Hey everybody, welcome back. We are so glad to have you, and I am so glad to be here with Melissa Tom, who is amazing and is sharing a really cool lesson with us today. So I'm so excited. Melissa, thank you for being here. Welcome. Listen, for those that don't know you, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure, well first of all, thank you for having me. I love this program that School Library Connection has started a year or two ago.
My name is Melissa Tom, and I am a teacher librarian in Connecticut. I have almost finished my eighth year of being a librarian, and before that I was a classroom teacher for 12 years. I grew up in Minnesota, moved to Arizona for my first teaching job, and then about, I don't know, 12-ish years ago I moved to Connecticut, ever since. Nice. Now what led you from sort of going from the classroom into the library? Well, it's a rather long story, so I will try to give you the cliff notes.
I was actually trying to create a school library and makerspace at the school that I was working at in Hartford. And sadly, there are very few libraries in schools in the district of Hartford. And so I wanted to kind of remedy that. And I started doing that.
And then about a year into that process, I started an ARC program to get my certification to become a full-time librarian because I wanted to do both my teaching that I was doing with fourth, fifth, and sixth graders in social studies, but also be the librarian at our school. And so that is how I eventually received my certification. And then as fate or whatever it was would have it, it didn't turn out the way I envisioned. And some things happened to the position that I was in at that school.
And I ended up getting offered a full-time position librarian in the neighboring district of West Hartford. And so that is how I ended up becoming a full-time librarian, even though, like I said, that wasn't really ever my intentional plan, but I'm very grateful for the way it happened. And one of my mantras in life for professional has been, if you jump, a net will appear. And that has kind of led me to my opportunities throughout the last 20 years of my teaching career.
And I'm very glad I in the library is so rewarding and it just fills my heart. I mean, we're glad you jumped too, because you have added so much to the school library world. It's really wonderful. So thank you for that. Thank you for jumping. Now, we're gonna be talking about podcasting and having students podcast. And I always feel a little bit like we're going very meta that we're on a podcast. We're gonna talk about how to get kids to podcast. But how did you sort of get into this lesson?
How did you see podcasting as an opportunity for students? Well, I had been thinking about it for a couple of years. I am a podcast listener myself, have been for quite a while. And this last September, my good friend, Kari Seiden, and I decided to again, jump. And we started and launched our own podcast, the Joyful Learning Podcast. And so I found out firsthand what it took to create it from kind of start to finish.
And so in my mind, when school started back in September, find kind of a way to incorporate that into my teaching with my students in my middle school. And for those of you who are middle school librarians out there or rely on the teachers to collaborate, you know that it can be a challenge sometimes to work in the types of lessons and activities you really are passionate about because you have to really depend on them.
And it as luck would have it again, this last winter, there was a new language arts teacher in in November for seventh grade and for some reason seventh grade decided that this year within their human rights unit that they do in the fall that kind of extends into the winter they were gonna have their culminating activity to have their students create a podcast.
So when I started seeing some of these emails coming through because the librarians were brought into this conversation in the context of what do we use for technology, what do we have access to, how to use it and really just how do you create a podcast from the technical side of things. And that was my entry point. So I completely jumped in.
I was so excited to be involved in some way with this and the language arts teacher and I work very well together and it just became one of the most amazing projects that I've done to date honestly in my library. That's awesome. Wow. That's, I mean, just the serendipity of everything lining up in just the right way to make that happen. Yeah, no, I agree. It was perfect, because I wasn't really sure how I was gonna make it happen, and then it came to me.
You put it out in the universe and sometimes it comes to you. Now, what would you say is sort of the primary objective of this lesson? Well, and it's interesting because it was more than just one lesson. So it was more of a unit and I kind of interspersed myself at different junctures. So I was very involved in the getting ready for them to create a podcast with getting them used to the tools that we were going to use in which we had access to, which I can talk about in a minute.
And then I also was brought in, thankfully, for the research part of it a little bit, because as a librarian, always I'm trying to get students in front of me to talk about credible sources and databases and note-taking and all of these other research skills that really fall into my area of expertise. So those were the two points. And then the last point that is sort of still developing as of this conversation is we then offered students to decide to participate in a contest.
So there are two one through the New York Times and one through NPR. And I am in the midst now of trying to help this small group who self-selected to go to this next step to revise the podcast that they did for their school assignment into a more polished piece that they will then submit to whichever of these two contests they decide. Nice. I had a couple of students a couple of years back when NPR was first starting their podcast contest.
We worked on a couple of things in class when I was still a classroom teacher, and they did some really interesting stuff. But one of the things I love is that they were able to sort of pick the topics that interested them, which I imagine is also what's going on with your students too, is that they get to kind of explore those topics. Yeah, and I was really excited that that was a component that the teachers were implementing.
Because again, like I didn't have a lot of say in how that was gonna look. So I was very happy when I saw what they had decided. And they kind of went through, I think a couple of iterations. Again, this bigger unit within language arts was human rights and like social justice or social issues. And at my school, they do book clubs. So for this particular unit, they didn't have a one text that everybody read.
or six different titles that students could choose from, all having specific social issues. And so at first the department had said, well, we're going to let students choose any topic under the sun, like anything they're interested in, which on the surface is great, but when you dig a little deeper, it can be both overwhelming and a little unmanageable, both for the students and for like the librarians and teachers working with them.
So they kind of, they kind of a evolved a little bit and said, well, they have to pick a topic that is of social issue. And, you know, like that kind of something that they were passionate about or felt very strongly about or wanted to sort of give more information to an audience about. And I thought that went really well with the overall unit. And some of the topics that the kids came up with, I had one student who chose to do media literacy.
And as you can imagine, I was like my librarian heart was singing because prompting, it was all on his own. And one of the requirements that came out of the project for all of the students is they had to find somebody to interview. So, and it could be a classmate, it could be a family member, it could be a teacher, but it could also be somebody out in the real world.
And so this particular student decided to reach out to the editor of a local news publication, and actually it might be mostly digital. Hmm. West Hartford, and he interviewed the editor and recorded, and she is part of his podcast. And he is one of those students who decided he wanted to enter his contest, enter one of the contests. So I'm really excited to kind of see what his final version is and send it off to the contest. That's awesome.
Wow. What a great, I mean, there's so many cool things going on here. Like if I take a half a step back and sort of look at it with supervisor glasses on your, um, using so many different library skills there, you know, you've got research and databases. You've got technology integration. You've got helping kids find information, not just with the research, but with, you know, in general, finding their interests and exploring reach.
I'm sure that you had a hand in helping them reach out to some of their at some point too. Yeah, well, and of course, you know I involved authors. So one of the groups wanted to do dress coding. And this is a little quiz for you, Steve. Can you guess who I might have reached out to? Can you think of in middle grade literature who has written a book that really deals with dress coding? It's interesting because I feel like there's become almost a subgenre of dress code books.
And I'm thinking of there's dress coded and then there's also Margie Kelly breaks the dress code. And I think there's one other one that's escaping me at the moment. So. OK. by Carrie Firestone. And again, as luck would have it, she lives in Connecticut, about 20 minutes from where my school is physically located. And so she and I have communicated, she's done virtual visits with students multiple times. Her book is actually one of the options for an eighth grade unit that happens every year.
So she was so excited to talk to these three students via a Google Meet one day. They came down to the library, they had their interview questions already, and she was so complimentary afterwards. She said that she has never really dealt with so, she has said that she's never really dealt with such mature seventh graders. So that made me very proud for her to say that. And they were so thrilled to have this opportunity as such an intimate experience with an author. Yeah, I can imagine.
Oh, that's outstanding. So just pivoting for a second here and taking a little bit of a step back to the practical application or not the practical application, but rather the... Yes, thank you. I'm going to just give that one a... We're going to redo that. Okay. So taking a step back and looking at the actual implementation, is this sort of a whole class lesson?
Is this sort of like, I know that it's a unit that's going to have multiple pieces to it, but sort of how does it break down in terms of what the students are actually seeing in the unit? That's a great question. And the answer is there's a bunch of different formats that we used. So the teacher did a lot of whole class instruction that didn't necessarily directly involve me.
I might have given her some resources or we maybe met to like talk about some of the components of what I was hoping that she would convey. And then she just did it in her classroom. And then I would come in at certain junctures in the sense that I did a lesson about a week or two out before they their podcast project and they used the previous lesson that they had done to learn how to use the tool that we ultimately ended up using for the assignment which was Screencastify.
Now Screencastify is not a typical podcasting tool but it is the one that we had access to as a district. We subscribe, all the students have it in their accounts and so that was one of Mm. what we could then use to make this project work. And there were a lot of work arounds, so people out there listening know what this is like. You have certain things you would love to use, but you just don't have access to it for whatever reason.
So we actually ended up, I taught them the basics of how to use Screencastify. I did a few screencasts that I would put in my Google Classroom so they would have access whenever they needed, when I wasn't there, they could just play the video. And then they practiced using it and then downloading just the audio because that is a feature of the paid version of Screencastify. And voila, there you go.
So it was kind of an app smash between their Google Slide that they would talk through and then Screencastify to record the audio. And so they got familiar with that. And then and she introduced the unit and she had them started doing topic selection and a little bit of research. And then I came in and helped and I did a lesson on credibility. How do you know if a source is reliable, credible? What are some of the things to ask yourself?
And where do you go to find reliable and credible resources? So I did a lesson, whole group for that. And then again, I kind of backed out because as a librarian, you know, you Right. be with one class day after day after day. And then when I would come back in, they had done most of their research, they had done most of their note taking, and now they were ready to put together their podcast. And the department basically had created kind of a script for them to use.
I wasn't really too much of a part of that, but I saw it and I thought they did amazing work. And so I was just, I would pop into the classes just to offer an extra set of hands. So I wasn't teaching, but I to guide and to answer questions as they came up. And then when we got...
Oh. such a difference for some of the students that you're able to sort of give them that one-on-one time that maybe they're not willing to, you know, ask something in front of the whole class, or there's just something that they think they know, but they're not quite, and you can kind of see over shoulder that they're maybe struggling a little bit. That's really great when you get that opportunity to sort of dive into those intimate moments.
again, that connection with a teacher was key because she I am a co teacher in her Google classroom. So I see everything and I was able to also asynchronously go in and put comments in the students note taking sheet.
And if they had something that they were like if they had a question or if they had an idea of where they wanted to find information, or if it was something that was just very questionable, I could put a comment and that was like a direct connection in my time when I was in the library not actively teaching, but kind of in my prep time, I was able to communicate one-on-one with a lot of students that way as well, in addition to
being able to see what their topics were so that I could start helping brainstorm possible interviewees. Because for a classroom teacher with 110 students, which that's what our school has, that is a lot to manage. And so, you know, having, like you said, that extra person is a game changer. It just makes it so much more doable and meaningful for the students. Absolutely. And you'd mentioned teaching them about reliability.
And it's funny, I don't know that we always think of how important reliability is when we're talking to students about things they're going to produce and share with the world. Because so many people get their information through podcasts these days. So kind of pointing them to, like, where is this actually coming from? Are you citing your sources?
Not only are you helping them find good information, but you're also sort of building good habits and maybe even sort of inoculating with a little bit of when you're listening to a podcast, are you hearing these things? And what does that tell you or not tell you about what you're listening to? I agree 100%.
And actually something you just said made me also think about when I first went in at the beginning of their project and I kind of did a very informal poll, how many of you actively listen to podcasts? Very few of the seventh graders raise their hand.
And for the article that I ended up writing for the May issue of the print school library connection, I also did some research on this because there's certain age groups that are very drawn to podcasts and seventh and eighth grade right now really is not part of that subgroup. And you know, we kind of know statistically they get their news from TikTok and from Instagram and just from the social media platforms and you know they don't have a lot of really reliable ways to get information.
And so I'm also hopeful that after this experience they will be more likely to think about podcasts as a form of research and knowledge and entertainment because they're all of those things. And I also shared my personal journey with my podcast. And I think that really helps some of them. And it definitely helped me know what some of the stressors and kind of roadblocks would be for them. And it kind of helped me preempt a little bit.
And I'm one less thing that and this and then I'll stop talking about this, but people hate Mm-hmm. Ha ha ha. it was something that I have had to get over and almost every seventh grader expressed concern about that situation. And I was just very real and I shared my own experience and I listened, I shared some of my podcast episode with them and I stood there and I said, you know, this is really hard, but it doesn't sound the same to my ears as it sounds to other people.
And what you have to say matters. get your workout. So I'm hoping that sticks. I love that. And I love too that you're able to relate to them on a very equal level as a podcast creator and producer, like, hey, here's struggles I had doing this. So it's not just you, you know, really helping them see, yeah, this is something that people go through. Right. Yeah. Nope. I think that was, yeah, I like being real when I can with my students because I think that they appreciate it too.
Yeah, oh absolutely. So how did you decide on what kind of resources you were going to use? You had kind of mentioned that technology-wise you, you know, were trying to focus on the things that you had access to. Were there any other ways you kind of looked at technology elements for the students? Yes, actually, it's very interesting and we definitely did app smashing at its finest, in my humble opinion.
So what we kind of ended up doing is, again, we had the Screencastify, which was really the only technology tool that we subscribed to as a district that everybody had equal access to. But part of the issue is that you can't add sound effects and you can't add anything like Mm. really in that platform. Again, it's not a podcasting platform. So I really enjoy WeVideo, but we don't have a paid subscription to WeVideo because it's cost prohibitive for our school.
And I went in and I figured out, good, bad, or indifferent, I'm not really sure, but they have an amazing template for podcasting in WeVideo. And I'm really, really hoping that we can make it work who knows, but so you could take this template if you wanted to or you could just create your own new project and put all of your stuff and narration into it and then we used Screencastify. We would just play the template that we had of it and the draft and we would Screencastify it.
So the audio wasn't super crisp because as you know on the backside like there's a bunch of things in at play and recording, but it did the job. So that was one way that we kind of got around. And it's also interesting. So many students found their own tools and they went home and they did their own tool and got it into their Google Classroom assignment in one way or another.
So another thing that I really took away from this, and I hope other listeners out there are open to this, is our a lot of things. And sometimes we don't really honor that knowledge and we poo-poo it for whatever reason, but if we can just, you know, be open to it and sometimes it doesn't work and there's reasons, legality or whatever the issue is that we can't, you know, very validate what they're using, but sometimes I'm like, oh where did you find that? What is it called?
Maybe we can get it, you know, for our computers at school. So just, you know, listen to what the students ideas they're pretty savvy in certain ways. They're also needing a lot of guidance in others and sometimes we assume they know more than they do about certain things but I think that we need to balance that and be open to their ideas.
Yeah, and I mean, it could also be a great learning opportunity to say, here's why we can't use that or here's why that's not acceptable in the way we're going to be doing this. So another chance for digital citizenship skills, you know. Yes, absolutely. And one last tool that I really wish we had access to, but again, we just don't right now. There's a really great platform called Sound Trap.
And I actually did some PD virtually, probably almost, well, it might have been last summer because it kind of maybe last spring, it kicked off this whole podcast for Carrie and I. And we did it was like three times. We learned so much. We really got some of the basics of what it is to podcast with students. then they gave us an account for a year to use and to kind of explore that we could take back to us with our schools.
And also another really amazing option if you have a budget for this kind of thing. So look into Soundtrap as well. Yeah. Were there any sort of informational resources that you made sure you pointed the kids to? You know, we didn't have a lot of pre-determined things that we put together, and mostly it was because of time. This was a very kind of quick, compacted unit. And so when we're getting ready for next year, I feel like we'll be ahead of the eight ball in that situation.
But one of the things that I use this opportunity to introduce the students to, or I should say review with the students, because technically they've seen it, is within Connecticut, we have research at CT, that's from the State Library. So that's where all our databases that are supported by the State Library are housed and they have magazines and they have just all sorts of information that a lot of times students and teachers don't even know are out there.
So I got them back onto that and we did some keyword search strategy and a little bit of a mini lesson and they some of the students found information there and then we also taught them some tricks down their results. And then there's a sweet search is something that we use a lot in our district. And it's an alternative to Google. And it's a little more student friendly, a little bit less busy. They don't have ads. And it gets a lot of the same results, I would say.
So that was something that I introduced in this unit as well. And I'm hoping going forward, they remember that and don't necessarily always start with Google. try a sweet search instead. Yeah, oh, that's great. So this is the first time this lesson is happening, this year. So, so what have you learned in this implementation that you're like, okay, next year, here's what we're gonna do.
Well, again, starting earlier of gathering sources, and another thing that I always want more time for is topic shopping. And students don't know what they don't know. And if we don't expose them to a variety of ideas and topics and different things that they have never seen before, they're never going to find them on their own necessarily. frame in which they have to choose a topic and just curate a bunch of different ideas.
And then the other thing is I don't think we spent a lot of time on listening to podcasts because I feel like just like with writing, you want to have those mentor texts and with podcasts you want to have those mentor podcasts. So I've been working since we finished on trying to curate a variety of different high podcast directed at this age group so that they will have a bunch of opportunities to listen to all the different types of formats that are out there. That's great.
That's a really great idea. The idea of sometimes we don't think of audio as a text, but it absolutely is. And it's something that it's when we can kind of encourage that reminder that yes, this is another, you know, this is another type of literacy. That's really helpful, I think, not just to the students, but to the teachers as well. That's great.
So it sounds like this is a lesson that can really be adapted quite a bit to ability level, topics, you know, if it wasn't necessarily rooted in social studies, but it sounds like it works really well in social studies. Are there any specific kind of supports built in to sort of support students that have maybe particular learning needs? Well, we did include the special ed teacher and the reading teacher. So for a couple different periods of day, we actually had three adults in the room at once.
And that's one kind of basic way. And then I, the teacher and I kind of would talk about students that we would see were struggling a little bit with whatever it was. And we would kind of interject at that moment, kind of divide and conquer. And we used the library as an extension of the classroom. students needed different space or just to work kind of by themselves or with their small group or needed more one-on-one attention. I was there and they could come to the library during that period.
So those were a couple of the specific ways. Again, something that I'm hoping to add when we do this in the future is to try to have that differentiated set of resources, you know, like Newzela or Newz-ELA, however people out there say it. where they're getting their information at different, even, lexiles so that it's accessible to a variety of readers. And that's a challenge, right? Because you don't know the topics going in necessarily if it's student chosen.
But to kind of have some websites ready to go where we can alter some of that is something that I'm hoping to build a little bit. And I don't have the magic answer, but those are a couple of things that I'm hoping to add for that differentiation of meeting kids where they are. No, I think that's great. So I know you're kinda sorta still doing this lesson a bit and it's sorta the first implementation, but I'm wondering, have you had any kinda feedback from the teachers about how this is going or?
Well, the teacher that I, at my school, we only have one language arts teacher for each grade. So she has all the kids and it's just her and I, which also makes it a lot easier to manage. So for those of you listening, who have multiple teachers at the same grade level for the same content, you're gonna have to tweak it maybe a little bit. I understand that. But she has been so excited about the enthusiasm and the productivity and just the engagement that the students have.
antidote I want to share because I'm so, I don't know, proud or just happy of this story. So we have two students who are working together, kind of typically underachieving, not really motivated, kind of the troublemakers sometimes. You know, those kids in class that just really don't want to be there and don't really find any value in a lot of what we do. They chose a topic When we saw the topic, we kind of looked at each other, the teacher and I were like, okay, we can work with this.
And she is amazing. And so she came up with this great idea to connect it to like financial advising. And she suggested to them, well, why don't we try to find somebody to interview that helps people plan for their future financially so that this maybe won't happen in the future. And so she kind of did that on her end. And then one afternoon they came down to the library Miss Tom, we want your help. We don't really know who to reach out to.
I tried to reach out to a contact I had and I hit a dead end. And she told me this backstory and immediately I said, well, I can text my financial advisor and see if he would be interested in chatting with you too. And right there, I had my phone, I speech to text my person and I just explained what was going on and what we were asking. he responded and said, that would be fun. That sounds fun.
And so literally two days from that afternoon, we had them set up in a room and they had all their questions ready. And it was so funny because right before we got them online, I was overhearing them kind of discussing the questions and being just super serious. And one of the boys goes, no, we have to take this seriously, like pay attention. Like he was getting the other, his partner in line. And I had to leave. I was actually teaching another class in social studies that period.
So I just hoped it all went well and I left them and then I went to go see the teacher after that period and she said They were so excited when they came back and they said we are gonna start saving money today and You know They didn't come out with a completely finished podcast because I think that's the other important piece that people need to hear Not all of the students are gonna have 100% success and you're not gonna get that complete project from everybody But that's okay
You have to look at what was positive and what they got out of it. And this is more engagement from these two students that I've seen in a year and a half of working with them. So you have to take the small successes and then think about how to build on that going forward with those students. I mean, it's such an incredible learning experience, even if the final product isn't necessarily finished or produced, they've done so much. And I'm sure that they feel invested.
I mean, clearly they feel invested in these projects. That's outstanding. Yeah. So you've already given us tons of advice for what we might wanna think about if we wanna implement this. Any last thoughts on what you might wanna kind of get in people's heads if they were going to run with this lesson? I think really, and this is with anything, just have faith it's going to work out. It's gonna work out.
It might not be as you envisioned it, but if you don't take the chance of implementing something new, you're never going to grow or know how it would end up. So find those people that you work well with and just jump and trust that it's gonna turn out I think that that is what keeps me going in education. It's really hard right now. Everything feels a lot more difficult than it did even five years ago.
And so if you can just really make connections with a few people in your building and just nurture those relationships and they will be willing to take those risks with you and reach out to your greater network. School library connection is one such network. There's so many of us out there who are communicating media and via the website and all the online sources and the webinars, find people that want to do the same things and connect. That's my advice. Absolutely.
Speaking of which, actually before I ask you where people can find you, I believe that you're going to, you had mentioned earlier there's an article coming out that's about this unit that you've been working on. Can you give us a little bit of a lowdown on that? Sure, and actually it kind of encapsulates everything we talked about. You asked really great questions.
So it should be coming out in the May, June issue of School Library Connection, right about the same time that I think this is going to be aired for the first time. And it really just talks about kind of my, why I think podcasting is important, how it connects us when we can feel really isolated in our lives or in our professions.
And it talks about the genesis of my podcast, and then how I took that passion and experience to then bring it to the school and my students and my teachers and some of those resources, some suggested podcasts that I have both for the adults and for the students and just some of the resources technology wise that I used in my process. I got a little bit of a sneak peek and I really, there's lots of great stuff in there.
So I really appreciate that you're sharing not only, you know, the thought process, but also the actual here's literal tools you can pick up and start using to do this. So thank you for that. So if people want to connect with you, where are they going to find you? Well, I am on Twitter still and I'm gonna stay. I'm hopeful it's gonna bounce back. And Instagram and my handle is at MsTomBookitis, M-S-T-H-O-M-B-O-O-K-I-T-I-S. And I do have a website, melissatom.com.
There's lots there and there's actually a link to a different website that I've been developing, the Joyful Teacher Librarian Toolbox. So I just always try to share as much information because I think we're better together. So just reach out, send me a message on social media, or email me at JoyfulLearning at MelissaTom.com and I promise to respond. That's awesome. Thank you again.
I cannot thank you enough for being here with us today and sharing all these awesome ideas and not just the ideas, but the enthusiasm for being a Leaper and a lifelong learner. It's really been wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you, I appreciate the opportunity.