From the wiki home page:

The objective of the College Readiness Dialogue is to provide an open, relaxed, and informal dialogue between high school and academic librarians on students’ college readiness (information skills).  How prepared are our high school seniors for college research?  What strengths do they take with them during this transition?  And, in what areas do they need support?  What can we do to help them achieve success?

On October 15, 2010 over 90 librarians from high schools and academic libraries from the greater Kansas City area met at Blue Valley High School in Stillwell, Kansas, to share ideas about preparing high school students for the experience of doing college-level research in academic libraries.

They are using the wiki to build and share resources from their meeting.  They want to keep the conversation going.  You can join the wiki to add things you might have to support their projcect!

I’ve also come away learning just as much as if I had traveled to a convention center or hotel.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I still love to travel and attend conferences for that face to face connection.  But, webinars certainly have their place, too.

Paul from P21 sent this note last night:

“I’ve already posted a discussion thread on the Cyber Summit (http://www.weareteachers.com/community/p21-cyber-summit) with your webinar title, so please feel free to post additional ideas, questions for discussion or links there for the community—As I said, we hope the conversation continues beyond the temporal confines of the 60 minute webinar. In that discussion post, you’ll find a PDF of your slides as well as a link to the online recording of your webinar.”

The new adventure last night was that I was one of three co-presenters for the webinar.  I’d always been on the receiving end and so it was quite a switch to be on the other side of the slides.   I will have to give a great shout out to Paul with the P21 folks.  He made sure the technology worked and was pretty easy to use.  He walked us through every step of the way and his help was invaluable.  My co-presenter, Melissa Johnston who is a Doctoral Student from Florida State University and Vince Barnes (my principal).  The time went fast as did my voice (I talk REALLY fast when I’m nervous sometimes).   I think we helped provide a little clearer picture of what P21 Skills look like at the elementary school age.

Our webinar was part of the P21 Cyber Summit this week.  Each day for the last couple of weeks P21 had anywhere from two to three webinars going on.  I know I was most honored for them to invite me to be a part of this.  I’m also glad that they archived all of these webinars because I wasn’t able to attend very many.  It will be good to go back and listen to some that I missed.

This last week I got to thinking about our dinner meetings, but in a little bit bigger picture.  I had a few thoughts after our meals….

1.)  Most of the time our group includes folks at different grade level configurations.  But, I think what I find the most interesting is that each one of us operates our programs differently.  The program we’ve created is based on the needs of students and teachers.  We’ve assessed how the library media program can be such a vital part of the school, and then worked to implement that plan.  One of the things I’ve noticed is school districts continue to move to “we all have to be the same” which I often think of as the “cookie cutter” approach.  I obviously have very strong ideas about what I think an elementary school library program should be.  I’m typically not very bashful when it comes to sharing how we do things and why.  I guess so much so that our music teacher once bought me a sign that said, “I’m not a control freak, I just happen to know what is best for everyone!”  To be honest, I’ve probably had that feeling, too.  But, my aha this week was that while what I do works for my building, but if I had to move to another building I might have to really adjust the program based on the students needs.  No matter what I do, I’m never going to have the same program as a friend of mine in the district.  Our personalities, our principals, our staffs, and our kids are just totally different…and that’s ok.  The important thing is we took the fundamental elements of the library program and then made those work for our schools.

2.) One of the most valuable parts of our meetings is the sharing and swapping and networking.  There are so many ideas floating around and we steal from each other all the time.  Even being different levels, we tend to be able to see adaptations we can make as necessary.  We also need that opportunity to vent a little and no one really understands your problems like another librarian does.  Our library friends are just too important to not make sure we stay connected!

3.) People ask the return on the money they pay to belong to national and state professional organizations.  I can’t begin to put a price tag on the friendships I’ve developed.  I don’t know that without belonging to our state organization, that I ever would have had a reason to meet any of the talented librarians I had dinner with last week.  Our initial connection was our work in the organization and from there it led to some of my most cherished friendships.  I can’t even begin to equate the value into a dollar amount.  It is just one more reason why I think those membership dollars are well spent.

So now we wait a little while and then we schedule another time for dinner again.  Until then I may just be stuck making my own dinner at home.  Guess that would be one more benefit to our get togethers – I don’t have to cook!

As I was thinking this week, I realized that the Indy 500 is a great analogy to the race for library media specialist working collaboratively with teachers. Sometimes we wish that collaboration was a quick endeavor like qualifications and everyone wants to get in the big dance, but unfortunately it takes time and persistent and going the full distance in the race to get teachers to work with us.

Sometimes there are many factors like the weather that are out of our control. Things like schedules, budgets, and time are often obstacles that we can’t control. Just like on race day, the weather is never a sure bet. But, we have to look for that window in the the weather when we can make it possible. Sometimes it might be a comment a teacher makes in the lunch room, or it might be a request for books that we can use to spark a conversations about what teachers are doing in their classrooms.

As we work collaboratively with teachers, sometimes we have to take pit stops to evaluate what is working right and what alternations can we make along the way to make the lesson/project more successful for students. Do we need more resources (more fuel)? Do we need to change resources (new tires)? Maybe we need to take a minute to reteach (realign the wing)? The great thing is just like in a pit crew, by working together the LMS and teacher have two people that can work to make the project more successful.

Sometimes our best projects hit the wall with a loud crash. Hitting the wall often ends the race for that project, but it shouldn’t end our attempts to collaborate. We need to take the car back to the garage, repair the machine, and try again at the next race. We need to take time to reflect on what caused the wreck. Was it our resources? Was is the project? Was it the rubric? Was it the timing? Was it our lack of teaching students the skills they needed? Did we not have students interested?

The Indianapolis 500 is called the Greatest Spectacle in Racing and we should strive that our collaborative projects provide the interest and motivation for students to want to be involved in the project. We should hopefully pass along our excitement that we have when we watch those car in the battle for the lead. As LMSs and teachers we hope we can help guide our students down towards those checker flagged. We can’t drive the car for them, but we can help provide the resources, support, training, and skills to help them get there.

As we win races with teachers, other teams of teachers will want to join on the bandwagon. 500 miles is a long gruely race, but the rewards at the end make it worth all the effort. Collaboration is much the same way. It is a lot of work for teachers, LMSs, but the rewards and opportunities it provides for students is well worth it.