Hey everybody, we are back and I am here with my friend Heather. This is gonna be really interesting. I'm really looking forward to this. So, but I'm getting ahead of myself as I usually do. Let me step back and say, Heather, welcome. Why don't you take a second to introduce yourself? Let folks know where you're at. thanks so much. Hey, everyone. My name is Heather Horner. I am a library coordinator in the North Texas area. I work for a mid-sized district of 52 schools.
And so that's where I'm at. I've been doing it for, gosh, admin for this is my sixth year in admin and librarians since 2008 in education since for 23 or 24 years, somewhere around there. 20-year club, love it. That's awesome. So what I love is usually where we've got school librarians here, and you have been a school librarian, but now you have moved sort of to the side of that a little bit, and you're looking at it from a little bit of a different perspective.
And I think that's gonna add a real interesting dimension to what we're gonna talk about. But before we get there, why don't you take a second and tell us, like, how did you end up in school librarianship? Like, what was your journey to get into the library? I don't have like a super wonderful emotional story at all. It was all logical and practical.
So I was a fourth grade teacher, started out with social studies and did reading language arts and social studies and writing at the time that they were separated out. So I did that for six and a half years and I knew that I loved teaching kids, but I was a little tired of the constant testing as you know, Texas. is responsible for No Child Left Behind, so we do lots of testing here.
And so I just, I decided that I didn't really want to be part of that system anymore, but I still wanted to be with kids. So that's when I decided to pursue my librarian degree. Yeah, I wish I had been looking at it from that perspective, because that is absolutely 100 % like what just made me want, no, that's not true. I wanted to get in the library for a lot of reasons, but man, the testing is such a drag on what good education should be. it burns my biscuits.
But anyway, we'll fix education another night for tonight. So now that you are doing this as a district coordinator and you're kind of looking at multiple libraries and multiple schools, you're kind of seeing things maybe a little bit differently, would you say, than when you were in library? Yeah, yeah. So we had kind of conversed a little bit about some really interesting stuff that you're doing.
And I was so fascinated by the way that you were helping your librarians sort of collect and use data, because you've actually got them doing their quarterly reports, right? Yes, we do it every nine weeks. Yes. which yeah, quarter. When you say it is nine weeks, for some reason it sounds so much shorter, yeah. So you have them basically, there's some specific information that you're asking them to look for.
So can you maybe walk through a little bit of like, how did you end up thinking this was something that needed to be done? And then maybe we can talk about what actually is in them. But how did you arrive at like, we need this? So I should be clear, I have a really, really, really wonderful director. She is also a certified librarian. She actually used to be a librarian in this school district. And her name is Alejandra Isais. She is wonderful.
I would say the assistant captain or second in command, whatever you want, assistant principal. But she is the one who helps. She is my thought partner and we happen to just really sink well on what we want our librarians to do and what we want the department to be able to accomplish for our students. We serve about just over 37,000 students. We're the sixth most diverse district in Texas.
And when I think about diverse, it's really along all markers, including socioeconomic and all identity markers. We have a very diverse district that requires a lot of different approaches and a lot of different needs. And so that's the background about our district and about who my wonderful boss is. cannot say that I'm, you know, this is all me because it's not.
But also when I was a campus librarian, gosh, for however many years it was, I think it was 11 years, I was a campus librarian, both elementary and high school. I was also required to do a data report. And we did hours once every six weeks. And so I had already been used to, as a practice, gathering data. And then whenever I came to work for this district, they used to collect data. And then there was a brief pause.
So then when Alejandro and I started working together, we're like, hey, we need to go ahead and start tracking some data.
This really helps with helping to... not only understand the jobs that we are doing and what I say we, the librarians, are doing, but it also helps to contextualize so that you can put it in a nice package for whoever you're talking to in your school community, whether it's bragging about it and showing off, which we all should be doing, whether it's talking about the types of
services and how we are helping our students grow and learn, or whether it's an advocacy where you need to help someone understand the absolute vital role of a school librarian. for students. And so because of that, we also, doing some more name dropping, we have a really, really great library director, school library director PLN up here in North Texas. And so there are several districts where we meet on a monthly basis.
And so we were able to talk to other library directors and coordinators and lead librarians and ask, what are you doing? And so what we did is we basically worked with Mary Woodard, who used to be the director in Mesquite and then the now director Emma McDonald, and asked if we could utilize what they already had because we liked how they had it categorized. Yeah. So I'm going to jump in for one sec, because I'm curious.
you went to your colleagues in Texas, were other people already like, is this sort of a thing that Texas school librarians kind of regularly do? Is they're already collecting data and putting out regular reports? say yes, just because I've been going to TLA for so long. I used to present as a campus librarian how to gather data and how to use it effectively. And there are other campus librarians and other school districts to do it as well.
Even if it's not a required thing, I would say in terms of best practices and pedagogy and what you often will see at TLA, I would say 100%. It's something that's a core part of what we do and that we utilize as a tool for advocacy, for sure. that's great.
mean, because I know a lot of people talk about doing it because they know it's a good thing to do, but I don't personally, I don't know a lot of people who have it as like a requirement, which I think is actually a really great idea, especially once you start breaking down, like some of the stuff you've got your school librarians looking at. think everybody's going to see why this is such a valuable tool, but I can also, I know coming at it from the.
teacher in the classroom side and the school librarian who's got bosses above them saying, hey, here's some stuff to do. Like I get that that can sometimes feel a little bit, boy, more stuff on the plate. But the way you guys are using this data is really awesome. sorry, I was just, it kind of got in my head. was like, I wonder if this is something that Texas is really like 10 steps ahead of us all on that you're doing this as a requirement.
You will usually find at least one session, if not more, on how to collect data and how to use it as a tool to communicate, advocate, and market what you're doing. basically breaking down what your job is and how it impacts students. That's great. I mean, like you said, that's something we need to be doing all the time because so many people are so confused about what school librarians do. So when you can bring them the data, it just makes that conversation so much easier.
Well, and I really like how you mentioned how much work it is and that, it's asking the librarians to do something else in addition to the 200,000 million fires that are addressed or whatever you want to call them, opportunities, problems, whatever you want to call them. know, campus librarians are incredibly busy individuals each and every day, and you are pulled in so many different directions.
But if the time is spent on collecting this data and we haven't organized it by type of questions, we try to utilize the quarterly data not only as a department, which we definitely use it with our superiors, but we also try to give ideas and provide continuing professional learning surrounding our data. Mmm. our librarians can utilize it themselves. We always tell them, yes, this is comprehensive. Yes, this is a time suck.
But there is no point in you gathering this data just because we're asking you for it. We need to be able to use it. And we try to simplify as best as we can for them and ways that they can utilize it. Because if you're to do it, you need to use it.
Yeah, well, and I think too that the stuff, and we'll get to what the stuff is, but I think that you're putting in the work on the front end to gather the data, but then you're able to utilize it to sort of save yourself time on the far side of the process. So yeah, I mean, you're gonna put in the time somewhere. You can put it in after the fact when you're just trying to like, no, that didn't work right, what's going on, how do I fix this?
Or you can put it on the front end and say, let me see what's actually happening, and then I can figure out what the mechanism I need to put in place is. to solve whatever this problem is that I maybe even didn't realize existed. So it's really, I think it's really great. I really, really do. So speaking of, why don't you give us some of the highlights of what are the sort of the kinds of things that you're asking your librarians to pull together?
Okay, so the first thing we have is a program administrator. So basically these are all of the things that you have to do to make sure that your library is running efficiently. you know, it is number of books added, number of books ordered, library hours, how many hours it was closed and for what purpose. total amount of circulation, PLCs, attendance. So all these things that have to do with the actual functionality of the library and of you as the professional. And that actually is one.
So we have five total domains in our library evaluation tools. So the program administrator is one whole domain that kind of speaks to some of that. That's such, I would love to have that data to look at myself.
Like, and I, obviously I need to take the time to start recording it more, but what a great tool that would be to be able to look back and say like, yeah, you know, I felt like I wasn't really, you know, understanding this particular thing that I was trying to do, but I also didn't spend any time with my PLC. So maybe that's, you know, maybe I'm seeing the hole that I need to fill here just by looking at the data.
Well, I think something that you can often correlate and sometimes that I look at personally, whenever I look at this data from each of my librarians and I do look at it every quarter and I do do my own math and my own charts and all sorts of things. I think it's really, really important. So for example, if you notice he didn't circulate as many books and you're not quite sure why, like maybe it wasn't a quarter that had a ton of testing, what's going on?
Well, maybe you should look at the number of hours that maybe the library was closed and you had to push into classes. Mmm. the classes, yes, you're still serving students, but the space itself is not open for point of need services. Or is it, know, for whatever reason, maybe you went to, maybe you weren't available because you went to a work conference.
So those are just little things like that, where if your principal notices, why'd your circulation go down, you have information that may happen to explain why the circulation went down. Right. Hmm. That's really... absolutely. Yeah. I was open 30 more hours this quarter than I was last quarter. And that's an opportunity to have a positive brainstorming session with your administration. How can we make sure this is happening more often, where I'm open more often?
Yeah, again, this is what I love about this idea of making sure you've got that data, because like you're saying, it opens up these possibilities for conversations that can just add to your program and make your space more useful for the students, make it more efficient for you so that you don't have to spend as much time trying to figure out what worked and what didn't. I would love, I'm already starting to make a list in my head, a mental catalog of all the things I need to start writing down.
Okay. other sections, if you want me just briefly to go over that, we have personalized and self-directed learning. And so basically that tracks like how many point in these students are coming in. And so we track what time of day, before school, after school, during school, how many checkout classes, how many instructions on library resources. So databases, it can be eBooks, literacy instruction. So personalized and self-directed.
The self-directed is obviously, students coming in and seeking information or no matter what it may be there for, right? And then the personalized is like, go ahead. I'm curious, how do you keep track of which kids are coming in and self-directing and or how do you know like what time, it sounded like you mentioned it, maybe I just misheard, that you're also paying attention to what time of day like stuff is checking out too. How do you keep track of those elements?
So our secondary schools have a Google form and they have an extra device that the students must sign in and sign out. And if you could think about it from a secondary perspective, it's also a safety and security thing. And so I'm sure most school districts, no matter where they are, have safety and security or policy. So if you work at a large school, like I used to, I used to work at a school that had almost 5,000 students, I would often have administrators say, hey, have you seen this kid?
Or I'd have a teacher say, hey, I sent this kid to the library and I can say they never showed up because I go check in the sign in sheet. Now with our elementary campuses, and we do have a couple of large campuses, they mostly do a tally sheet.
And of course, you know, at the elementary level and at some of our middle schools and junior highs as well, the traffic flow and student autonomy and how often they can go to the library on their own is a little bit different because we are dealing with age appropriate policies. From what understand, our elementary, they just pretty much do like a little tally sheet or they might even have the kids sign in. We just basically tell them whatever works for you is what works for you.
We also tell them, especially if it's at a large school or if you get interrupted, your numbers that you're able to record are probably going to be smaller than the actual amount that you're serving. Because there's always that issue. Maybe you have multiple entry points into your library. Mm-hmm. a couple of kids snuck in while a teacher needed to grab you and you just didn't happen to see it or think to count. Things like that do happen.
So we don't expect precise numbers, but we do have mechanisms in place to be as precise as we can. That's a great, Again, just all these things that are popping in my head because I've got students popping in all day long to use the print station. And sometimes I've got to go and help them with that. So I'm not doing something else, but I'm not keeping track of how many times are they using that station. That'd be good data to have.
And yet, well, now I know what I'm doing first tomorrow is making a check-in sheet for my students. All right. know what is pretty typical to public, well, the public libraries around here, at least, I don't want to speak for all public libraries, but they do have counters for people who come in. so the public libraries are, at least the ones that I know of, are tracking how many patrons they are serving, regardless of reason. I don't see why we shouldn't be doing that as well.
And it really helps to explain, again, your impact, whether it happens to be with relationships, trust, Mm-hmm. extracurricular clubs you may be doing. It doesn't really matter what the purpose is. It's demonstrating that your library and you are valuable to the school and students need it and they don't need it just for books. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Man, I'm now I'm creating a project in my head that I'm to talk to my tech teacher about like, Hey, how do we set up a little eye that's going to track who's, you know, track how many people are coming through the door and throw it in a spreadsheet for me. So I have times that'd be great. boy. Okay. So, sorry, I keep dragging this off topic, but this is really fascinating stuff. It's just, it's got my mind exploding with possibilities. So we've got program administration.
We've got, self-service based sorta kinda. What's next? So after self-directed and then personalized, which is more of your literacy instruction, we then have inquiry instruction. we really, really like, we know, as I told you before, AASL is one of my favorite standards to look at and inquire. I think you would be hard pressed to not see some sort of district statement or graduate profile that doesn't mention the different facets of inquiry. Mm-hmm.
critical thinking, analysis, problem solving, it's going to be somewhere in your district statement. And so that's why we decided to make an entire section just for inquiry instruction. And so what goes into that can be makerspaces, it can be digital citizenship, but it can also be your classic information literacy slash research slash inquiry cycle lessons as well. we...
We find that to be incredibly important to make sure that we're tracking that because inquiry is really the, gosh, I'm not thinking my words right now, but that's what you want all your students to be able to leave your doors with when they finally leave public education, the ability to utilize inquiry. Yeah, yeah. man.
I mean, school librarians, I know school librarians always say, we are the ones who are really capable when it comes to teaching those inquiry skills and yet having the data to show, look at how we do it and look at how much it's impacting the populace at large. That's a great piece of information to have in your hand. Absolutely, especially if you already know that your district has some sort of statement or infographic and a lot of them do.
know, graduate profiles have been quite popular for a while. That's an easy way to show that you're meeting your district initiative, which I think is really important when you're trying to define to administration, campus or upper. Well, what do they do to help contribute to the district's mission? Well, other than literacy, we also do this. Yeah, other than the two main things that you need. Right, right.
But I think a lot of people don't think about inquiry being in the library because I think inquiry is sometimes difficult for even adults to really truly be able to define and describe what it looks like when their students are doing it successfully. Like you just know it when you see it sometimes. Right, right. But it's a great point that you make too, that it is in so many mission statements and vision statements for schools and districts.
And I know that we think about it as a mission of the library, but we're also serving the whole populace. And it is something that the whole district is working on. So that's another plank in the platform of saying, here's why you need a school library. Here's why you need a school librarian. I'm all about correlation where I can make it. definitely. Okay, so we're three in. What's four? All right, transformative and enriching experiences.
So basically in short, these are your community engagement activities, whether it be your students, your parents, your teachers, special events, any clubs that you may do. It's basically anything and everything that addresses some sort of your community. And so... That's how we describe that. And so, yeah, our book fair goes in there because that's a big literacy push.
you know, literacy night, anything you do for Teentober, if you have a virtual author visit, something like that's where all that stuff goes, because I think those take so much effort and take so much work. And often you're having to collaborate with a lot of people if you're lucky to really help pull it off. Some of us, and I was one of these two, had to do it all on my own.
But I think it's really worth it to go ahead and gather that to help encapsulate like, yeah, I'm also doing community engagement and it's both interior and exterior. Another thing that I forgot to mention is also professional learning for staff. So we count staff for the campus. We tend to put professional learning as professionals to other librarians or say in a more formalized setting. We tend to put that in our leadership bucket.
we try to It's really community engagement of all types is really probably the easiest way to say that. Okay, I love that. I, again, that's a thing that I've seen a couple of librarians really successfully kind of build in programs for their staff as well as for the students. And that's such a great way to build those connections, the rapport, get those collaborations going. But it's something that I think the librarian is sort of uniquely positioned to be able to do.
So it's great that you are encouraging your school librarians to be thinking about when you're doing that, because sometimes it's like somebody's standing at the copier and you have a conversation with them and that can actually lead to a lot of different stuff. you know, throwing that check mark on, yep, did one of those today. Like that's a, that's a great thing.
And for a lot of these transformative and enriching experiences, nobody knows how much work goes into it, but the moment you stop doing it, or you decide you're not gonna do it anymore, parents, I mean, you may not have the same amount of parent involvement as others, but sometimes parents will complain and upper administration will notice, your teachers, mean, everyone starts to notice.
And so this way you can even start to put in, we don't have this documented, but if you wanted to keep track of how many hours you dedicated to, a big event that was community engagement. That would be worthwhile as well. Like, yeah, we will still want to do this. I can't do this on my own anymore, though. I would really, really love this help. So this is obviously valuable to the school. Is there a way we could commit it?
We could create a small committee to make sure that this is we can continue to grow it, you know, use all the buzzwords that you need to that help your administration to see the value in you not having to do it on your own all the time. Just because you're really, really good at it doesn't mean that you need to continue to do it. Sometimes it's okay to say like, I'm good at this and I love doing this, but I'm tired. No, I think that that's really, really valuable as well.
Yeah, well, and I think it's valuable in multiple senses because yes, you need the rest sometimes. Like you can only go, you can only burn the candle at both ends for so long before they meet in the middle. But it's also, like you said, sometimes maybe that's a little bit of a wake up call to the folks around the program who all of a sudden are like, wait, what? That's not happening?
no. And like you said, now all of a sudden you've got this opportunity for a conversation to discuss, well, you know, yes, I think it's valuable, but here's, know. I can do X or I can do Y, I can do both. And now maybe you've got extra hands, maybe you've got extra help in some fashion, maybe you've got more resources than maybe you had before. So, hmm, boy. I don't have a term for this, but I always say, if you start with, I would really, really love to do this, but here's why I can't.
Can you help me with this? How can we make this more successful? And so I think that's a little bit of an inroad into, it can be an inroad to help get some more investment from your colleagues and your administration whenever you're honest and say, yeah, I'd absolutely would love to, but this. right now this, this and this are in my way. And if you do it in a positive way, like how can we solve this? Sometimes it can lead to some really, really great investment in you and what you try to do.
Yeah. And I was just reading recently, psychologically, people like, people tend to like you more if you come and ask them for assistance with something. Like if you ask them for their help to do something. So if you can come to them and say, I want to do this, I'm a little stuck. Maybe you can help me figure it out. Maybe you can help me implement this idea.
Like they're going to be more likely to want to help you with that anyway, because you're an awesome, friendly school librarian who's going to make their lives better. But you're also building that extra connection and that extra goodwill. that sounds like a great article I need to send to my librarians. I will have to see I can track that down. I can't remember so many channels these days. So hard to keep track of where you see which thing, but okay.
So we've got administration, we've got our self-selection and literacy. We've got our inquiry, we've got transformative. What's five? Final is leadership and this one's probably the shortest one of all. But in our evaluation, this is our second most prominent skill set in order to be marked as proficient or distinguished or higher.
So we have challenged, well, so part of our evaluation system that we have in this district and in many districts is the administration and you know what they're supposed to observe you. and then they are required to offer a summative conference. And so the person who has been observed, whether it's a teacher or whether it's a librarian, always has the option of turning that down. Like, no, I'm good. I like my evaluation. Thanks so much.
And what we have asked our librarians to do, we've challenged them to say, hey, this is required. They have to offer this to you. Don't ever, ever, ever minimize your own worth because you, if your principal, is obligated to sit with every single instructor in that building to talk about their evaluation and their performance. Why wouldn't you take that as an opportunity to talk with your administration about the things that you've done? It can help educate them.
You can show your evidence using this comprehensive library impact report. But I think most importantly, our administration, our campus administration are responsible for growing U2. That's actually, that's their role. They're supposed to grow you. Yes, I love supporting our librarians. That is my sole function. I am here to support all of our librarians. But at the end of the day, the campus administration theoretically is there with them every single day.
So yes, I can grow you because I've got the content expertise, but your campus administration is responsible for growing you as an individual and as a professional, as a campus employee. And so I always say, don't minimize. who you are and your worth. Don't think about, don't want to bother them. They're so busy. Yeah, they are so busy. We all are so, busy. But you're worth having a 15 minute conversation about, I'd like to show you what I've done.
And I'd like to show you the growth that I've made. I'd like to show you some of the things that I tried to do that didn't work out so well. And I want to kind of let you know what I'm thinking about for next year. Why wouldn't you do that? It can be scary, but I think that that's just... learning to the value in you as a professional and believing that you have a right to be grown and to have someone help lead that work with you.
Yeah. Well, and even just the conversation that you get to have, I think, is an important one because I just had one of my observations recently. And when I got the written report back on it, the administrator had put in like, have you thought about trying this? And maybe you should try that. And the library space that I'm in is like literally brand new. Like this is the first September we've had a library since 2018.
So it's like I'm doing a lot of trying to get a lot of things going all at once. And I just never feel like I've done enough. And so I saw that I had this moment of like, man, I'm not, you know, how do I, I'm not doing enough. And then I stopped and I was like, wait a minute. I don't know if she realizes that, you know, this and this and this. when I, when we had our post evaluation conference, I was like, thank you so much for the feedback.
Here's some stuff that maybe you know, let me show you some pictures of what this looked like a year ago. Let me show you what it looks like now. And like, here's what I'm working on. And here's my 10 page document, single spaced of all the ideas I wanna do. And I just haven't had time yet. And she was like, wow, I hadn't realized like this was, and that's it. Like sometimes they just, they don't know. Like you don't know what they don't know.
And so that, like you're saying, having that conversation can be an eye opener for all sides of the table. Yeah, and I think that having, so like I was mentioning earlier, you I challenge, we challenge our people to meet with their principals at least twice, and we ask them to reflect that, us how many times they've met with their administration, and then to give us a brief summary about what they discussed. And so I... Let me think about how I'm going to redo that one.
I may have lost the thread anyway, so that's OK. No, wait, I got it. got it. got it. OK. All right. So like I was talking about earlier, you know, using this as an as a as an education opportunity and just really commenting on what you said, they don't know what they don't know. We as teachers never got training on librarians and all. of the different skill sets and what's part of our pedagogy. Teachers don't get that, so why would our principals get that?
Why would our assistant principals get that? They don't. And maybe they do in other states, but I can tell you in this state, they don't. So I think that often, and I've had the exact same thing happen to me where I had a summative conference and I could tell that was marked by the comments, I was marked a certain way when I was like, my principal doesn't know what this means.
Mm-hmm. And so I went and brought my little data notebook, you know, that I was collecting and I said, hey, so I noticed this. This is what this means and this is actually how I've been doing it. And that principal was like, yeah, I need to change this, you know, because he didn't understand and it wasn't his fault. So going back to that, you know, we require our librarians to meet with them at least twice. We asked for them to meet with them quarterly.
but we only require twice and we asked them to document how often they met, what they talked about. Finally, in that leadership portion, we also asked them for a quarterly reflection on how they felt. We asked them to talk about a celebration and we asked them to talk about a challenge and what they would like to do differently. And then we always asked them to put in a media approved or parent approved media.
photos that we can use for our infographics when we take all this data as a district and we put it together for our superintendent and for any other, you sometimes the board members also get a chance to see it as well. We use those pictures there. So. That's awesome. Man, that's, and I think it's so, we all know as educators that reflection is so important for our students to do. And I think we don't build in enough opportunities for ourselves to reflect.
And so I love that you are making that a part of what they're doing every marketing period. So it's, it's fresh in their mind, like, here's what happened. Okay. So how did I grow? How did I learn? What have I changed or gotten better at, or what's still giving me a problem? So, okay, now this has been a problem for a while. How do I get, who do I talk to? How do I overcome this? So having those opportunities, wow, that's powerful. my boss and I, look at those quarterly reflections.
And when we see a celebration that's really, really just amazing, we'll reach out. But I think we tend to reach out whenever someone's having a true challenge or obstacle and they're just, you can read it from their words. We will reach out and say, hey, what can we do to make this better? Or what can we do to support you? I think it's important to make sure that our lights know that we do read them.
And because it helps us give us a tone, we can usually tell when it's been a really challenging year for someone. And I would like to say, my librarians might say differently, but I would like to say we see a lot of all honest reflections there. And I'm very, very happy that they can share their honest reflections with us. Even when it's a challenge that has been difficult to overcome for that quarter.
Well, and I think school librarians, mean, you know, school librarians are facing some real challenges these days and on so many fronts and that you are there to help support them has got to be such a wonderful bonus for them to know that like, yes, I'm having this problem, but I also have people who are there to kind of help me out if it looks like I'm really not sure what to do next. So that's. I'm so jealous of your school librarians that they've got that support system in place.
Well, it's not even sometimes these challenges are not things that we can solve. Just because we're in central administration, we do the same kind of advocacy that campus librarians do where we have to tell the story and we have to explain and we have to have our elevator speech. We do the exact same advocacy, except we're doing it with many, many, different departments that work in different buildings. And so sometimes there are things that even we can't help with.
sometimes there's many things that we can't help with. So even what I hope, again, I won't speak for my librarians, but certainly what our hope, Alejandra and I, is that they feel comfortable that they can say, you know what, I was closed a lot because of X, Y, and Z. Or, you know, I just had to reschedule a lot because of X, Y, and Z. I hope that they feel comfortable letting us know that. And we know we can't fix that for them, but we are understanding.
So we're not going to sit there and harass you. about if your numbers are low in one category or you dip down for whatever reason, things happen. Life happens. And so that is our hope at least. And we hope that our librarians feel that. Yeah, well, and that's the other thing too, is that there's so many challenges out there that it can feel just overwhelming and like just you're constantly, you know, on the lookout for what's, you when's the next shoe going to drop? Who's coming at me next?
And I think having that opportunity to reflect on the challenges and know that there's someone there who maybe you can't fix the problem, but at least there's a sympathetic ear there who can say, yep, that sucks. You know, I understand that's, I think.
sometimes maybe we get into a mindset of if it's not anybody outside of me, I've got to be careful of and I feel like you're giving them an opportunity to see that that's not always the case that there are people out there who just even just hearing about a challenge that's going on they're going to be sympathetic and they're going to want to help in whatever way they can so that's really awesome that you're helping remind them of that and also you know offering the supports that you can offer.
Well, and it also helps us to whenever we do need to go and talk to our superiors about a potential system change or a potential initiative we would like to present to campus administrators. If we start to see trends, both in celebrations, don't want to say that it's only for the negative things. As we know, our brains tend to remember the negative and don't remember the positive.
But when we do see a challenge that tends to be a trend, It does help us having this information and for the honesty from our librarians so that we know how to advocate and create, you know, proposals and things like that, just like campus librarians do with their administrators on things that we would like to do to try to help make the impact better for students so they can continue on their literacy journey and they can continue to learn and grow.
And really so our librarian can be at their best. I love that, that's awesome. This is a very comprehensive, you had shared a sort of an outline of what these reports look like and it is extremely comprehensive. And I'm kind of curious, like are there any sort of mechanisms you've been able to put in place to help your librarians kind of gather this information or do you make this a little bit less of a like, go spend a week and a half getting this information together.
Well, we did create a Google, so everything's in a Google form. We did create a Google Doc that includes all the questions so they don't have to keep on going back and forth because when you said comprehensive, you're absolutely correct. Would our librarians love for it to be shorter? Yes. Would I love for it to also be shorter? Yes. But we actually use this a lot. And our libraries are not always aware of how we use it or how often we use it when we're asked questions.
But we use this quite a bit whenever we're talking to the people we collaborate with. so easier, the Google Doc does help. In the Google Doc, we also gave examples for each section. So what kind of activities, what things to track. whenever we have, so for example, number of special events. We have in parentheses there, know, literacy events, teen tober, author visits, clubs, virtual events, book fairs and movie night, et cetera. Those things go under special events.
Transformative experiences are more like coding, gaming, making and creating, virtual field trips, guest speakers, because those are more transformative, if that makes sense for the student. So we try to define each of the type of questions with examples of what it represents. Because when we first launched this or relaunched it previous after several year hiatus, I think we sat down and our librarians asked us questions for probably an hour and a half. What about this? And what about this?
And does this count? And does this count? And I think that was 100 % fair because it really made Alejandro and I think like, OK, yes, we have these questions. We think we know what it means, but what does it really mean on our vastly different campuses? So it really, really, it was great work. And thank goodness, again, our librarians felt comfortable saying, but what does that mean? And does it mean this or does it mean this?
Because we were able to really specify and give concrete examples to help them track it a little bit easier. Some of our librarians have shared tracking documents that they use and We may have a special something that we're thinking about doing later on this year, but I don't want to say too much more that will make it easier for them. We're hoping to have something for them that makes it little bit easier. Cool. I'm sure they're going to appreciate anything you can do.
Even just looking this over though, I can see like my mind is mapping this into a form that would make it relatively easy to kind of gather this information as you're going. Like if you had a device handy or you go to your computer and you're sitting there for five minutes, you could absolutely fill out several pieces of this as you're in between people running through the library or whatever.
Well, and I think that we also have conversations with our new librarians when we train them on them, we give them a mentor, of course. And throughout, we revisit this every once in a while so that we can make sure we're all on the same page. you forget. I mean, when you're only doing it four times a year, you're gonna forget sometimes.
And so one really good example I can give you is that several of our librarians were counting PLC time as only an official department or grade level PLC or content level. PLC that they went to where everybody was there and they were formally doing something. And we said, no, a PLC can be like that conversation at the copier, as long as it results in collaboration and instruction or resource giving or something like that. That counts as a PLC that just happens to be a one-on-one PLC.
So texts, emails, hallway conversations. I used to walk around when I was a campus librarian because We had nine different buildings that covered an entire city block. So I would have a a little clipboard and I would write down things because I wouldn't remember by the time I got back to the library, because it'd be stopped in the hallway if I was moving around.
So even that's when I was like, no, I think a PLC is anything that results in collaboration for students or for the teacher that results in something that's a PLC. I don't care if there's 10 people in the room or one. Yeah, man, that's awesome. I'm glad that you're supporting your librarians in that way, because I know that there's some folks who can get very persnickety about what counts and what doesn't count.
like, love that I'm sure you know, you know, Amy Herman, she, yeah, she was able to, there's a couple of districts who use her podcast as part of their PD, which is awesome. Like that's, to me, that totally makes sense. Like you are learning from other professionals. It doesn't matter how you're doing it. So I love that you are supporting your school librarians with whatever it is that works, whatever it is that's making a difference. That's part of your record.
And that's such easy stuff to let just slide right off your radar. Cause you're just in the moment. You're doing this, you're doing that. right. Here's that. Here's this. I can totally see that not getting marked down someplace, but that you're encouraging them to take that moment and think about like, okay, what did I do? How did I do that?
Man. I'm just like in my head going through how many of those conversations have I had this, it's only Wednesday and I've already had about a million of those conversations and yet how many of them I'm gonna remember next week? Zero. So it's really great that you're encouraging them to kind of pay some more attention to those kinds of interactions. Man, yeah. Man, this is so amazing. And one of the things that I was, when I first.
When we first started talking about this and you were saying how much you use data and how you encourage your librarians to gather data, my very first reaction was my classroom teacher reaction, was, my God, data, no data, please. Because there's so many things that we're forced to do. You've got to fill out all this paperwork. You've got to write this down. And it all goes in a file someplace and it never gets looked at. And how many hours did you spend getting that stuff together every year?
Drove me up the wall. But you're actually This is this is a lot but it's useful and it's like you were saying it's helping you make the case for your librarians It's helping your librarians make the case for what they're doing There's so much value in the information that you're gathering and like you said there's ways that you can sort of set up forms or you know share tools that different individuals are making kind of pick the best of the best and I want to say automate, but that's not right.
But like make the process at least a lot more efficient than, okay, what did I do for the past nine weeks? Like you're giving them the opportunity to do this on a regular ongoing basis and like short spurts, which is gonna make it so much easier at the end. And they're gonna have this awesome wealth of data, man. It's, I'm almost seeing it like a, it's almost like a portfolio project, but for your school librarian instead of for your students.
Well, and they are required to do a portfolio with two growth goals. And so we, and this is going to some of the other things we do with this data, but every year at the beginning of the year, but before the students return, they are required to analyze their data from the year before and then make potential goals, whether it's their own pedagogical growth goal or whether it's their student growth goal based on their data from the year before.
They're also have to analyze their full year's data from the year before and and celebrate the things that they did really, really well that they're very, very proud of. So we utilize it for goal setting. They utilize this information for their evidence that they must put in their portfolio that's required by the district. so we, again, I said earlier in the podcast that I try to correlate everything.
We try to correlate this in as many areas as possible in which we know that they're gonna have several different touch points because again, What you said about data, I get it. I'm married to a teacher who has been teaching as long as I have been. And I also understand that. But at the end of the day, that ship sailed, what, about 15 years ago? And data is a language that schools use.
And so since we must do it, let's capitalize upon it as much as possible and let's utilize it as efficiently as we can and as effectively as we can. Absolutely. I sincerely hope that folks that are listening are going to take some time to look through this set of metrics and pieces of information that you're asking your librarians to gather because there's so much valuable stuff here and it's so much stuff that it's easy to just slide right by.
I think, I don't know, I don't know everybody's situation but I feel like a lot of folks are in a boat that's sort of similar to mine where like You're the only person in your school.
Maybe you're the only person in your district and maybe you don't have an administrator that knows what a school librarian is supposed to do and this seems like such a great way to, like you said, self-advocate, record, reflect, find your challenges, but also find those moments of celebration because there's so many things we do that we just, yeah, I did that and we move on and we don't take the moment to celebrate like you were saying, which, boy.
I hope folks take advantage of this because it's so wonderful. It really is. And you know, the piece of advice we give to our new librarians that we train every year, we have a pretty comprehensive mentorship program for our new librarians. We always encourage them to use the first quarter as a trial period. We always say like, don't really care about the numbers.
Yes, we want you to track, but we want you to track to the best of your ability because really what we want you to do is to be able to survive and get to know your campus and figure out what's working for you for just these nine weeks. Cause you know how fast that nine weeks go. Whether you're an experienced librarian, but at a new campus, that's still a new job sometimes. Even going to a new level can be, when I went from elementary to high school, completely different job.
You know, imagine being brand new to the profession. So we really try to encourage them to use the first quarter as kind of an experiment, see how it works, work with your mentor and see how they gather data. And then quarters two, three, and four to use that to continually get better and better and better. So advice that I would give is this is more comprehensive than what I had to do as a campus librarian in my former district.
If you find just a couple of things in each area or if you just want to focus on literacy or if you just want to focus on instruction or something like that where you just capture maybe one thing from every section of what feels good to you, start there and just see how it works. Because this is very comprehensive and it can take some time to get good at tracking the data. And so I really I would just encourage us like what we say, fail forward, go ahead and try it.
But don't be afraid to try small. Just try small and then expand later for what works for you. Yeah, I'm so glad you said that. was literally thinking, you know, we need to mention, don't expect you're gonna come in and do all of this at once, folks. that's, you're not walking into the gym on the first day and picking up the heaviest barbell. Like you work your way up. We gotta leave room for growth and expertise building. Absolutely, absolutely man. Well, this is so amazing.
I'm so glad that you shared this I hope people are gonna take advantage of it We are now gonna take our 90 degree turn and go into our book break So the book break you can share any kind of book title author you like doesn't have to be professional It can be if you want to be it can be personal whatever whatever works So what's a title or two that you're thinking like?
people should know about this one Okay, so I am a huge, my comfort genre has always been fantasy, especially YA because I love, love, love being a high school librarian. That's still probably my favorite job to this day. But I've got, it's more of a new adult. So I wouldn't say this is YA. It's definitely not YA, but new adult. So whenever you say goodbye to your graduates, if they still stay in contact with you and ask for book recs, like some of my old students still do.
I really like the Flesh and False Gods series by Chloe Gong. And the first one is called Immortal Longings. I kind of like it because it's a little bit of, there's some, not sci-fi, a little bit of sci-fi and a little bit of fantasy. It's set somewhere. It seems like it might be part of the Asian region. which I really, really like because there's a lot of references. I can kind of recognize a little bit some different cultures and different things are coming into that.
So I like it for that, but it's just a comfort read for me. I love fantasy. Every time I just need to give my brain a break and feed it some candy, fantasy is where I'm gonna go. So that's been my newest one. Nice, okay. Well, that's definitely going on my TBR. That sounds awesome. I'm a huge sci-fi nerd, but I'm also a pretty big fantasy nerd. So this sounds like it's gonna hit right in that sweet spot for me. Definitely gotta check that one out. Awesome.
Well, so you have shared all this awesome stuff and you're always sharing awesome stuff. If people wanna find you online, where should they go looking for you? Okay, so I am on X but I don't use it like Amanda Jones. I'm keeping it there just so that someone can't replicate my account. But I am on Blue Sky and my handle is Heather PNWTX because I'm originally from the Pacific Northwest. I'll always be a Pacific Northwest girl but I also live in Texas. So it's Heather PNWTX.
And then on Instagram, I am Mrs. dot Horner, H-O-R-N-O-R. All right, awesome. Folks, you definitely want to follow because there's so much goodness always coming your way from Heather. So Heather, again, thank you so much for taking the time and for sharing this awesome, awesome, awesome set of thoughts and information that are going to help us in so many different dimensions. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the time.