Future Ready Librarians

Future Ready Librarians is an expansion of the Future Ready initiative aimed at raising awareness among district and school leaders about the valuable role librarians can play in supporting the Future Ready goals of their school and district.

Two guiding questions are central to Future Ready Librarians.

1. How can librarians and libraries support Future Ready schools?
2. How can librarians and libraries become more Future Ready? 

• Future Ready Librarians Press Release
• Future Ready Librarians Fact Sheet 

Information from Future Ready Schools

images from: futureready.org

Your School Progress Plan (SPP): Connecting to and Supporting the Vision for Your School

The School Progress Plan (SPP) outlines goals and key actions for your school over the course of the year that are aligned to your school's vision. This translates the vision in to actions that can and will be implemented in order to improve the school's effectiveness at meeting the vision and goals of BCPS as outlined in Blueprint 2.0. 

How can you support your school's SPP in your library program?

• Examine your School Progress Plan. What are some Key Actions in Reading, Math and Climate that you can identify that you can support in your role as a School Library Media Specialist in the school library media center?
• List nine Key Actions on your Supporting SPP: Planning/ Monitoring sheet as well as circle or highlight them on your SPP document. You should have three Key Actions for each area: Reading, Math, and Climate. (Download a copy)

 

• After listing nine Key Actions, brainstorm strategies that you can do to support the Key Actions in each area (Reading, Math, and Climate) in your role as a Library Media Specialist in your school library media center. Think about what you will do and can implement this year:
• as a teacher/staff member (as a Library Media Specialist)
• as a member of a team/ department/ grade level (As an Instructional Partner in collaboration with teachers/ staff)
• monitoring (the documentation and data that you will review as evidence of the change in teaching and learning)  
• After analyzing your SPP and reflecting upon the actions that you can take to support it, use your chart to note any areas of difficulty. Move to the area of the room where you had the most difficulty with developing strategies and work with the group. If you did not have difficulty and can help in an area, please move to that area. 
• brainstorm strategies with your group that can be aligned to your school's SPP.

NEXT STEPS:

• Check out the aggregated responses from our PD brainstorming charts. 

• Add strategies to your own  Supporting SPP Planning/Monitoring chart. 

• Be prepared to return to your school and share your plans with your administrators and teacher leaders, even if you are not a part of the school leadership team. 
• Consider how you can document your progress with the supporting strategies that you have developed.
• Take time to share your progress with your school community. 

Connect to the Four Domains:

1c. Designing Coherent instruction

2b. Establishing a culture for learning

3c. Engaging students in learning

4d. Participating in a professional community

Connect to Future Ready Libraries: 

Grading and Reporting Review

On September 21, 2016, we conducted a Librarian Town Hall on Grading and Reporting. During this meeting, we discussed the new grading and reporting guidelines. 

In your groups, there are people who have attended and learned at this meeting, grouped with those who did not attend. 

• In your groups, take time to share highlights and take-aways from the meeting with your colleagues. 
• Using the BCPS Grading and Reporting Procedures Manual, review the Guiding Practice area assigned to your group. 
• Group 1: Guiding Practice 1 (pp. 10-13)
• Group 2: Guiding Practice 2 (pp. 14-18)
• Group 3: Guiding Practice 3 (pp. 19-21)
• Group 4: Guiding Practice 4 (pp. 22-26)
• Group 5: Guiding Practice 5 (pp. 27-29)

• Complete the Guiding Practices Chart as you have a discussion at your table. (Download a copy)

 

• After reviewing the assigned Guiding Practice, in your group, use the chart paper to write down your major take-aways, how it looks in the library and any lingering questions your group has. Be prepared to share your responses with the whole group.

(click image for a copy of the BCPS Grading and Reporting Procedures manual)

Connect to the Four Domains:

1f. Designing student assessments

2b. Establishing a culture for learning

3d. Using assessment in instruction

3e. Demonstrating flexibility and responsiveness

4b. Maintaining accurate records. 

Connect to Future Ready Libraries: 

SLJ Leadership Summit Take-Aways

Keynote Speakers: 

• Karim Abouelnaga, founder and CEO, Practice Makes Perfect

• Shaun David Hutchinson, author

Superintendent's Panel: 

Announcements 

• SLOs: New, approved SLO examples were provided via email on Friday, October 21, 2016. These examples will be on the Office of Staff Relations Site soon. 
• Team BCPS Reading Relay: The English Language Arts Office and the Office of Digital Learning are collaborating in this initiative. Please support and promote this initiative to your entire school community and have students create book talks and book reviews, uploading them to Destiny for others to view. There will be a contest for submissions that will be announced soon. Winning submissions will be recorded by BCPS TV and featured on the BCPS Website.

Reading Relay Promo from Baltimore County Public Schools on Vimeo.

• Professional Learning Opportunities:  We will offer the Maintaining a High Quality School Library Collection Workshop on the following dates:

• Wednesday, November 9, 2016 @ Franklin MS, 4:30 p.m to 6:30 p.m.

• Thursday, November 10, 2016 @ Essesx ES, 4:30 p.m to 6:30 p.m. 

• League of Innovative Schools: We are being featured at this conference- "Innovative Libraries".

• Joppa View Elementary

• Stemmers Run Middle

• Randallstown High School Independent Research Course students (panel) 

• Destiny support: Please continue to email destiny@bcps.org for support with Destiny related issues

• Digital Citizenship: Please work with your STAT teacher and classroom teachers to inform them of the D.C. skills that you are working on with your students, as well as model and support your school community with the strategies for being a good digital citizenship throughout the building. 

• BCPL/SAIL: Please continue to support the SAIL initiative by providing studnets with SAIL card applications. 

• BCPS/BCPL Joint PD: Save the date- Tuesday, January 17, 2017 

• Battle of the Books (in conjunction with BCPL): If you are interesting in having a team participate in this event, please contact your School Outreach Coordinator at your schools local BCPL branch by October 31,2016.

• Library Media Advisory Group: If you would like to be a part of this voluntary group please complete the LMS Advisory Group Survey. This is a leadership opportunity that will allow you to be a part of discussions on library policies, such as Holds and Fountas & Pinnell. Your participation supports Domain 4: Professional Responsibilities.