for the students who come too early for breakfast or have to stay too late, waiting for their ride home. It's a very diverse community and there are many students who need that support. PB and J is pretty cheap, but it makes the library be the core of that school and I was just floored how much effect that small thing made.
In Beaverton, Oregon, there has recently been a crisis that parents stepped up and turned around. One parent said, "If it's to be, it's up to me." If we can convince our parents to step up, individually and collectively, it certainly helps us tremendously. Campus communities can never assume that somebody else is going to take care of it for them. If you can get as many of your students' parents, teachers to speak up, it will help you in the long run. Don't wait for a crisis. Get them to do it all the time to stave off the possibility of a crisis.
There are some materials on the ASL website. There's an advocacy toolkit and a crisis toolkit. On the Students Need Libraries website, there's a parent page and a teacher page we talked about. Deborah Kachel has posted for the Pennsylvania School Library Association, a PDF for parents. These are all just incredibly helpful resources for you.
There's also an article recently in Forbes Magazine. That's not usually a place we cite in library circles, but Mark Moran who wrote it, used to be a high-level businessman and he quit that life and opened Dulcinea, which is a suite of search engines for the K-12 world. In Forbes, he wrote an article called Young Learners Need Librarians, Not Just Google. Share this with your community because some people don't realize there is that quote, "The internet is out there so what do we need a library for?" Well, they need us more than ever.
Parents need to know that you, the librarian, are a horizontal teacher. We talked about this a little bit before, but I'm going to say it again. You are able to connect all the different content areas, to blend them together, and also say to the child, "What are you interested in?" That is so important. This is from the California School Library Association video. Honoring the students' interests, as well as all the curricular needs, it's essential that parents are aware of how much of that you do because that is what teaches us as people to love learning.
Challenge your students to help move the library forward. Give them a sense of ownership. Start a student advisory committee, even maker space option, student-driven book genre or movie promotions. There's a hundred or more creative solutions to this question, but get the kids to take ownership and they will talk about it to the principal, to the teachers, even to the district if somebody's around, and to their parents. This builds your support and you haven't really done anything except what you want to do anyway.
The parents know their students' enthusiasms. Start a newsletter that you send to parents and the campus community. It doesn't have to be every week, but maybe every couple of weeks, once a month, something. Talk about what's happening in the library and offer them some information that they might not have about databases that are available, about new books that have come in, about how you're working in a specific project, author visits, authors that are coming to local bookstores, anything, but let them know that you're a voice for all of that information and you can be counted on to keep it coming.
Ask students and parents to randomly mention to teachers, the principal, PTA leaders, the school board, how much the library matters in their success. Ask for editorials in a student newspaper or even in the community paper. It seems like we shouldn't have to ask, but that's not true. We do have to ask. We have to remind people that there are folks out there who don't understand why we matter, and so we need to keep the word around that we're doing really strong, education practice, pedagogy, on behalf of student achievement and success, and even those pesky test scores, yes.
A powerful statement from a parent is recounted in this lesson: "If it's to be, it's up to me." Bringing more parents to this side of the advocacy fence is possible and essential in today's schools. There are two primary components of this work: informing and demonstrating to parents the library's role in their children's learning, and then encouraging them to share this understanding with others. Strengthening student ownership in the library is another important dimension to building both parents and students' support.
Read "How Parents Can Advocate for Quality School Library Programs," found in the Resources below. This document offers numerous pathways for building advocates among students' parents. Select one strategy to implement in the short term (say, 4–6 weeks) and one to implement on a long-term basis (perhaps this semester or school year). What steps will you take to begin?
Kachel, Debra. "How Parents Can Advocate for Quality School Library Programs." Pennsylvania School LIbrarian Association. https://www.psla.org/assets/docs/advocacy/howparentscanbeadvocates-handout.pdf.
MLA Citation
Morris, Rebecca J. "Tell Your Story Every Day: Cultivate Parent Advocates." School Library Connection, September 2017, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1987176?learningModuleId=1987183&topicCenterId=2247903.
Entry ID: 2128159
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. Student & Parent Voices Echo Loudly [5:25]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, November 2015, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1987176?learningModuleId=1987183&topicCenterId=2247903.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1987176?learningModuleId=1987183&topicCenterId=2247903
Entry ID: 1987176