If the start of school this last week wasn’t exciting enough, I also had the chance this weekend to travel to Henderson, NV (just outside of Las Vegas) for the Nevada Library Association Conference. The Nevada School and Children Librarians’ Section of the NLA is an affiliate of American Association of School Librarians (AASL). My visit was part of the AASL Presidential Travel Rotation. Many years back, it was decided to help connect the national organization with the state and local efforts, the AASL President, Past-President, and President-Elect would travel to the various states. The rotation ensures that each state gets a chance for a visit from AASL about every 5 years. As part of the visit, I got a chance to highlight some of the important projects and opportunities AASL is working on currently. Below is a quick bullet list of what I shared. More complete information is on the AASL website.
- The AASL Fall Forum will be in Portland, Oregon on Nov. 5th-6th.
- AASL has created in partnership with Britannica an online planning guide and assessment tool to compliment Empowering Learners
- Nancy Everhart, current AASL President, is visiting school libraries all over the country during her presidential year. She is documenting her visitings on her website – OutstandingSchoolLibraries.org. She even has a theme song called Check It Out. You can download the video, the music, the sheet music, and create your own video music. Nancy would love for other schools to try it out and then submit those videos to her.
- AASL’s new list of the Best 25 Websites for Teaching and Learning is available on the AASL website.
- The 15th AASL National Conference will be in Minneapolis on October 27th-30th, 2011. The theme is “Turning the Page” and the Concurrent Session program deadline is November 1st
- Lastly, and probably most important, to continue to be aware of and follow-up action with the re-authorization of the ESEA act. We want school libraries in that legislation, so we need to make sure our representatives in Washington make it happen. When you see postings on the AASL Forum, etc. asking you to make contact, don’t wait, don’t assume someone else will do it for you, just do it!!!
I got to spend the rest of the day enjoying the conference. They had some great sessions about dealing with change and adversity! I enjoyed the opportunity to go to Nevada and look forward to visiting other states over the next three years.
Tags: AASL · AASL President 2011-2012 · American Association of School Librarians · conferences · Nevada Library Association · Professional DevelopmentNo Comments