Hey everybody, we're back and I'm excited. I'm talking to a new friend today. And so this is gonna be a fun one. There's a lot of interesting ideas that we're gonna be digging into here. without further ado, let me turn it over to our guest. Jen, why don't you take a second to introduce yourself, tell folks where you're at what you do. Right. My name is Jennifer Fox Eberly, and I live right outside of the Chicago area in a suburb north of the city called Lake Zurich.
And I am currently in a middle school. We are grades six through eight, and I serve as the school librarian. It is a unit district. So I do have the opportunity to PLC with I have a sister librarian at another middle school and then my high school librarian as well. That's awesome. that's great.
Man, you're really fortunate when you get to be in a situation like that where there are those other librarians in your district you can kind of build programs with and like integrate different ideas into your school, their school. So many opportunities there. That's cool. So I'm curious, how did you end up in the school library? What was sort of your path to the book room? So this is my 27th year in education and I spent the first 18 years in a classroom teaching ELA, mostly with gifted kids.
And it was a magical 18 years. And that is not an exaggeration. It was absolutely amazing. It was definitely a niche for me. I also had the opportunity to work on an amazing team. So we were a self-contained team. Ooh. And I taught sixth grade and eighth grade. And the four of us kind of worked together and yeah, as a self-contained team, we just got to do a lot of really special things with those kids.
And then what happened was, is like everything in education, you don't always have a lot of opportunities to move around. You kind of get, you know, into a position and there's not a lot of options. So my colleague who I worked with for years was going to retire. I knew it was coming and I knew they were going to take our program and they were going to shake it up a little bit. And I was not excited about the shakeup.
So I started thinking, you know, my Sundays were spent at Starbucks, creating papers, very dedicated students. You know, it was common that I would spend Sunday afternoon on Google docs with kids. And we would be conferencing for hours. And I got to work with some of the most talented writers. and readers and just had an amazing, you know, first 18 years. But when I knew it was kind of coming to an end, I thought, I want to do something else. I want to stay in education.
I love my school district, but I think I want to try something else. And so like a lot of us in education, I had already kind of maxed out my education as far as my district was concerned. Mm-hmm. And I didn't want to teach high school, which is funny because I feel like my middle grade kids were always like, you should teach high school. And I was like, no, no, you guys are so angsty in high school. I kind of like middle school cause they still kind of like you. but they have lots of sass.
And so I, I liked that. And I thought, you know what? I've spent a lot of my childhood in public libraries. and it was an important part of my maturation. And so that's kind of what I wanted to kind of reinvent the way libraries were perceived in my school. And I knew that we had a referendum coming up. I knew there was an opportunity they were going to remodel the library, make it much more modern.
And then when I went to library school, I started to discover that it was an advantage that I had already been in the building 18 years. Mm-hmm. So I had a relationship with these teachers. So I didn't have to build the same kind of trust that I think you have to do when you come in new and you're begging teachers to work with you. So that's kind of how I got there. Nice, man.
Yeah, there's definitely, I definitely feel like those folks who get to library in the school that they were teaching in come in with a handful of extra cards to play, because you know the people, the people know you, you know the programs, you know, you get like, here's something that I can help with, here's ideas I already had that I want to explore more that I can, you know, now share with others too. So yeah, I definitely think there's a huge advantage there.
Not that it's also not a good thing sometimes to be the new person in a new place to shake things up, but it definitely can be a much easier transition if you kinda are familiar with where you're going. Yeah, I can totally get that. So we're gonna be talking about your Writer's Week program that you do. This is a really fascinating thing. And knowing that you're an ELA teacher, I can absolutely see the connections and the tie-ins here.
But I'm kinda curious, like where did this come from in the first place? So my school has always, my district in general is very, very supportive of bringing authors in to the school. And I formed, as soon as I got into the library, I really kind of formed great relationships with my elementary librarians in district as well. And my building shares, my middle school is attached to an elementary school in district.
And so the elementary librarian is very creative and her and I, got together and we started just kind of doing some brainstorming. We shared some authors, which was very cool. We got to have Tim Green and the kids were really excited about him. We had Margaret Haddock. So we've had some big names and her and I have done some creative collaboration, which has been fun. And then I had a young teacher in my building. who I had been on some committees with.
She knew that I had written a large part of the ELA curriculum, so I knew it really well. And she came to me and said, hey, what would you think about taking this idea of having an author come and making it a little bit bigger? know, making it a, let's call it a writer's week. And the reason she was passionate is that she is a writer herself and is getting her first book published this spring. Ooh, yeah. name is Connie Richardson and she's awesome.
So I have to tell you, like in the beginning, our library had just been the year she came to me, which was four years ago, we had just remodeled and it was just, you know, we had just gotten out of COVID and I thought, there had been a lot of changes. And I was, I was a little bit reluctant. said, you know, is this the right year to do this? You know, the library is reopening. so much change. and she was just very enthusiastic and she just said, Jen, I really think we can pull this off.
Let's, let's do it. And I'm, you know, I, I love the enthusiasm and I'm like, okay, all right. And I don't, you know, being a librarian, think a lot of people would have the same experience where it's such an island in so many ways. and I, you know, I didn't realize that until I left my team and went into the library. and so I was excited that somebody wanted to do something with me. and I think her enthusiasm just encouraged me to do it.
So we sat down and we kind of came up with a plan, with some ideas. And then we went to our administrator and said, you know, we kind of want to bring the school together post COVID. This feels like if we did a one book, one school experience, this seems like something that could really take off. Excuse me. so he was, he was great. He's, know, I mean, We did, we did really all the work. We really just needed his permission. And we came up with some ideas of how to, I have a very generous budget.
So I knew that I could fund some of the activities and then my PTO stepped in and I'm very, very fortunate. Lake Zurich has an educational foundation. And they also give grants for innovation. Hmm. So I've been able to reach out to them, not every year, but it depends on the year. They also support our writers who come in. So that's kind of how it started. And it's obviously kind of blown up since then. That's awesome, man.
And I love that you've got that, not just buy-in from one of your teachers, but that enthusiastic looking for the collaboration, looking for the ways to integrate some of the things they're doing with some of the things you're doing and bringing that to the whole school. Like that's just, that's so great. I mean, I used to be on a team.
So I know when you talk about like you work with these people and you know these people, and then all of a sudden you're on your own little island over here, it can definitely be, like you said, it's isolating, but. That's awesome that you had this supportive person that was just as enthusiastic about this as you were, maybe even more so. that's usually you don't see it go that way. Usually it's the other way around. the librarians like, yeah, we're going to do this thing.
And that you should like, okay, all right, we'll get there. That's awesome. And it's kind of funny. It's, I just am thinking of this now, but we're to be talking about your writer's week here. And I just did another episode about how we can bring more writing from the school library. And it's funny. I don't think of the library generally as being a place. that is necessarily supporting writing sort of directly, you know, as a huge reader as a kid, like that absolutely formed my ability to write.
And like people say, you're such a great writer. It's because I read all the time. So like, I know we're supporting it that way, but this, you are bringing it to a whole different level. It's, this is really something. So this is really cool. So you've got, you had this sort of, all this work that you were doing with authors, which is great. You've got this English teacher that's interested. You're doing the one read. So now how does that evolve into Writers Week?
So, her and I kind of came up with, I guess we would say some mission-like ideas. Like, what is our mission in Writers Week? What is the point? Okay, so I do have to give some credit. There is a high school in the Chicagoland area called Fremd High School, and they originally kind of made Writers Week their thing. It became well known among... high school teachers in the area and that they were getting big authors. They were spending a lot of money. They were having all these cool experiences.
So many, many years ago, the librarian in my district at the high school level had tried to get a writer's week off the ground kind of at her school. And it's super challenging in high school setting, right? The buy-in is even more important. Her library space needed to be remodeled and... all these factors and she eventually left education. And I think, you know, so she had kind of already put a seed in my mind. And then when Connie came to me and said, Hey, let's do this, know, friend does it.
I, and then she said, she goes, I've been peeking at their writer's week website and kind of taking a look at the things they do. So we were kind of inspired by that. And then we thought, all right, what is our mission? What do we want to accomplish for the week? And how can obviously we do this, just the two of us, and get Biden from the staff.
So the first year, we decided to do was, a big part of the mission was we wanted to make the library space accessible to all kids, meaning kids who are not huge readers and or writers. And so we wanted to make sure that we included activities that would speak to them. Obviously, that would also help with their excitement about the novel. So that particular year, we had reached out to Dusty Bowling. And she lives in Arizona and she was gonna be in the Chicago area.
And here's what's funny, I had reached out to her. She does not work with an agent. So all you librarians who are at least not yet. She was wonderful because she communicated one-on-one. But when I reached out to her, I didn't hear back and I thought, I wonder, should I do it again? You never know if you're being too aggressive. But Connie, being the young millennial that she is said, She was like, Jen, let me handle this. I'm just going to get on Twitter.
Like she said, Dusty is very active on Twitter. I'm just going to DM her. And I was very like, Whoa, I mean, really? That seems a little assertive. And she's like, no, no, this will be great. And she was right. Dusty and her got into this conversation and that's how we were able to land her actually for that first year.
Huh. So we decided to go with a book, and I would suggest this for any school that's interested in a one book, one school, we decided to go with Canyon's Edge because it's written in verse. And we thought, hey, this is a book that's a fast read. It deals with so many different topics. It has adventure in it, so it's gonna encompass all kinds of different kinds of readers. It's accessible. in the sense for teachers won't be as intimidated to get through it just because of the length.
It was affordable, was already in paperback. So we were able to fund every student in our building received their own copy. And that's a really special moment when you are standing as a librarian right in the hallway and where my library is located, it's in a central part of the school. So I'm very fortunate, but I see, I see at least half of the student body daily. Hmm. to see every kid carrying that book, you know, that month kind of leading up to her visit was pretty cool, very exciting.
It just gave us so much, go ahead. It just gave us so much to talk about. It gave me something else to connect with kids about. And so then we decided, all right, so we have the book, we have the author. What else can we bring to that? We want to make writing accessible to kids. what is something we started to think about our curriculum and kind of feeling like, you know, as we had moved towards the core standards, what were we losing, we lost a lot of ability to do creative writing.
So we thought, hey, why don't we work on some poetry. And then I had this connection from I went, I did my master's in Vermont at Middlebury. And in Middlebury, poetry was just a big part of the curriculum. And I had a connection with a gentleman who runs a literary poetry magazine out of Vermont. And he and his partner actually do professional development for teachers. I had been to some of his professional development when I was a teacher and I really liked him.
thought he made poetry very accessible for young people. So I just got online and reached out to him and said, Hey, I've got this grant this year. We're doing this one book one school. This is this I would love what do you think about coming in as our writer in residence is what we called it. That's amazing. And he was a me. He was so awesome.
So Vermont, so down to earth, just, you know, works with kids, works on the East coast a lot, does a lot of work out there, obviously, but he flew in, he spent two and a half days at my school. And then he spent two and a half days at my sister middle school. And Connie and I were able to work the schedule so that every single student would see him. So there's a lot of things about I mean, as you know, there's not a lot of male ELA teachers in my building anyway.
And so I just liked this experience of having this kind of this gentleman, you know, from the East Coast who was very, very active, you know, dressed in all of his Columbia gear teaching poetry to these kids, you know, making it accessible for them. And he was super flexible. I said to him, Hey, poetry is my jam. How do you feel if I kind of team teach with you? You know, and he was like, no, Jen, absolutely let's do it. So it was really the two of us.
So we were able to, with my furniture in the library, clean out and move furniture. I have flexible furniture. We moved everything and basically set up the entire library for Writers Week. So he came in on a Monday and Tuesday. Every student in my building was also funded a black and white composition book. We gave, we made custom stickers for Writers Week with the year on it. in the Canyon's Edge, so every kid got a sticker. And then of course the library had all kinds of promotions.
We gave away cactus pens. We gave away all these things that had to do with Dusty's book. And then he kind of, his lessons, you he and I of course zoomed a couple times before he came and he ran some lessons by me. I told him I loved him. I thought they'd go great. And he was uber flexible. You know, he did something a little different for each grade level, which was great. So we have sixth, seventh and eighth grade.
I would say, you know, one challenge is that we did in order to make it so that every kid could see him, we did have sometimes two or three classes at once. So in my library, it works out. So we could have up to 90 kids in a room. And you would think, holy smokes, like that's, that's a lot of kids, right? It is, but you know, my teachers were there to help us monitor. I'm obviously there helping him teach. He's there. Connie was in there. My administration was so kind.
They were able to get her a sub for a day so that she could come in and help teach. Just so much support. And that was such a cool experience for the kids. So he was there the first two days. And then Dusty came on Wednesday. And she did something really cool where she did three separate grade level talks to the kids. Okay. And they just sit on the floor. just sit in the library. My school is, is we have about 200 kids per grade level and you know, she only talks for 45 minutes.
So she would talk to the kids. She was very engaging, wonderful, has a PowerPoint. I have a microphone system in my library. So that's perfect. It's ideal. And then she offered, which is, this is one of my favorite things we do for writer's week is we do pay our authors a little bit extra to run a writer's workshop with kids. Hmm. So Connie and I will come up with a Google form where we'll ask the kids a series of questions. And then we make this little flyer with a QR code.
put it all over the building and we say, you know, we advertise on the announcements and we have canvases or iOS and we can put announcements, push them to the entire student body that way. And we have them fill out this kind of easy Google form. Hey, do you want to come and take a writing workshop with Dusty Bowling? Hmm. know, do you like to create a right and you don't get to and we capped it at 40 kids and we hit 40 kids, 40 kids signed up. And then, I mean, we really went all out.
made them little, little custom invitations. So my, my paraprofession, I have a paraprofessional, which I have to give her credit because I couldn't do half the stuff I do if I didn't have her. So this was something I gave her. said, can you make like a fun? And then the kids got these invitations delivered at lunch. It was very cool. And of course you have to have teachers have to be flexible about that, right?
They have to allow that student then to miss minutes in the afternoon so they can hang out with Dusty Bowling. So that was very cool. These kids, you know, and from a teaching perspective, and I'm sure you feel this way too, just because you're an author doesn't mean you're teacher. So you never know like how that's going to go. Yeah. Yeah. have had some experiences with authors that I'm sitting in the back thinking, man, man, they're losing them, they're losing them. But actually I'm wrong.
The kids love it. They love it. They absolutely love it. And I get a really wide variety of kids, two kids that you wouldn't think would be interested, you know, want to come. So we do that on Wednesday. also have a lemon, we created a lemonade stand in Dusty's book, The young girl is eating, she talks about prickly pears when she's in the desert. And so I got some prickly pear juice and we made lemonade so the kids could taste it. Cause it's not common in the Midwest.
And so we had like a lemonade stand. like as they went to lunch one day, every kid got a little Dixie cup and you would think it would be a mess. They were so respectful. They were so, it was awesome. They were great. They loved it. So we did that. Then on the fourth day, we decided to take a little bit of a break. We needed kids to make sure they were getting their minutes and other classes, obviously.
So we hired, we wanted to give kids, one of the reasons, a part of our mission for Writers Week was to expose kids to different jobs that they could have through the process of writing. That you don't have to be an author. you know, that writing and reading, you know, this is going to be a part of your life. And so very fortunately, students that I have had in my program many, years ago that I taught, I've stayed in contact with them and some of them have become writers.
So I reached out, I had a student who used to work at Harbor publishing and she actually was an editor for middle grade books. So I hired her to do a 45 minute zoom with the kids. And then she did two Zooms on Thursday of that week. And then I hired another student who was actually a journalist living in Colorado. And she had just taken a new job and it was the perfect opportunity.
So I just went into the Zooms and kind of, you know, had the conversation with them and kind of guided the conversation. But then all the teachers zoomed in so their classrooms could see it. Okay. And then the kids could ask questions. So just showing them like the purpose of, know, that writing is not, you don't have to be a novelist, like, right, you don't have to write a novel, that there are different jobs and different ways that writing will become relevant in your life.
And then on our last day, this was really my most exciting thing. the last day, you know, we kept racking our brains like what can we bring to the school? that is really going to get my non-readers excited, right? Like what can I do? So I decided to, on a whim, reach out to an exotic animals organization here in Illinois. And I called this gentleman and I said, hey, I am looking for animals that are critters that are indigenous to Arizona. You know, and I told him the whole thing.
said, we have this book and this is what we've done. And she encounters tarantulas and snakes and other things in the desert. And he's like, yeah, I absolutely have those. I'm like, really? So then I, you know, I had this whole conversation with him and I said, you know, I need you to send me someone who can handle middle school boys. Like you gotta send me somebody engaging. You know, and then I said, my gosh, is this a dorky thing to do?
Like, is a 14 year old middle school boy gonna think this is cool? And the guy who owns the company goes, Jen, I'm going to send you a 30 for BOA. And it doesn't matter how old you are. They're always cool. I'm like, okay. and it was an absolute hit. And he, it was so cool. And he did three presentations. So I got to do it in the library, each grade level. And he like worked the crowd. He was great with kids. The kids got to hold things, touch things. And then he brought in the Arizona like.
desert talk, it was out of this world. It was so cool, yeah. it's, mean, I'm listening to you as you're going through each one of these, like each one of these seems like, wow, this is like a week's worth of stuff to just, that the kids could dwell on. And you're doing all this all at once in five days. It's amazing. Boy. And it sounds like you've got some incredible support, like both fiscally, but also it sounds like your administration and your teachers were really.
helping to support your goals and the way that you're bringing the students in and helping you, giving you that time, which is probably the most valuable commodity we've got in school. So that's really awesome. Boy. And I don't know if you remember, but I feel like when I went into education in the late 90s, the big push was interdisciplinary education. And I feel like we've kind of gotten away from that.
And I feel like this is, whenever we do Writers Week, this is an opportunity for us to come together as a staff and as a community of learners. And what Connie and I did was we prepped a presentation for the staff months in advance. And we said, look, this is what we're going to do. These are our ideas. And then we actually laid out for the staff ideas for every subject that we thought would tie into the novel. And you know how it is, like your administrator can't make people do these things.
But if they're interested, like my art teacher, you know, doing watercolor desert scenes, or my music teacher. So I have, we have a music teacher who's wonderful. And she actually sewed Canyon's Edge. The author Dusty uses Beatles music throughout the book. She like references Beatles music. So for the week leading up to Dusty coming, she played Beatles music over the announcements in the morning. And then her choir sang for Dusty in the library, a bunch of Beatles music.
just, yeah, bringing that alive for the kids and like something they can do for the author that was really kind. That turned out to just be so cool. That was so cool. know, 3D printing, bookmarks. There were so many things that we could do to really, really kind of help it explode for the kids and have it be something that they hopefully would remember for a long time. yeah, can't, I'm just hearing about it. I'm gonna remember this for a long time. This is amazing.
And I love too, you talked about that you got a copy of the book for all the kids, which is great. And that's something I'm hoping we can do. Actually, I've been talking about doing the same Kenyon's Edge one read for our school too, buying every kid a copy of the book. But I love that you also got the composition notebooks. And now everybody's got one. And so everybody's got this ability option.
they've got the resource they need if they want to start playing with some of the different writing skills or mirroring something they're seeing in the novel or, you know, when they're hearing from Dusty, maybe they've got ideas they want to jot down. Like, what a great additional piece to add to all of this that I literally just it wouldn't have occurred to me, but it's it totally makes sense. It's it's brilliant.
And it's probably I mean, I would imagine if you're buying bulk composition notebooks, probably not a huge cost either. They were pretty inexpensive. And you know what my department had, who's wonderful is a reading specialist. And so she's super supportive. And she was the one that was like, Hey, why don't we, why don't I use a little bit of our budget and we'll buy these composition books. And that way the kids can be really unified. It kind of creates this opportunity.
And I mean, I can't believe I'm going to say this, but our kids are one-to-one devices. They have Apple iPads. So for them to actually go old school. with paper, helped my guy from Vermont not lose his audience, because he's old school. He was using the whiteboard and paper, and it got the kids were like, all right, guys, we're going to go retro. We're going back to a writing utensil. And we've kind of kept that vibe now. So for the following years, we change it up a little bit every year.
For instance, one year, and it's so funny because If you have the time and you have the energy, these authors are out there and they want to participate and they want to come. One of the coolest authors I've had, and I would suggest any librarian reach out to him is K.R. Alexander. He works for Scholastic. He's absolutely amazing. I thought he was like 25. He's like very hip and young. He's not, he's older than that, but he came all the way from Oregon. to Chicago and we just got really lucky.
He has family in the Chicago area. So he was able to like, but he was amazing. He also writes for video games. He works for Marvel. He does things. So as a writer, he was able to speak to the kids in a completely different way. And they, think probably one of the best responses I've gotten from students was for him. And then he did a writing workshop too. He did a spooky, spooky stories.
Nice. Talk about another great, yeah, and another great sort of angle on writing if he's working at Marvel and he's working in video games. Like, you don't think about the fact that those require writing, but absolutely there's writers behind so many of those pieces. So bringing in that other way of thinking about this too, that's so cool. boy. funny because my I was with my seventh grade book club the other day and they said, separately, why haven't we been hearing about writers week?
It was so I go, guys, calm down, you're gonna hear about it. It's coming. And they were like, we haven't heard anything and we want to know what's happening. I'm like, it's coming in March, don't worry. So the kids have kind of, you know, because they're there for three years, obviously, we try to change it up. So these kids have not seen dusty. So they will see her for Canyon's Edge. But we had such a great experience with her. We definitely wanted to like recycle that experience.
But we do change it every year and they're kind of looking forward to it now. They're kind of expecting, hey, they're asking me, actually my seventh graders are begging for me to get Sharon Draper. And they love her. And I said, well, she's probably pretty expensive, but I'll see what I can do. She might be able to do a Zoom. Cause we like to bring in as many authors in the week that we can. That's awesome.
So like for instance, this year we'll have Dusty, but then I'm going to have Crystal Giles is going to zoom with the kids as well. And she's in North Carolina, so she's going to zoom with the kids. And then we try to bring an alum in every year. So I do have an old student who just published her first picture book. And so she might be zooming in with us too. And so really bringing our alum back has been an awesome experience. So the kids can kind of see.
Like look at all these students who came from this small little town outside of Chicago doing big things with writing and reading. Yeah, man, I'm just, in my head, I'm picturing like pulling out the yearbook and showing the kids like, here they are, and then they're here, and they're adults now, and look, someday that's gonna be you. Man, so you've been doing this for several years. Do you know how many years you've been doing your Writers Week?
actually, so this is the fourth year for writers week. And then I did I did forget though, when I the first year I went into the library, we did do. And now I'm gonna I'm not gonna remember. that's terrible. It's been nine years, though. We did an event we did a we we did a week. but it wasn't as elaborate as it is now. I brought an artist in residence. we did do a one book one school. it's coming back to me. Thank goodness. I don't know if you've heard of this book.
It's called, I Will Always Write Back. It's a nonfiction book about a girl who, when she was in seventh grade in the nineties, has to get a pen pal from another country. She decides to get a pen pal from Africa. Anyway, it changes both of their lives. Hmm. And this is their, this is her book about how it changes their life. It's, the kids love it.
And a teacher, actually the French teacher in the building came to me and said, Hey Jen, this author was just at my daughter's middle school, you know, a couple of towns over. She was awesome. You should look into getting her. And I'm like, yeah, it's my first year in the library. don't, I don't know. I have a lot to learn. And she goes, well, what if, what if I help? I, and that's, I'm always like, okay, I'm going to put you to work. Yeah so we did, we were able to bring that author in.
And then what we did was I decided to bring in because of the steam element of the library kind of, right? We have, I actually do have a steam lab attached to my library. We call it the spark lab. I wanted to bring in other activities I had to do with that novel. And so I brought in artist in residence and for a day and she did a needle felting. And we made a huge mural that hangs in our building inspired by that book.
And then throughout the week, I did a whole bunch of other activities in the library that had to do with the novel. So that's kind of so nine years ago, I did that. And then you know, COVID happened. And that kind of threw us all for a loop for a couple of years. And I think then Connie came back and was like, Hey, let's get back into this. So I guess technically, it's the fifth time we'll be doing it this year. Okay, all right.
So clearly the students are loving it that they are clamoring to, you they're asking you for authors and they're asking when it's coming again. So that's clearly a positive feedback that you're getting there. How about, have you heard anything from the teachers about how, you know, their thoughts on this? so my, my principal asked us, you know, after the first year, Hey, can you guys put out a survey and kind of see if you can get some feedback and you know how surveys go.
Not most people don't fill them out. but I did get a little bit of feedback. They felt like, you know, they didn't have enough time with the book. They felt like, they needed, they wanted more activities provided. there were, wanted more suggestions. Mmm. and so Connie and I then every year we'll send out like a little, Hey, how did you feel about the week? Do you feel like it applied? And most everybody is positive because I think they're not forced to participate. Technically.
it's kind of a choice, but it's just more fun if they do. Right. It's just kind of, we just try to like pump it up. Like, this is just more fun if you get involved because the kids are excited. You know, it works. You know, these are our ideas or I'm and I even will go in and teach lessons. So for instance, last year we didn't have a writer in residence and we decided money wise, we were trying to keep our budget a little bit more on, on, you know, just a little bit lower.
And so I said, well, Hey, our district was really pushing sketch noting as a way of taking those. And I had been to a conference on sketch noting and then one of the coaches in our district. is a master sketchnoter, she actually does it professionally. And I met with her and I said, Hey, do you think like, maybe I could teach the kids sketchnoting for two days instead of hiring someone to come in, I'll just be the teacher.
And that, that actually was one of the best experiences I've had in the library. cause the kids see you as a teacher, right? and I got to see a side of kids that I don't get to see. So like all of a sudden, all these students that I know maybe don't love reading or don't or writing is challenging for them. They are master artists. And to see them blossom like with this other opportunity was amazing.
And that actually turned out to be so successful that my sixth grade teachers had me teach it the following year. And now they use it all the time. That's awesome. Huh. turned out to be really positive. Yeah. cool. So great feedback, it sounds like. People are digging this, the students are digging this, the teachers are digging this. I love that you sort of do some pre-gaming, some pre-planning and say like, okay, here are things that may fit in your subject area.
And, you know, like you said, no one's required, but at least you're giving them that sort of running start if they do decide they want to try and incorporate some of this. And like you were saying, you know, We used to talk about interdisciplinary learning and that sort of happened sometimes, but not as ideally as, you know, as much as we'd like. But we also talk about these days, it's all about reading across the curriculum and how often is that really happening?
But this is a great opportunity. Like a one read gives everybody the same book. And if you can get the teachers to buy in so that they're reading the same thing and now you've got that shared reading experience, not just the shared knowledge, but like Because you can sum up a book, you know, can tell people here's what it's about, but it's not the same thing as when you actually read it and then you can have those conversations about, what'd think of this?
you know, how can you believe that happened? And especially, I mean, Canyon's Edge is very high on my list of ideas I want to use for a one read, because there's so many things, and like there's so many things you could do. and that's another thing. I was jealous that I didn't get to teach the novel because there is so many things to teach. So I will tell you AI has totally changed my game this year.
So my school district has, is offered, they bought a subscription to an AI program that they wanted teachers to play with. And I've kind of gone crazy with it. So for instance, I was able to create a 10 minute podcast using AI about Canyon's Edge. And so some of my teachers who are already reading it, they're asking me, Jen, do you have any supplemental things? And I'm like, my God, I have this 10 minute podcast, listen to it.
It'll give the kids some ideas to write about, like if you want them to write. So I'm also going to use AI to help me create an escape room. And one of the things we wanted to do was have one of my goals for the last nine years, which is a long time, is to get parents, know, parents want to be involved, but there's, in middle school, there's not a ton of opportunities. So we wanted to have a literacy night where they could come and do activities about Canyon's Edge.
And I was thinking of doing an escape row. neat. I feel like escape rooms are sort of a little bit of an underutilized tool, especially for getting your science and your math, kind of sneaking that in, you know, with like combinations or, you know, mix these things and get this other thing and what's the result? And that's the answer. Like there's a lot of things you can do there to kind of tie those in, in the ways that we don't always get to.
Well, that's a great idea to bring the community in. Yeah, that's I've been trying to, you know, the positive is that the kids look forward to it. But I also think there's almost an expectation. And I want them to really understand that this is not this is not the norm. Like, like this is really, really unusual that you get to have a one on one writing session with Lindsay Curry, right? And she or KR Alexander or, you know, these Margaret Haddix, like, come on, we all grew up reading her books.
You know, and so helping them understand that, I'm always trying to figure that part of it out. And so I think getting parents, like, I ran into a parent, I'm also a public librarian in the same community. And so last year, I ran into a parent and she had wonderful things to say. And she said, Jen, I feel like people don't know enough about this in the community. They don't know how special it is. And I'm like, I know, and I'm struggling with like how to get that out there, you know?
And I mean, I'm still struggling. I'm always thinking about it. How can we advertise it more? So I figure if I could get parents in to kind of see some of the, and do more like family oriented things, just make it more literacy. So that's one of my ideas for this year. We'll see if I can bring that to fruition. Yeah. And I mean, you talk about people not being aware of how much goes into this.
Like, and maybe this is just my own ignorance or my own shelteredness, but I don't think I've heard of a middle school that has an artist in residence or a writer in residence before. That's like, that's an amazing get for your school to have, to be able to, I mean, to have it is amazing to be able to brag about it and say like, yeah, you know, we've got this author who comes in to work with our students. No big deal. Yeah. Yeah. Geez. Boy, that's awesome.
Man. So it sounds like there's tons of opportunities for this to sort of be adjusted to fit whatever students like. This sounds like it's so infinitely adaptable for your whole population. Are there any particular things that you try to bear in mind to help sort of gear anything for, I don't know, ELL students or special ed students or anything like that. tell you this year. one of the things, so this year we didn't, couldn't bring our Vermont poet back.
I decided, Connie and I were talking, we're like, you know, I really want to hit some of those, right, those EL kids and some of the kids that, you know, I don't get to interact with as much. What really speaks to them? Well, when I look at my statistics in the library, what speaks to them is graphic novels, right? That's what they're checking out. They just love them and they devour them.
You know, whether it's manga or it's just true graphic novel or it's nonfiction in a graphic novel form We even have as a part of our curriculum in eighth grade. We have a graphic novel unit So we teach that right? So I'm like, what can we do? And then my paraprofessionals said hey, she works at a public library, too She said Jen there was a cartoonist who I think is like a graphic novelist who came to our library and he was amazing Why don't I get his number?
So that's who we're having come this year. We're having a graphic artist come in. He's going to spend actually he's going to do three days in our building. He is doing after school. So what he's going to do is based on her novel, he is going to teach them how to do some quick drawings. And then how to create a character that they could somehow could somehow interact within that setting. Huh. I have no idea how this is going to go, Steve. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed.
I figure they loved sketch noting. So like this guy is a comic artist. So I'm like, okay, this is going to be great. I've met with him on zoom a couple of times. He seems fabulous. Apparently he's well received in, and this is kind of his jam. He wants to get into schools and do this, but he's very, very well received in public libraries. Okay. So he's coming in with his partner. There's two guys, they're gonna do this. They're gonna do multiple lessons over the course of three days.
And then kids who are interested will get to sign up for after school, taking their story to the next level. That's wild. Huh. I guess I'm hoping that, you know, this will kind of speak to them, right, a little bit. And of course, like giving kids visuals, like a lot of our teachers just showing them what is a slot canyon and just helping them understand some of the elements of the novel, right?
I, you know, I'll offer lunchtime, come on in at lunch and let's talk about the book, or I want to show you this cool mountain climbing, you know, this slot canyon rappelling clips so that you can get it. I even looked into and I just couldn't make it work. The first time we had her I did look into bringing in a climbing wall. I know I'm a little over the top, but you know what, go big or go home, right?
Like let's, if you could do it, I couldn't make it work because we didn't have a surface that it could anyway, it didn't work. But we even talked about going to our YMCA and having a family night where they can climb there. Hmm. So could get my athletes in, my kids, you know, these other kids, these kind of outliers who don't. So I'm kind of hoping that comic book artist is gonna speak to some of those other populations and maybe connect with some of those other kids. We'll see.
And if not, I got the creepy crawlers. So I know tarantulas, right? And boas, come on. It's good stuff. So if I can't imagine that anybody who hears this is going to be like, yeah, that's not for me. So many people are gonna wanna do this. So do you have any suggestions for folks as they're thinking about, you know, getting ready to do this for the first time? Any particular things they should sort of have in the front of their minds? I mean, you have to have a flexible staff, right?
Your teachers have to, and you have to kind of sell it to your staff. Like this is why this is important. If we, know, as a learning community, if we think these experiences are important for kids, then we have to be willing to give up our minutes, right? We have to be willing to go on a field trip. We have to be willing to let kids have these experiences. Mm-hmm. they're valuable. You can't say, I value that.
I want my kids to these unique educational opportunities, but then you don't actually give up your minutes. So trying to help your staff see the benefit, I think, is pretty important. And that's why we give them the suggestions. And then I think you do need to, and I see this online all the time. I think librarians are so great at reaching out to one another. I think finding the right authors, right? Finding the authors.
and believe me, I've tried to get like, like Rex Ogle who wrote free lunch, you know, we worked with his agent over the course of months. And, cause I knew that he would speak to a population of kids, right? To my boys who are reluctant readers. and I knew that they would connect with him and we just couldn't make it work, you know? So I think you have to know, you're going to put in some, a lot of time that it may not.
you know, developing anything but making the connections is a huge part of it. Megan Freeman, we had Megan Freeman who also wrote Alone. Also a book in poetry poem form verse. I do think that can be the way to go either a short book or a book and verse. And then trying to find a book that has content that is both adventurous. You know what I mean? So there's some adventure, there's some something to kind of spark interest for all of your students. Mm-hmm.
which can be challenging, but I think that helps too. And then finding authors like KR Alexander, as an author who he even told a story about how he had a buddy who worked for Scholastic and this friend called him and said, Hey, KR, you want to write this book? I have the outline. Will you write it? And he's like, man, I'll write it, but I'm not going to put my name on it. Cause it's not going to sell. And he tells his story to the kids, right?
He's like, yeah, I sold like 5 million copies and now nobody knows who I am because I don't have my name on the book. So finding, I think authors that can relate to kids, right, is I've had a lot of authors. So nine years I've had, I've had over 12 different middle grade authors and some of them are really fabulous with kids and some of them are not, you know. a funny thing.
Like you would imagine, for some reason, I always imagine like, if they're an author, they're gonna be good at like a reading. If you go to see an author at a reading and you're like, they wrote it. They're gonna crush this. And some authors just aren't good at public speaking and they're not good at reading their own work. And like they're awesome at putting the words on the page, but they don't have that presentation skill.
like working with kids, that requires a particular set of skills and... gotta be able to juggle a lot of different things when you're working with kids. And like you said, not all authors are necessarily gonna have that. But it's awesome that you've got local resources that you can draw on both from your school, but also from your public library that you are able to sort of get almost like a preview of, yeah, okay, this person presented. And so we sort of know what they're like.
We sort of know how that's gonna work. That's really great. That's a great idea. I gotta try and tap my public library and see what they've got. is. another thing I would say is, I mean, you know, those of us of a certain age, right? Like social media is wonderful. And it's it's can be such a pain. It can be such a distractor. But I have really like Connie reaching out to dusty through the DMS. You know, sometimes you're not going to get these authors to respond unless it's through social media.
Neil Schusterman is a great example of an amazing author. He is wonderful at if he's in an area like he'll be like, Hey, I'm in Houston this week. And I've got four hours. Can I come to your school? See Like you gotta be following these authors, right? You have to find their platform and follow them because some of them, so Neil Shusterman actually, saw how, I don't know how I got in contact with him.
This was before he wrote Scythe, but he was available in the Chicagoland area and he had put something out on Twitter and I couldn't make it happen. Like I just, couldn't make it happen. And he was, know, his writing was a little bit too old for middle school at the time. But I contacted my high school librarian. go, hey, Neil Schusterman's in town. He's dying to do something. Make it happen. And she did. She's like, my gosh, okay. So I think you have to follow these authors on these platforms.
And I think making connections with them and tagging them and doing those things has kind of helped too a little bit. Now with social media shifting, you I used to do it all through Twitter. Mm-hmm. And I am curious to see how that might shift in the next few years. I'm not sure, but I think it's been beneficial to make those connections. And even on Facebook, like you can go old school, go Facebook. And these librarians are great at saying, I'm thinking somebody just put it on Facebook.
I'm thinking of bringing Dusty to my school. And of course I chimed in. I was like, she's amazing. DM me if you want all the info, but this is what I loved. Nice. So using social media to make those connections for sure. For what it's worth, will say that Blue Sky has a pretty good burgeoning middle grade and elementary author scene going on over there. So for what it's worth, something to think about. Man, so many things to think about here.
Speaking of thinking about, boy, my head is spinning with all the possibilities, but this is so cool. So, okay, we've got all these great ideas for this lesson. We are now gonna take our 90 degree turn and go into our book break. Okay. Book Break, you can share any title you want. It's something that you just think people should know about. It could be an author title, whatever works. So, well, if you've got more than one, we can talk about more than one, whatever works for you.
This is the reader services public librarian in me. So I will tell you the best kid book I think I've read. And middle grade literature is tricky, right? And I'm because I, you know, all of us read so much, it's hard for something to stand out. But I just did with my seventh grade book club. Simon sort of says by Aaron. Bo, think is how it's pronounced. Wow. I mean, there are so many things I want to talk about in that book. I want to teach that book the right, the craft, the writing craft.
And it's hilarious. I do think some of the jokes go over the kids' heads, but I'm loving it as an adult. So I'm going to reach out to Miss Bo to see if she's available for next year, because that's how much I loved it. I think that is just, it's heartwarming. It has such a variety of characters. Yeah. yeah, so that's my favorite kid book that I've read in a long time. We do have, in Illinois, we have what's called a Rebecca Cottle award. And that is a, it's kind of like, we also have Bluestem.
We have, I mean, all states have these, right? I think Texas has quite a few. So usually the Rebecca Cottle books are pretty good. But Erin's book's not on there. My guess is it will be on that list next year. So that's my favorite kid book. Adult books. point out that Simon sort of says also has a great tie into social media and getting our kids to think about digital footprints and even some of the actual infrastructure or the physical side of some of the technology.
Like because of the, I don't wanna give too much away, but like they, he. this kid finds himself living in a town where basically there's no internet. And so why is that and how does that work? And like getting the kids thinking about some of the scientific principles behind some of the technologies that they use on a daily basis that they probably don't think about too much. Plus, like you said, hilarious. Like it's got some of the funniest stuff in it. So my jokes, I can't handle it.
And then adult stuff. Well, another kid book I did love alone by Megan Freeman. think if your kids love Canyon's Edge, I think that is such a great companion book. And Megan Freeman was amazing. We had her too. And she's amazing. So I would highly suggest her. OK, so adult books, the best thing I've read probably in the last 10 years, I can't believe I'm going to say this is it's called All the Colors of the Dark. Okay. Whitaker. It's got something for everybody.
It's got a little bit of mystery. It's got a little bit of love. It's got nostalgia. It's got a serial killer. It's kind of got everything. Obviously very much an adult book. That is something that as a librarian, I do do for my staff. Using Canva, I put together an amazing book recommendation list every year around the holidays. I put kid book recommendations, and then I put staff recommendations. Buy this for your mother-in-law, buy this for your dad, buy this for your mom. You They love it.
And I suggest all librarians to do that. I am considering having my, my principal attach it in his newsletter to parents, just as like, Hey, if you have someone in your family that loves to read, you know, here's some great kid books, here's some adult books and so on. So all the colors of the dark. And then I just finished Tom Lake, which was, I think it was Ann Patchett's most recent book. I think, Let me take a look. It was fabulous. I am also a huge proponent of audio.
And I try to get my kids, when I was teaching, I used to require them to listen to an audio book because I think that is a skill. And I tell them it is reading. You're not cheating, right? And so making those opportunities available to them. Yeah. So Ann Patchett wrote a book called Tom Lake. It is read by Meryl Streep. Just a lovely story I would recommend for anybody's mother-in-law. Like I just... Just a lovely story about a family on a farm in Northern Michigan, and it's during COVID.
So their adult children come back to the farm to help them over the summer. And it's just, it's just very pleasant and enjoyable. Hmm, well, I think I know what my wife's getting for Christmas. Nice, that's cool. All right, so well now I've got some awesome titles to add to my list. This is great. So I really appreciate you sharing all of this information, book titles, lessons. I mean, so many ideas for things that I need to now start setting up and digging into for the future. So I love this.
And we happen to just come across each other online, which, because you were sharing some awesome stuff. So. How can people find you if they want to try and touch base with you? So I will say right now I am on Twitter. I've been a little less active, but I am thinking of going to Blue Sky. So my Twitter handle is at msslibd95, which is my district, district 95. You can find me there, but I have set up my Blue Sky account.
just, need to push myself into, cause I feel like I'm starting all over, know, starting all over and I do only use Twitter for work. So it is only like my entire feed is librarianship. Those are the people I follow. are the people, know, those are, and I, I've, mean, if you don't know who, gosh, there's a middle school librarian. want to say her last name is Corey. She's amazing. She does all the beautiful. Yes. Yes. She is amazing. and I borrow so much of what she does. Right.
She is a wonderful asset. Her, Canva game is stellar. Yes. For what it's worth, if you're on Blue Sky, they do do things called starter packs and you can, like, it basically is a list of people you might wanna follow and there's at least one school librarian, I think there's a couple of school librarians starter packs and it's just lists of people.
Also, If you go to mine, you don't have to follow me, but if you go to mine and look at my followers and following lists, there's several hundred school librarians there. So yeah, yeah, super easy to track down that way. Yes, and I would say, yeah, if you're if anybody is thinking about anybody can email me. I'm on the Lake Zurich Middle School South website. It's not I'm not hard to find at all. out there. I'd be happy to share my information. You know, Connie and I have we have tried.
think I mentioned this to you last time we have we have tried to present at multiple opportunities and we've been rejected. We're not sure what we're doing wrong, but we would love to share all our ideas and just talk about. I mean, it's endless. We could talk for hours about all the different things you can do in Writers Week and how to bring your library to the forefront of every classroom. Yeah, there's always more. It's awesome.
mean, and it's great that you've got these awesome ideas and you're willing to share them. Because I think sometimes we forget that some things might seem kind of basic, not that your stuff seems basic, but sometimes we think our stuff seems basic to us. But for somebody else, it's like, my gosh, never, like this as simple as I never thought about giving every kid a composition notebook so that they could, you know, take part in a one read in a different way. Brilliant, you know, man.
Well, hopefully somebody's gonna snap you guys up real soon and have you present, because this is some great stuff. Wow. So thank you again so, much. I appreciate your time. I really appreciate you sharing all this with us. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate it too, Steve. Thank you for having me.