Illumination and Transformation - 2010 CAL Conference Exciting Sessions!

What a great conference this year!  The brand new facility, the keynotes, the presentations, the layout of the conference all were fantastic!  Thank you CAL Conference Committee for all of your hard work!

This was my 6th year to attend CAL and my 3rd year to work on the signage for the conference.  Here are the events from which I benefited.

1. Keynote "Beyond Information to Transformation".  It's all about choice, fun, hospitality, no guilt, relationships, community, favorites, tools and simplicity. For more information, click on the linkable title to go to the website by the presentators.
2. Session "Uncover...Discover...and Read" - a digital book talk on teens and tweens books by Brighton 27J Teacher Librarians Tiah Frankish, PVMS and Dawn Lewallen, Stuart Middle School. Check out their blog:  ConsumedByBooks's Blog.
3. Session "Library Advocacy with the Maasai in Residence Program at ThunderRidge High School" - where their library hosted a Maasai warrior from Tanzania for a week of interactive lessons and cultural exchange.  If you want to get in on it, he'll come to your school for a full day for $500.  Contact Paula Busey at ThunderRidge.
4. Keynote "I'm Sorry You Hated This Book:  A Conversation with Censored Author Lauren Myracle" - an Intellectual Freedom best-ever session in my opinion.
5. Session "Unconference within a Conference:  School Librarians and the new Content Standards:  Taking the Lead with 21st Century Skills".  Wow - click on the session linked title to see all of the great information on their CASL wikispaces! 
6. Session "Becoming Anythink - How Rangeview Library District turned everything upside down or at least sideways".  They eliminated fines, thought totally out of the box for Summer Reading, energized themselves into such positive power houses individually and as a group.  I went to this session specifically because in my tours of my new district, I've seen their mobile libraries at our schools.
7. The Colorado Association of School Librarians Board Meeting - At this meeting I joined the Awards Committee and will be doing the publication of this effort through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the like.  We also as a CASL membership are doing a letter writing campaign to publicize the awesome stories going on in our districts through the local newspapers.  Thank you to the CASL Board for preparing all of the collateral material needed to make this easy for us.  This project aligns right in with a project we brainstormed in our District Leadership monthly meeting - marketing our schools and our district by sharing positive stories that are happening everyday in our schools.
8. Session "Libraries:  Are we the center of our community?  John Creighton, public policy researcher, community organizer and St. Vrain Valley School District School Board President, presented his finding from his analysis of public trends and community values and forecast impacts on our institutions. The shifts that are impacting communication, school districts, and politics impact libraries as well.  John's visonary thinking enabled me to see and understand how we need to look at our potential roles for the future differently.  It was a new way of thinking for me and I must say exciting!

All of the session handouts will eventually be available on the CAL Conference Handouts Link.  Check back occasionally so that you can benefit from these great sessions as well.

Did you attend CAL?  What were the"bests" for you?

Book Challenge Gone Wrong?

"YA Authors Rally behind Fired Librarian" is a "talkback article" on The School Library Journal website that seems to show an example of a book challenge gone wrong or is it? We'll never really know what happened, but I sure would hate to be in that position.

The fiasco in this article surely exemplifies why we need accurate, effective Board policies on challenged materials as well as teacher librarians, media clerks, and media techs that know the policy and how to implement it and inform their school staff of the policy.

My first year in the district, I attended a library conference workshop where we role played different book challenge scenarios. At the time it felt sort of silly. Reasonable folks should be able to handle these issues in reasonable ways. But what this article points out is that emotion gets in the way of reason and without a firm grasp of the policy and how to implement it, disaster can strike.

I am so pleased that our Teacher Librarians proactively took on the task of updating our library policies this year (about six months before the superintendent requested that all policies be reviewed and updated). They did an excellent job and the review of these policies at all school levels with other media staff was well reviewed also. I wonder if perhaps though we don't all need to do a little "silly" theater work now to be proactively prepared to implement this policy if it ever becomes necessary?

So much that needs to be done, so little time.