Hey everybody, we are back and I am here with a fellow Jersey person, which when we first met, I did not realize that we were practically next door neighbors. So this is kind of fun. So Meredith, welcome. We are so glad to have you. Why don't you take a second, tell folks who are, where you're at, what you do. Well, I guess because I'm on a librarian podcast, I must be a librarian. My name is Meredith and I am a true Jersey girl.
I grew up in North Jersey in Brin County, went to Rutgers and yeah, yeah, go RU and I got my master's at Rutgers. I did all my education there, loved it. And then I met my husband there. We weren't dating at the time, it was until later. but then he made me a South Jersey girl. I moved. The whole state. Yeah, so I've kind of been up and down and all over the state. And so I've been living in South Jersey, gosh, think it's the past 20 years. And I miss North Jersey bagels, but that's okay.
Yeah, yeah, so I've been. So I've been a school librarian. I've done actually a lot of different things as a librarian and I love it all. I think that's one thing that I found out doing my master's. As librarians, we all seem to have a lot of interests, lot of varied eclectic interests, but that's cool. know, cause we do do it all. We do budgets, we do analysis and we do reading and we do creative things. so I really, I do love being a librarian. I really do.
And how did you end up sort of in school librarianship? What was your path into the school library? Sorry, I'm just going to take a drink of water. No worries. Okay. Sorry. So what was your path into the school library? So becoming a school librarian, my father was a teacher. So of course I never wanted to be a teacher. I said, no, not doing it. And then I went to school and I graduated with a double major in German and economics and got to study abroad. It was awesome. And then I left college.
I'm like, what am I doing? No clue. And the job I was in, I realized that I had really a lot of fun. gathering information and writing reports. And, okay, well, what can I do with this? And it turned out librarianship might be a good job for me. And then I decided, okay, let me see, do I wanna do certain type of librarianship or do I wanna do schools? And my father, who was still very close, because he was a teacher locally, and he knew a lot of the teachers in our town.
And he got me in touch with my old school librarian, my elementary school librarian. Huh? Mrs. Prendergast and she was amazing. She really was phenomenal and he got me in touch with her and she gave me Dr. Carol Cuthouse book, Seeking Meaning. And I read the book and the big takeaway was as a school librarian, you are teaching people the skills to learn for themselves for the rest of their lives. And I put that in my application letter.
for the master's program and I got in and I got to have a class with Dr. Kuthau and I got to work with Ross Todd. I mean, it was incredible. And I never thought I would do school librarianship. I never thought in many years, but listening to my dad, yes, dad, you were right. Listening to my dad, it really led me to a wonderful place and having the mentorship of my school librarian.
you know, and that kind of connection of what it really means to be a school librarian, to educate, you know, so that was my path. That was my path. Wow. Yeah. I have been in education a long time, but it wasn't until I really thought about school librarianship that I realized, like you said, it's a job that you are teaching people how to be lifelong learners.
Like, because the classroom teacher, you teach specific skills, you teach specific knowledge, and you're hopefully getting them to apply that broadly. man, the school library just takes it to a whole different level, I feel like. And I love it. Gotta love it. So we ended up connecting online because you had been sharing about one of the ways that you help your students sort of figure out how the library works a little bit. And I am just absolutely fascinated by this.
And I'm wondering if you can give us maybe just a little bit of a background. Like, how did you end up, what was the lead in to this activity that you do with the kids? Well, it really was kind of backwards working. a few years ago, I was working with some students and I wanted to figure out, okay, we need to get them to understand how to use digital resources because this is the world they're living in. And we need to get them to understand the value of databases in particular.
So now we have to teach them these tools of where the pieces of information are. Where are you finding, you know, who made it? Where are you finding menu options? And if you kind of pull that back, okay, I can start by showing them the library catalog. And you've got menu options and you've got to look for these details to help you search and find. Okay, well, what's the basis for that? Let's start with a book. And let's look at the title page. Let's look at the copyright date.
Let's look at the index. Let's look at the table of contents. And if you understand these pieces and these tools for informational reading, for seeking, and figuring out where those pieces are and how to get relevant information, then you can build and you can point out and say, okay, remember the book and you have the table of contents and you have the index, these are tools to help you use it.
Now we're gonna go to the school catalog and use that, figure out where the menu, where your quote unquote table of contents are, find those information. Okay, you're gonna go now to a database, you're gonna go to the internet. All right, where's your author? Where's your publication date? All of those details. So kind of coming back and then thinking, okay, we've got to get them to understand this context and understand categorical thinking.
Because even if they can use these tools, I was seeing trends of students having a hard time understanding how to search. If you have a book, the context is made for you. If you go to a database or you're on a website, a lot of that Context is made for you But then how do you apply those tools? But also think of how to build a search or think in your mind How to build a search and think of? Context to create that meaning that dr.
Kuhlfell talks about You know for yourself So kind of scaffolding back and kind of thinking all right. What do I really need them to know to start? Dewey Decimal System. It's a system that was created to hold that context and provide some structure. And if they understand this overarching creation, then it can give them a way of understanding how to connect pieces for themselves. And any system will do. It's just getting them to understand that there are systems. Right, right.
And I love that you start by dealing with a book, like starting at that basic of a level. And I think there's so many awesome reasons to start there, but it's so easy to forget that students probably don't get a lot of time to focus on what are the informational elements that are contained in a book. Like as an English teacher, I would have to, when we were talking about how to cite sources and we'd say, okay, we're gonna cite this book and where do we find the publication date?
Seventh grade, eighth grade, they don't know to look on the publication page that the information is right there for them. Even when they're looking at it, they don't know where to look. So that you're taking it back to that real basic level, I think is incredibly important. And I think it doesn't matter what grade level you're dealing with. I think there's absolutely a time and a place, or there should be hopefully a time and a place to kind of just take a book.
and say to the kids like, okay, let's really look at how this is put together because you're so right to think about, you know, what are the structures this is all built on? Because whatever the system, like you said, there's going to be a structure. There's going to be some way that we can look at how this is put together and then maybe transfer that knowledge to, okay, we know this system.
Now let's look at what's similar and different about this other system and just building that knowledge, layering it on top of each other as you go. Yeah, and that's that lifelong learning because no matter what you do as you move on in your life, there's going to be systems and groups of information that you're going to have to navigate. And now it's been interesting seeing what's going on with AI. But even before AI, I think, and I'm sure you've seen this, there's a tendency for our kids.
And I've kind of gotten deep into reading neuroscience on the side as a hobby, but our brains want... that security. wants to go directly to an answer and it wants that fastest path. so students want to go directly there. They don't want that open-ended exploration. It's really hard to give them that space and bring them back. So when we have a context like the Dewey Decimal System or whatever, you can say, all right, listen, we're going to just explore.
It's going to be safe, but we have some boundaries, we have some barriers, but we're going to practice that exploration and understanding how things connect because it is so easy for them these days to go directly to an answer, especially when you're fighting with like chat GPT who's going to spit information at them very, very quickly and they're going to take it because it makes their brain feel good. Yes, yes. And I think there's two really important elements sort of built into that.
And the one is, you know, we, I believe there've been some recent studies that show that we tend to believe what's on a computer screen when it's presented to us, because we tend to think of the computer as being a place where we get information. And so if it's on the computer, even though we may intellectually somewhere in our brain know, just cause it's on the internet doesn't make it true. it still kind of adds that almost veneer of reliability just because we're getting it from this device.
So I think we're fighting that in a way. And I love that you start with books because I think that opens up the opportunity to have the conversation about, why do we think of books as being a more reliable source of information? Like what goes into making a book? Why would publishers... spend that extra time making sure the information they're publishing into the world is reliable, is something that you can trust, and how does that compare to the internet?
So, like, there's so many layers of conversation you can have with the kids about this. Yeah, exactly. And I think the one thing to hone in on, and I kind of bring this back, is, okay, where's the money coming from? You take that book, and you and I, I'm not gonna presume, because you look eternally young, but you and I are probably of an age where you go to the library, you didn't have to think.
You knew that there were professionals, information professionals, who had been vetting these resources and spending money. So there was value. placed in them and you didn't have to think whether or not it was good. You know, you just knew, this is here for a reason. And now, you know, technology happened. It changed so quickly. The internet, now social media, now AI, that understanding, okay, if, and this is the DIY factory, you know, you do it yourself, you're going to get what you get.
professional isn't doing it for you, then you have to do it yourself. So talking about books and starting at that base level, even at middle school, they may or may not. You don't know the students coming to you where they've been before. If they have an understanding of the Dewey Decimal System, doesn't matter. Understand there's a system, there are books here, and there are digital e-books, audiobooks are also in the Dewey.
But understand the context and understand the school or me, we've selected these based upon professional understanding. Mm-hmm. providing you with the author, the publication, the data publication, the publisher, all of that. But these are the pieces of information you need.
And then when you graduate to using databases and the internet and you're kind of loosening the reins of guidance and saying, now you're on your own, but you still need to find the author, the publisher, the data publication, is it free? Why is it free? You're paying for it. ads or the school or whoever and get them to just think about those things and put those pieces together.
Man, having this conversation right now has got me realizing how important it is and what a great advocacy element this could be for school librarianship to point out. Like, yes, the district pays me to be here, not just because they want me to check books out to you, but because I am an information professional and I am curating resources for you to save you from having to think about is this reliable information or not? Like, what a great... cook for the students.
And what a great way to sort of present it to your teachers, your supervisors, your administrators to say, it's not just me sitting in a library with some materials. It's there's so much more going on here. And that's really what you're paying for. I kind of like part of my brain knew that, but I don't think I've ever heard it put that way. So I really appreciate you pointing that out. Like, yes, that is a huge, like that is the reason that we want to go to libraries.
Yeah, and that's something that I've been doing for a while. So I spent some time working in the local county college because I had moved with my family for a little bit and I was in between schools and I was doing some work there. I was talking with, you know, working with higher ed, you you're working with kids who have graduated high school. And it really, you know, was clear to me. I need to tell them explicitly that, you know, money, where's the money? Mm-hmm. you use this database?
And this is before social media was really like rampant and misinformation were problems, you know, and understanding that I need to explicitly say it and help them connect the dots, but say it very clear about these things because the kids need it, but man, adults need it too. Yes, very much. You know? So, um, so yeah.
Yeah. It's funny to me, and I've been having this conversation, it feels like a lot recently, but there's so many things I think we take for granted that, especially in the information environment, I think as school librarians and as educators, I think we take a lot of things for granted that these are things everybody knows. And our students don't always know that. And when we ask them, well, why didn't you do this? and they don't have an answer, it's because they didn't know.
Like they didn't know they should be looking for where did this come from? They didn't know they should be following the money to figure out how this came into the world in the first place. And we just assume, well, of course you're thinking about that when you're taking information, but A, our students don't necessarily know that. And B, like you pointed out, humans like that direct answer.
So whether they're kids or adults, when it's presented to them, they are more likely to just soak that in and not necessarily do that sort of mental due diligence that should be done. And I hadn't made that connection before about how like when we were in our youths going to the public library, you just knew like you didn't have to think about that. And it's been I mean, you've really got me think like my wheels are spinning now about how, boy, I know where to look for reliable information.
And I've never really in my life had to worry about where do I look for reliable information? But now that landscape is completely different. no rules. There's no guardrails and good information. So good information, feel like Ratatouille, it can come from anywhere. Anybody can produce good information. And that's tricky because it isn't clear. I mean, you can get good information from YouTube.
And early on, I want to say when I first started back in like 2000, I want to say like 2007, I was in a high school and I remember teachers would be like, no Wikipedia. I'm like, no, no, Let them evaluate Wikipedia. There's ways to use it wisely. Why are you saying don't use this and don't do that? Because you're cutting off independent critical thinking. And especially working with teens, especially middle schoolers, I love them. They're so funky and weird and I love it. I don't know why.
But telling them, say guys, listen. You can listen to me or not, but these are the pieces of information you need to know. And if you can understand this, then guess what? You can decide for yourself. You don't have to rely on me to tell you. It's up to you. I know how to do this stuff. But if you want to make choices for yourself, because they don't like people telling them what to do, right? If they want to make this for themselves, say this is on you. Here, this is what you need to look for.
You know, and so kind of getting back to the lesson that I did, you know, that we're geeking out and I love it. So getting back to it, full disclosure, I've already decided how I'm going to revamp it and do it differently. Because I know, I know exactly, you know, and I'm great at experimenting. love just throwing stuff and I'm in a great space where I can do that. So I've got a teacher, especially I'm working with right now. She's like, let's just do it and we'll figure it out.
And then we kind of figure out what to do next time. So kind of getting back to the presentation I developed, you know, talking about the first image and I had used this years ago is the fire hydrant. And it's, you know, going on the internet is like trying to drink water from a fire hydrant. But you know, it's not like that anymore because everybody's just going directly to the answers or you have, you know, whatever AI. automated that's spitting answers back at you.
You're not even touching like the tip of the internet. It's more like you've got AI and algorithms spoon feeding you. So I tell my student, do you want to be spoon fed? It's up to you. If you want to just take whatever it's giving you, whatever these algorithms are giving you, fine. But if you don't, you need context, you need direction, you need containment. And here are some examples. And so then through the lesson, I give them some examples of ways that information, sorry, hit that.
So by going through, I give them examples of information systems. And then we go into Dewey. And again, this can work with any information system. I know some people don't like Dewey or they might have different ways of organizing their libraries, totally fine. But then I walk them through and I just give them an overview. And it seems like a lot, I have a lot of slides, but it goes quickly. And you can even engage with the students.
We were finding that as we were going through some of the categories of Dewey and giving them the subcategories, we could say, OK, well, what type of category do you think is my favorite? Here's fairy tales and folktales. What do you think I like better? Or kind of engaging them that way and getting them to read the slides. And then understanding, because this also gets to the point of Kids want to go to that zero point. They want to center in and get that tidbit and leave.
So they don't know and it's really hard to expand a topic. It's easy to narrow in, but it's hard to expand. So by using the different levels of Dewey and giving them some examples, I can show them how they can take an idea and they can expand it or contract it. and explore. And we're starting to get into that with some of the classes now. But if you get the idea of how things kind of connect in categories, and you've got big topics, subtopics, and then smaller details.
And within Dewey, you can give them concrete examples. And so trying to get them to understand that topic, I keep hitting this mark. No, you're doing okay. So trying to get them to understand how to do that. And so then I show them and I give them an example and then they go into the stacks and they get a book and they have to show how that single book, where it belongs in the big context. And it was just sort of a fun interactive thing for them to do.
And there were some things that would change, but overall, getting them to think beyond just that zero point information and leave. Mm-hmm. giving them some boundaries, some safety. They like just explore. You know, that's really hard for them. Yeah, yeah. I love, I mean, A, the fire hose. I've got a video clip from the Weird Al movie UHF where a kid drinks out of a fire hose and gets blasted across the room. That's in every one of my presentations. I love it. But you're absolutely right.
It's not that anymore. I just hadn't, again, I need to get my own thinking caught up with what's actually going on because... my thoughts and my assumptions are not necessarily what the students are experiencing. Like they're coming up in a different world. And I think about that in terms of like the fiction reading that they do, that they've got a much better selection of stuff. And I'm trying to keep my eyes open and find them stuff there.
But the information landscape is so incredibly different. like part of me intellectually knows that, but to actually talk it through with you right now really is making me question some of my... deeply held assumptions about what they're seeing and how they're interacting. So I really appreciate that you are sharing this, because it's an important conversation.
And I think I am going to guess I'm probably not the only one out there who's kind of stuck in this mindset of, yes, it's a fire hose that they're getting blasted in head with. And that's not where we're already. They're not. And it's even working with the teachers because I've been in this for a while.
But even when I first started, I was reading a lot of academic papers and studies and I was realizing that working with my teachers was going to help the students because they're going to go to their teachers first.
know, some of them might be intimidated by the librarian and, my gosh, you know, my book is going to be late or you know I damaged a book she's gonna hate me you know and and so their first point of contact is a teacher so while I'm trying to work with students and build a rapport and have books and bringing you know programming and have helpers coming in I really want to talk and work with teachers because if I can get them to understand
that I can help I can support their instruction I'm going to make their lives better I'm not going to be some added thing that's going to give them more of a headache. But if I can get the teachers to buy into what I'm trying to lay down, these skills that I'm trying to give the students to build and carry across their subjects, then I can, it's like a one-two punch. It's a direct and an indirect. And so that's especially key for me that I keep going back to too. I hone in on the teachers.
I'm trying. takes time, takes trust, you know, but this concept is, yeah. when you're able to convince them that you're going to take stuff off of their plate, you're not making more work for them because they've already got, everybody else is pushing more work on them. Like it's coming from the top, the bottom, sides. So when we're able to step in and say like, look, I know you've got a ton of things. Here's something that I can do to take some stuff off of your plate.
You're going to make a friend for life. So. bring them in the light. Like, listen, I've worked with math teachers. I've worked with special ed teachers. I've worked with the health teachers. I've worked with all kinds of teachers. And I feel like sometimes they still don't believe me. Like, I can make anything tie into information literacy. So just give me a chance. And it's, it just drives me each and every day. I love it.
And I'm looking through your slides as we're talking and you had said like, there's so many slides, but they go fast. I honestly think that that is a mark of a good lesson rather than a bad lesson. Cause I think way too often I do this and I know other people do this. I'll make a slide deck and I'll put 9,000 words on a slide and I'll spend 10 minutes on that one slide when really it should be one word per slide, just enough to get the ideas going, pictures more than words.
I love that yours is boom, boom, boom, boom. Like we're just going to roll through these because it is like a conversation. It's like you're showing them, here's the things that we need. And you're just kind of hit the highlights as you go. And they're seeing it rather than just sitting there hearing you read them a slide off of the screen that they can already see. Yeah, and this actually originally started, had, I think a free version of Powtoon. I know if you're familiar with Powtoon.
I had used a free version of Powtoon, I guess about four years ago, and I made a little video of this little character I think I had access to, like a panda, and it was Organizing Panda. And I did these slides, like a version of these, and it was just a little video, and I could do it as like a do now. to the kids or just an intro. And so this past year, I was in a different school and I wanted to bring it back.
I had this teacher who was open to working with me and I'm like, okay, I don't have the Pautune anymore and I don't know what happened or whatever. But I had the outline of what I was doing. And it was actually a blog from a librarian that the description of the Dewey and the way that she spoke about what the categories were. that kind of was beautiful. And so I adopted that. And so I made it into these slides.
Instead of doing a video that's just a standalone for like two and a half minutes, I incorporated it into a bigger presentation that can be shown on its own, although I do have a lot of images and not as much text. Like I do have to talk along with some of them. But some of it can also be taken out and just made into a little video.
So then... what I can do and what I'd like to do is take these presentations and make a little library of resources that students and teachers can refer to on demand through the library website. And so building, doing these kinds of things, I mean, I'm doing it with Canva now and I love Canva, it's so much fun, having a ton of fun with it, but I wanna build this repository of resources and... I feel like every time I've been in a different school or a different place, I just build new.
It's constantly building new. I haven't really had a lot of time to have anything stay for very long, but that's okay. I wanna stay fresh. I wanna understand what's going on in the information world. I say information environment, but I heard it referred to as the infosphere, like instead of atmosphere. I don't know if heard that, but I wanna stay abreast of what's coming up in the infosphere and be relevant.
So, you know, really just this set of slides, however I take it and evolve it, however anybody wants to take ideas and evolve it, you know, I think that's part of what is also interesting is being a librarian. I'm never bored. Yes. yeah. No, there's always something new. There's always something to do. I love this idea of infosphere too as related to atmosphere because we are just breathing in and completely surrounded by and permeated by all the information that's just everywhere these days.
It can be. It really can be. these kids are. And you know, it's really funny. All the technology we have and these kids are tuned in to TikTok and all this stuff. I have fantastic ebooks. I have a whole thing of graphic novel, like tons and tons of ebooks. These kids do not care about them whatsoever. They don't want to touch them. They don't want to read another darn thing on a screen they love. having that book.
I mean, I have like the newest one piece, you know, three in one volume and they get to take that book and they get to hold it and they get to pull it out of their backpack. These kids, I think all of us, we don't want more digital. We want tangible. We want that in-person experience. And I think that's so, so vital, especially these days, you know, we need to make sure we provide those spaces for them. Absolutely, and I agree.
I've been spending a chunk of my budget for the past couple of years on a couple of digital resources that, like, Comics Plus blows my mind with how much stuff is available to the kids. It's so awesome, and yet at the same time, I feel reluctant to suggest it to my students because I know they're on screens all the time, and it's like, ugh! But you know, one thing I do like about it is that, all right, we do have expanded tools.
Students that maybe have visual needs or auditory needs or language learners. There are some ways that I want to work strategically to direct funds for the materials for a specific purpose. And I think there are a lot of good options out there now these days that weren't available even five years ago. So. you know, whereas we don't want to go all digital, we don't want to be only print.
You know, we want to have those expanded resources for kids who maybe, you know, maybe, you know, they already have two books out and, you know, maybe they damaged a book and you're like, okay, listen, but you know, you've got to, you know, we've got to think about our responsibilities. But you have access to all these other books online. that you can read as much as you want. It's not going to get damaged. You're not going to lose it. The library is not going to lose funds.
That's another great point that, gee, you are like, just, my mind is going to be, I'm not gonna be able to put hats on anymore, because my mind is expanding so much in this conversation, because I have not thought about the fact that the kids who are damaging all my physical stuff, why don't I just point them at the digital stuff? I did see a post that you made this week about the book coming up. God, they're killing me, losing my mind. But that's a conversation for another day.
So organizationally, you are helping these kids really think about where they're going, what they're doing and why. I think the why is so important and I really appreciate that. Why is the most important question that we can ask? And what I prompt with the kids, because I really believe in getting them to ask questions and understand the value of questions. And so it's always going back to what do we do? What does Q stand for? Why, you the who, the what, the where, the when, the how.
And sometimes kids will jump to why, because I ask them what are the question words. I said, no, no, no, we can't understand the why. unless we answer those other ones first. You don't know why you should use a resource or not until you know, who made it? How are you accessing it? How are they giving it to you? Where is it coming from? When was it made? You have to answer those questions first and then you can understand the why. And the why is the most important one.
You don't get there directly. You have to go indirectly. You have to build that understanding. Mm, yes, wow. Love it. boy. There's so much good stuff here. I really, really love this. No, no, it's great. It's absolutely great. I do, I am curious, with this lesson that you've been doing, as I look through it, I just, wonder like how maybe adjustable is it? Or like, how do you differentiate this for?
students that are either coming in with, like you were saying, limited English proficiency or maybe just our students who are not as academically strong. Like, are there any particular ways that you have differentiated in the past or that you imagine differentiating this? So this was my first time doing this specific one. did it, you know, before, again, I just had it as a video, like a little, you know, three minute clip, and that was just a little intro.
So this was my first time doing it like this in a full form. And, you know, I will say that I think there are ways to simplify it. Or streamline it just a little bit for students who might need that I don't think you need to do much to make it more full for High school students. I really don't I think there's a lot that the high school students need at this level too. They need reminders.
They need refreshers You know, maybe just go a little bit faster through things and you know not spend as much time on trying to get them to understand how information is connected or how topics expand or contract. And what I'd really like to do is next time, so evolve this lesson because I already wouldn't do it this way. It's crazy. Things change so fast. I'm already like, no, no, no, this isn't good enough because it's really not. Now I look at it I'm like, ugh, terrible.
But I really want to spend more time on having the students practice topic expansion and contraction. Because that's really what the point of it is. We want them to understand how to think in their minds and explore because we want to get them away from that, you know, direct answer, easy thing, walk away, sense of mental safety, you know, get them to feel comfortable with exploration and open-endedness.
That's the struggle I think that we face even just as a society with AI and computers and the social media, We don't explore. We don't question ourselves enough. We don't give space to just sit with uncertainty. And that kind of gets me back to Dr. Carol Cuthout and her information search process where she integrated the psychology of what's happening in the process. You know, people, I wrote, I just started writing some sub stack and I wrote one about, I called it information grit.
Feeling uncertain about not knowing something, you've got to push through that and have some grit to get through to the other end to finish the whole search process, the whole research process to get to the point where you actually learn something. You can't if you're stunting that. So if you're not, giving space to kids but also supporting them in feeling uncertain, then you're not giving them the space to really push through and learn.
So that's what I really want to try and bring into the lesson more, is give them that chance to sit with uncertainty. Mm-hmm. When you're teaching and you have very limited time and you're just grateful to have a teacher who's like, I'll bring them in and you have 40 minutes for a lesson. You're like, my God, I have so much to say. How do I say it all?
So I really am very much looking forward to trying this lesson again, revamping it and focusing in on giving them a little more space just for that quietness and that uncertainty. Let them sit with it. Yeah. Well, that's, funny you're saying that because last week I was doing a lesson on research with one of the history teachers who was doing this big project and she and I were kind of collaborating back and forth.
And when they came in to talk about what are the sources that you guys might use and I, you know, put some stuff together for them, I was part way into it. And I always sort of have in the back of my mind, Dr. Calthough's process of research and how frustration is part of that. And so I expressed that to the students. I was like, Gang, you're going to at some point feel frustrated. You're not gonna have the answer and that's okay. That's part of the process. And like really, yes.
Yes, absolutely. And so my analogy that I kind of came up with on the fly that I wanna try and expand for next time around is it's like playing a video game. Because when you sit down and play a video game for the first time, you don't know how to play it. You don't know what the rules are. You gotta figure it out as you go. You don't expect to sit down and beat the big boss on the first go round. Like it's gonna take you multiple times. That's what research is.
Like you're gonna go in, you're gonna try multiple things and they're not gonna work and you're gonna have to come back at it. And that's okay, that's part of the process. I love that. love that. So I was I'm always trying to find ways to make things relevant to them, right? Connect to what they're doing today, right? And so I love that analogy of like you go you're playing a video game. You're already using these skills, right? You got to show the kids.
You got to show people you're already applying in your life. You just don't know you are now. You want to take it and apply it here. And I had done something similar a few years ago where I did like God, I'm blanking. The like TTYL, what is that? yeah, text messaging is a... beforehand. my god, I'm so old. T9, that's what it was. T9 language. right, so I told them I you know, I put a bunch of books on the screen I said you guys can read these right? do they say?
The kids knew I'm like, okay So when you're looking at an article online You're not reading every single word You're pinpointing the pieces of information that you need To understand you don't have to sit there and read and now I mean students who need more instruction on literacy and reading skills, you don't do this.
You've got to do it with kids who already have strong literacy skills, but when you're talking about informational reading, you can say, guys, you already know some of the shorthand. You already do this. So now let's apply it here and understand that you don't have to sit and read an entire article in full. You don't have to take a book. and read every single book. You're gonna look at the index. You're gonna look at the table of contents. You're gonna find the information you need within.
Look at the headings. Figure out what's bold. Pinpoint the things. You can do it. Your brain can do it, because you do it. Apply it here. And what a great opportunity that would be to expand into history classes, into science classes and say, when you're reading your textbooks, like science teachers, let me take them for a minute and talk to them about this information and how they're taking it in.
Because again, it's there are skills that they're transferring and they probably don't even recognize that they are skills in the first place and that they're transferring. And that's another reason why I love being a librarian, because we have an opportunity. We are one of those unique roles in a school where we can conceivably see every student from all different classes. And so we can say, remember when I did this with your teacher here? All right, now you're back here.
We're going to apply it over here. And you do make those cross-curricular connections. And that's how you build that lifelong understanding and the skills. You know, I love it. Yeah. Absolutely. So you've already said that you're thinking about doing some revamping. Are there any particular things that you're sort of leaning toward?
So I was trying to figure out how I could make it less scripted with me talking and more get the kids asking questions, more prompts, more involving, because it really does start with a lot of me saying things, but I need to bring myself to a point where I'm not trying to shove information at them because I'm so desperate to tell them what I think they need to know. Uh-huh.
I want to make sure that I'm giving space for them to do a little more wondering and make some of the connections themselves. So I need to figure out ways to make it more of a guidance and get them to fill in some of the blanks. So that's what I really want to focus on for next time. And it's crazy because I have been in so many different libraries and different positions over the years. I love where I am right now.
And I really hope, you know, I get to stay for a while and really build on some of these things. So there's kind of a fun aspect of having to reinvent and recreate for the audience and for the building and for their unique needs. But I haven't really had as much time lately to take a lesson and evolve it. A lot of it's been on the fly or trying to figure out. So I really, am looking forward to really taking that time and evolving it. I don't know, do you have any suggestions for me?
I would love if you have any suggestions for me. I am still just trying to process so many, there's so many great things here. So I will have to get back to you on that. But I mean, I am absolutely loving this. I'm actually, sorry, go ahead. No, so there's I love podcast. I listen to a lot of podcasts I think they're fun and I don't know if you know who Mike for big li is He's a good.
Yeah, so he has a podcast called working it out and he has guests on they talk about jokes and they talk about they workshop them and like, know That's what I need. I don't need to talk about my lesson as much as I need help. How do we get better? That's one of the things I love about getting to do this is I get to hear all these great ideas. like, as we're talking, I get to throw out like, well, yeah, that makes me think of this and that and the other thing.
And like, just that conversation sometimes, because I mean, as school librarians, we're already in our own separate silos and we don't, you know, have that professional conversation in the hallway. Yeah. we don Yeah, and I think you're absolutely right. It would be so valuable for us to have that time to just sit and talk to each other about specific lessons that we have done to do that feedback and to do that sort of group reflection and, what about this? How about that?
Even just seeing from a different perspective sometimes, you get this whole different way of thinking about Yeah, yeah, I would love more of that. All the time in world. yeah, well, yeah. So I'm kind of curious. You said this is the first year that you've done this this way and you work with five through eight, right? I do, although next year it's transitioning, it'll just be six, seven, Okay, so what grade level was this where you're mostly working with with this?
Was it all of them or was it sort of targeted? so I just, it was concentrated on seventh and eighth graders. So we have a certain subsect where the teacher has seventh and eighth grade in different classes, but they have like two seventh grade, two eighth grade. So I've gotten to do it with the seventh and eighth graders. And it was really interesting.
I think what I'd really like to do is kind of build a curriculum for the library where sixth grade focuses on kind of the understanding, the tools of informational reading and bring it back to that book and remind them of, okay, publisher, author, all that kind of stuff and build an understanding of the systems and how we use them. But then seventh grade really start bringing it into the research process. And I've actually been working on a model myself.
I don't wanna get into it because it's a lot, that's a whole nother deal. but get them to really understand the research as a process. And then eighth grade kind of solidify those skills and reinforce. So I think this particular one, organizing information would be great at seventh grade, that middle spot, give them that foundation.
And that way when they're in eighth grade and I'm working with them, we're really focusing on the mental acuity of expanding, contracting, making connections, thinking about context and all that. So that's my ideal world. We'll see what happens. Yeah. mean, like you said, you need the time and the space to kind of develop and see how it goes.
So having done this with the students, and I know this is the first time and I don't know when in the year you were playing with this, but have you gotten any feedback from either the students or the teachers about how they've been able to use some of these skills or whether they've seen these skills, whether the teachers have sort of seen this in effect in their rooms? So I really just this past week got to see this set of students again.
And it was wonderful because I was connecting with them and saying, OK, remember we talked about, know, and reinforcing the questions of who, what, where, when. And I was getting them to now think about searching for topics in a single database. We just said one database and they were finding information for Women's History Month. They have to do some slides. So I was introducing, I was getting to that point now. Okay, we've had a few lessons. I've talked about a few different things.
So now this is expanding on it and saying, okay, let's think about topic. And a lot of them did struggle because we said, okay, you have to find any person, any woman that you want to do in this database. And there were students who were like, well, who should I do? Well, look, here are some topics to explore. Use this, you know, function of the database. What you like? I don't know. I don't like to read. Well, no, I'm asking you what you like to read. What are you interested in?
You like sports? No. You like fashion? Yeah. Type in fashion. Type women in fashion and see what comes up. And you have students reading about Coco Chanel, you know, or they're, we're finding like a Ghanaian queen from 19, you know, hundreds British colonialism, you know. giving them the space, giving them that opportunity to be uncertain and saying, no, I'm not going to give you an answer. Take this time. have 15 minutes now. Explore. You like sports? Yes, I like sports. Okay. Type in sports.
You know, and it was really wonderful. I loved it. And I loved when I got to tell them, you know, like, you're okay. You know, it was, it was really refreshing. It was great. Yeah. Oh, man. That's, that's always such a wonderful moment when you get to see the fruit being, you know, blossoming on the vine, as it were. Man, so. it was starting to take off. I was really happy to see that those connections was fun. Yeah, that's great stuff.
So are there any particular things, if somebody wants to kind of take this and run with it, anything in particular they should sort of have in mind for the first time they're heading into this activity? Yeah, I mean, I think it might depend on the age of students that you're working with, like how much you really want to go into. So I really went and I explained every single category and I gave examples of each category and I have this framework of describing the Dewey categories.
You don't necessarily have to go into all of that. You can give kids a taste of one and maybe you want to just break it down to one and focus. and make it a little bit more simple and say, you know, all these categories are here. Let's just use this one as an example. You know, and so that might be a way that might be more digestible for some and maybe I'll even do that in the future. I don't know.
So that's something that I would probably think about changing or doing differently depending on, yeah, group size, where their skills are and all of that. That's one the things I love about this lesson is I think there's a lot of ways for it to be sort of tweaked and to meet the needs of whatever group of students you happen to be working with at the time.
Like you can really hone it in and really focus on the skills they need and that are gonna, you know, if they're, that are gonna meet their level, I guess, you know, wherever they happen to be at. So yeah, I really love this. I'm really glad that you shared this with us because there's so much here. But I think. we are at the point where we're gonna take our 90 degree turn and go into our book break. So for the book break, you get to share anything you wanna share.
could be personal, professional. It can be just what something you're reading on the beach this summer, whatever you wanna share. What do you think people might wanna have on their reading radar? Yeah, this one is tough for me. Whenever I was doing interviews or somebody asked me what my favorite book is, I get really nervous because all of a sudden I go blank.
So I have put a lot of thought into this because I've had some time and I really struggled with what do I want to pinpoint because I can't talk about all the things I read. But so I decided I wanted to mention Dr. Ian McGillchrist. He is a psychiatrist, among many other things, and he wrote The Master and His Emissary. I have not read The Master and His Emissary, because I have about 10 books and like 30 articles that I want to read, and they keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger piles.
But I read his primer on it called Ways of Attending. And that was a nice, short, sweet read. You know, really, that's what got me thinking about neuroscience and the way our brains function and that there's an actual mechanism. There's a reason why we hone in on and we want that certainty. you know, Carol Cuthout had talked about that feeling of uncertainty and the ways that we process psychologically the research process and information seeking.
But... hearing him in his podcast where I first heard him and then looking at the book and understanding the ways our brains focus on things. You know, there's there are reasons for it. And so understanding that human information behavior, why my students are acting this way? How can I work to help them through it so that they are learning good information literacy? skills. So that was something, you know, it's short ways of attending. It's not that long.
You get a taste of, you know, this kind of perspective and he's a bit controversial. You know, so some people may agree, some may not, but I found it very, very enlightening. I that. I love that we, you know, there are so many different areas that I think school librarians in particular tend to dip into. And I love that you're bringing us into this, the neuroscience field to think about a very important element of what we're doing with our students. So thank you. I appreciate that.
So I think we're getting pretty close to our wrap-up point, but people definitely are going to want to hear more from you. So where should people go looking for you when they want to track you down? So I am on Blue Sky. And I for years struggled with how do I want to be known. so I'm not even sure my actual handle is the right one. But if you find the Mary librarian, M-E-R-I librarian. And so that's me. That's me. My name is Meredith.
But all throughout my childhood growing up, everyone called me Mary. And So the Mary librarian, I want to be happy. I want to find joy in being a librarian. I love being a librarian. If I want to feel fancy, I'm an information scientist. But so they can find me on there. And then, yeah, I started doing some Substack. I've tried different things over the years, medium and even writing my own blog. But so right now, my newest thing is Substack and I'm on the Mary librarian on there as well.
You know, so that's that's where they can find me. Cool, well, I know people are going to want to because again, just this conversation we have had has just already, my brain is spilling over and I love it. It's so wonderful. So thank you so much for sharing. No, thank you. I really appreciate this opportunity. I've followed you a little bit online and I'm really excited that I got to do this today. And I want to continue learning from you as well. So thank you. Thank you.
This is a good opportunity for me. I appreciate it. no, I believe me, the appreciation is all mine. I am truly thankful. now.