Bring Us Together: The Sustainable Development Goals in the SLLC
by Jennifer Aston
Now more than ever, it's crucial for teacher-librarians to take the lead in championing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in our schools, placing the SDGs at the heart of everything we do in our school library learning commons. In this paper, Jennifer Aston aims to show how our work as librarians in school libraries is directly linked to these goals. But it's not enough to stop there—we must also integrate the SDGs into our partnerships, technology usage, and even the displays and upkeep of our collections. To illustrate this, Jennifer has included insights from students gathered through a recent survey. Their perspectives offer valuable guidance for us.
Jennifer - it makes my heart happy to see this paper here, shared with a wider audience (as a topic of importance like this deserves)!
ReplyDeleteI actually went back and re-read both your paper (and my initial thoughts) and it's even better the second time around! I have new questions.
- with the books in the SDG bins, how do the students locate them if they aren't labelled or noted as such in the cataloging? (You mention later in the paper, around page 6, that you have no control over SORA, so this can be difficult. I loved your student suggestions; have you figured out how to address this?)
- the Grade 8 teacher at my school does a lot of social justice and passion projects with the students. Often, they are most attracted to doing work on gender equality, similar to the Grade 7-8s you work with. Why is this such a popular choice? Do you have theories?
- re: the graphs, I paid close attention to the blue section, the "I don't know what this is", and for many of the tall ones, I had to agree that I'd struggle to define it clearly. I agree with you that digging into it and examining division responses would be quite illuminating
- on page 10, you suggest we should contribute to IFLA's ambitious aim to educate students about SDGs. As to how, you mention ". A link is provided to submit items, encouraging our active participation in our shared goals" as well as "Moreover, they offer an open-sourced map to which we can all contribute, empowering us to make a difference." Do you have suggestions on good initial first steps? You and your school are so much further along in this process.
Thank you for all your work in this area!
Diana
Diana - first I apologize for my late reply! To answer your first question, so far we have not had any issues not being able to locate a book because they are in these bins. Today I had a student looking for a book on tides and she started her search in the "oceans bin" as she called it. I don't have any theories. A lot of our students are definitely taking books from the Gender Equality and Reduced Inequalities Bins. I am going to do a preliminary tally of which bins are being read the most and will share that at my table talk presentation at TMC a week from now. The IFLA document about telling our SDG stories is really fabulous and has step by step instructions. It is listed in my sources. My first step were making the SDGs visible in our library and drawing attention to them in conversations with students, classes and teachers. It grew from there!
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DeleteJennifer, Your paper is very inspiring. I’ve been trying to incorporate more social justice awareness into my LLC. I like how using the SDGs gives this focus. Do you have teachers interested in using the resources or incorporating this into the classroom or curriculum? How can partnerships increase engagement and learning or is this more of an extra-curricular experience for students?
ReplyDeleteAlso with the goals you identified that students didn’t know much about - do you think this is because the concepts are harder to understand, or is it about further learning and instruction? Would it be more productive to focus on the goals that are more accessible for the age group?
Thanks for your post Amy. My goal in stepping out of my comfort zone and publishing this paper was to inspire others, so thank you for that! When it seems that there is so much dividing us, these goals can really unite us in my opinion. I have had teachers ask to borrow a whole bin for a time because it matches some themes they are addressing in class (mainly in Science and Social Studies so far). Of course there are times where my LLC partnerships with teachers do not match an SDG at all, but I try my best to centre them around them. We had Grade 7 and 8 students develop pitches for City Counsellors to improve our city. One group actually got to do so in a School Board initiative last year. We have a lot of clubs connected to the SDGs (not just led by me but by other teachers - for example "Hackergal"). Currently, we have students developing videos for an anti-racism contest and they are creating their video around historical people they have learned about in the bins. We did a Food Drive in the fall too. I think reading and learning through partnerships is great. But moving students and teachers into action is where the real magic happens.
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DeleteThank-you Anita. The two anonymous comments above and one below are me. I have figured out how to identify myself in replies now.
DeleteWith the current situation in the United States - including the President's withdrawal from world organizations, refusal to recognize the LGBTQ+ Community, and the threat to impose "economic terrorism" on its trading partners - adhering to and promoting these Sustainable Development Goals is more important than ever. I am just afraid that it will become more difficult to uphold these principles.
ReplyDeleteThis is Jennifer. I understand your fear, Sheila. My hope is that our LLC spaces, focused on the SDGs, can help reconcile some of that awfulness. We can achieve this by ensuring our spaces are safe for the LGBTQ+ community, where they can see themselves represented in our collections (and in this case bins).
ReplyDeleteI thoroughly enjoyed and cheered as I read your paper, Jennifer. Your action research is so grounded in your students. Each change you've made in the LLC is a direct result of student feedback and guidance. I'm not surprised at all that your bins of books are often empty! This simple act of grouping and displaying books by the SDG's has had a measurable impact. Oh the data that you could share with staff - so many opportunities for a school-wide collaboration. Thanks for sharing - I'll be sending the link to your paper to several of our TLs in Richmond, BC who are committed to this work, as well.
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