Mire and Stars

Ross Todd quoted Cyrano de Bergerac as a reflection of the critical nexus that we're in at this time, as school libraries.

Antoine: Be so good as to read once more the chapter of the windmills... Windmills, remember, if you fight with them...
Cyrano: My enemies change, then, with every wind?
Antoine: ...may swing round their huge arms and cast you down into the mire!
Cyrano: Or up, among the stars!

Ross asked, “Are we going to plod along in the muck, the mire?” Though there is foreboding in our school libraries world, we are in fact at a watershed time. We must go on to ask strategic questions: "How do we craft and engineer the learning experiences of our students?” In so doing, we must embrace the emphasis on intellectual agency as THE central concept of the Learning Commons. It is upon us to engage in pedagogical experimentation.

The question for us, as individual practitioners, is how we pursue that experimentation. What does that look like in our schools? What vision do we hold for that tenet? Exploring those strategies here today, in our dialogue at TM Canada, our school libraries community is asking you to engage in this exploration.

Tell us what visions you hold for experimentation in your school library. How do you envision the stars?
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