Fill out that Professional Day request...you want to be at NJLA!
The theme of the NJLA 2019 conference challenges participants to “Engage and Inspire” this year. As a school librarian, adopting this motto ensures success and collaboration for the remainder of the school year ahead. Yes, even school librarians must make it a priority to attend the NJLA conference! As an attendee and presenter, and a school librarian, I have gained much from the years making the drive to this annual conference. It will be time well spent away from school as you learn strategies to stay on the cutting-edge, participate in advocacy, and build relationships across the state.
Keeping It Current
Makers, therapy dogs, and innovative programming. Keeping current is one of the ways that school librarians remain dynamic in their profession. Most programming that a public library does, especially when it comes to Children’s and Teen’s, can easily be adapted for a school setting. Bringing in guests for book talks, testing out new tech toys, and empowering young people as creators all have a solid place in a school day. In fact, empowering students as creators, collaborators, and explorers is a cornerstone of the newly updated AASL National School Library standards. These are the themes that come up in the NJLA conference sessions, led by librarian experts who have already done a lot of the troubleshooting so that your adaptation can be as smooth as possible. Additionally, attending conference gives school librarians ways to discover and participate in collaborative initiatives such as the Garden State Book Awards or Read Across America activities. Don’t forget, NJLA’s Children’s Services Section and Young Adult Services Section are heavily represented at the conference. The librarians who make up these sections are often in the community serving very important patrons - your students!
Securing A Voice
Attendance at NJLA ensures that school librarians have a presence and a voice within the association. While New Jersey school librarians’ unique curricular goals (and more!) can be achieved through the guidance of NJASL, it is NJLA that is the voice for librarians and libraries of all types, throughout the state. A day trip to NJLA will leave you feeling invigorated and empowered by your chosen profession. In fact, NJLA has recently taken significant steps for the protection and celebration of school libraries: forming a School Libraries Taskforce, founding the Unlock Student Potential initiative, instating the I Love My School Librarian campaign, and fighting for state legislation that would put certified school library media specialists back in schools. NJLA is also behind new legislation that would require Information Literacy skills be taught in schools as a required curriculum. However, without school librarians to communicate their needs and contribute their expertise, these initiatives cannot succeed.
Building Bridges
You are not confined to your geographical region when it comes to making connections with other librarians. There is no reasons that as a school librarian you should shy away from making practical connections with public libraries outside your county. For example, my school library is located in Bergen County and through my network of people that I met via time spent at NJLA , I was able to borrow maker materials from a library in Middlesex County, with permission of course. The materials were actually not being used by this library at the moment but were completely shiny and new to me! Being able to try out these materials in my school library with my students let me show my principal the value of them on student learning. I was successful in obtaining my own materials in the budget the following school year - all thanks to a professional librarian connection! The message here is that networking via conferences at NJLA opens up your professional world, with the potential to benefit your students and maximize their exposure.
School librarians know that district-mandated PD is often irrelevant, uninteresting, and/or limited in scope. Rarely does it truly meet the needs of a school librarian because more often than not, their supervisors are not librarians! Attending NJLA helps you feel like you are part of a bustling city, instead of a lonely island. Signing up for an email list, joining a roundtable discussion, or laughing it up at a social event all lead to significant opportunities to better your professional practice. Attending NJLA will not only leave you engaged and inspired, it will leave you with one new thing you can try in school tomorrow. So track down an interoffice envelope and put that Professional Day request form in today. See you at the conference!
Maureen Carroll is a School Librarian at Hackensack Middle School in Bergen County, serving students in grades 5 through 8. Nominated as Teacher of the Year in 2016, Maureen also leads the Future Ready committee at her school. A co-recipient of the NJLA Amy Job Partnership Award, Maureen is thankful every day for her fantastic partnership with her local public Teen’s and Children's librarians as they work to find creative ways to serve the children of Hackensack together.