Dear School Library: Advocacy from the Heart
by Wendy Burch Jones
This paper is an account of a province wide advocacy initiative spearheaded by Wendy Burch Jones, OSLA President. In Wendy’s words, “The “Dear School Library” project was born out of a deep need to create a stronger sense of community within our school libraries and school library professionals in Ontario. The OSLA wanted schools across the province to consider the reasons why their school libraries are important - highlighting all the incredible collaborative programming, events, resources, technologies, and community that our LLCs bring to school communities. We wanted to celebrate our school libraries - loudly and unabashedly.”
Wendy Burch Jones, BA, BEd, OCT is an elementary teacher-librarian with the Toronto District School Board who is passionate about literacy, librarianship, and the importance of agency for students and student voice in school libraries. She works to create colourful, welcoming, safe, and student-centred spaces while ardently believing that every child has the right to see themselves reflected in story in every aspect of their intersectional identities. (Please don’t get her started on censorship and the freedom to read - it’s a hill she will die on!) She wears many hats: TDSB TL Mentor Leader & Digital Lead Learner, Forest of Reading Steering & Selection Committee member, President of the Ontario School Library Association, Canadian Children’s Book Centre Review Committee member, foster kitten rescuer, and sometimes she ekes out time to be a partner from whom she steals the covers, and mom to two teenagers that grunt at her in mono-syllablic noises she thinks might be gnomish. Above all else, you will hear Wendy loudly advocating for the key role that libraries and librarianship play in student and school community success.
Wendy, I consider myself fortunate to have been a "beta-reader" for this paper, so some of my commentary may focus on unusual minute details; apologies for being so "off-centre"!
ReplyDeleteCan I tell you how much respect I have for you, that you and the OLA Forest of Reading made a concentrated effort to ensure that there were no copyright, trademark or intellectual property violations with the use of this promotional campaign? That is such a "teacher-librariany" thing to do! Same with the photo credits!
The morphing of FlipGrid (into Flip, into a Microsoft property), like the discontinuation of JamBoard (because it wasn't a profitable Google extension), is a sad but important reality; we must be flexible in terms of the tools we use for advocacy. This is also true with social media. It seemed a few years ago that Twitter was "the" place to be to stay connected, but with the actions of many of the social media "big players" (Meta, Facebook, X, Instagram, Tik-Tok, etc.) causing people to end their associations with them and delete their accounts, how much harder will it be to conduct school library advocacy via electronic social media?
I am proud to have been one of those 16 schools that offered to try Dear School Library in their space. It's a perfect activity to do as a year-end summary in May/June, and it's purposeful as well. I agree with you that seeing the responses make you laugh, or melt. I wish I had taken more photos of the hearts from my school before I sent them to OLA.
As for your "wondering" about whether or not advocacy should have a greater place of prominence in Foundations or Leading Learning - do you have any suggestions about where it should be (Foundations or LL?) and/or how it could be integrated? Looking forward to this conversation (one of many) at TMC8!
Diana
Hi Diana! First, thank you for all the things (being a beta reader, being a "test" school, and answering late night "help" calls when I had writer's block).
ReplyDeleteYes, the slide of social media proved difficult for this campaign. But we are a resourceful bunch - and I have no doubt that we will overcome this blip in technological advances. After all, we were advocating for school libraries long before social media and we'll being doing so long after it morphs into the next big thing, too. We will triumph!
As for the place of advocacy in Foundations or LL - I firmly believe that it belongs in our Standards of Practice. It also deserves more than a footnote in our Foundations document. We - as a profession - will not survive without a strong push in advocacy in the years ahead. Not just by the likes of the leaders among us, but when *all* of us frame our work as advocacy for school libraries, literacy and the very role of the school library professional.
Yes, I'm loud. And advocacy does not need to be loud. Advocacy is a verb. It plays out in our actions. And I think if our community (as a whole) were to consider their actions on a daily basis, they'd be able to see how what they do, how they do it, and who they do it with are all a part of advocacy (e.g., learning as/of/for assessment analogy = learning as advocacy, learning of advocacy, learning for advocacy). So much to think about!