I was excited to have one of my grad students visit today. Yay! It’s fun to catch up and hear what people are up to, even if they ARE already done with Mockingjay and you haven’t even started it yet.

Here is one of the many things we talked about today that is resonating with me hours later.

So … we’re making these libraries that are more stimulating, more social, more cooperative, and more interactive.

What are we doing, as a movement, as a profession, as an association, to protect quiet spaces for the kids who can’t function with additional stimulus? Those who would benefit from being squirreled away, perhaps working alone, in a quiet study carrel? Those students — students with Asperger’s or autism, for example — who need hushed comfort to help them focus?

Our classroom colleagues talk all the time about meeting the individual needs students with various special learning or developmental needs.

All. The. Time. In hallways, in professional journals, in books, on podcasts, at conference.

But let’s turn the mirror the other way and reflect on our own practices. As a movement, as a profession, as an association, what are we doing to make sure that our learning commonses (is that a word?) are truly embracing all kinds of learners BEYOND diversity in reading materials?

So, thinking I had just offered up a thoughtful nugget for you to chew on, I was about to click “Publish” when I glanced at the back-to-school issue of School Library Monthly. Well, look what’s on page 52 — “Meeting the Needs of Students with Disabilities,” by Kendra L. Allen and Sandra Hughes-Hassell.

Beaten to the punch by folks far more expert than I!

(Though I hope I get some credit for learning-by-osmosis. My mother was a resource room teacher, my father was a special education director, and my stepmother still works with pre-primary impaired students. Y’all be careful coming to our house for dinner if you don’t enjoy table talk about special education.)

Here are three statistics from Allen and Hughes-Hassell’s article:

- Did you know that almost 14% of K-12 students have disabilities?

- That 90% of surveyed North Carolina school librarians scored themselves a C, D, or F when it came to their knowledge of best practices in special education?

- That only 1 of the 67 survey participants read all of the IEPs for her school? Which, umm, by the way, is kinda like against the law for school librarians to be doing if they consider themselves teachers of those students.

Those are some pretty scary numbers that tell us that this is a huge area for our professional growth!
Whether you’re a Southerner about to enter Month Two of the school year or a Midwesterner just about to start, let’s take a moment and think … if we had taken Allen’s survey about our special education practices, what grade would we give ourselves?

And here’s one final thought. Did y’all know there are books out there about collaboration and the SPECIAL ED TEAM, just like there are reams of published information about collaboration with school librarians? Do we see our special ed colleagues the way THEY want to be seen? As instructional collaborators, co-teachers, and partners? If not, what does THAT tell us?

Over the summer School Library Journal floated out the idea that many children’s authors would consider doing a free 20′ Skype author visit.  That sounded just great to a third grade teacher and me.  We scoured the list for the authors with the most appeal to our kids and sent a few Tweets to inquire.  No dice.  (But we’re not giving up!)

But in the meantime, I had also heard from Michelle Bayuk, head of marketing for Albert Whitman, that Whitman was going to launch five Twitter feeds: one for the narrator of the Boxcar Children and one in the voice of each of the four characters. 

AND, as I’ve mentioned before, I learned that the Boxcar Children (which remains a favorite with our second and third graders) is now a graphic novels series!

There was just one hurdle: how could we connect our young learners with the five Twitter feeds without having them log into Twitter (which restricts access to users over 13) and with all the feeds appearing on one page? We just wanted the Boxcar Twitter feeds, not everything else.

Leave it to my intrepid (and, sadly, about to depart) student teacher Raya, who figured out a way to get the Twitter feeds we need and embed them into our new media center wiki.  Voila! We had what we needed.

Now we had a cool opportunity to talk about how there are many ways to tell a story in the 21st century: with “regular” books, with graphic novels, AND with (a safe version of) Twitter. 

Our wheels started turning.  Would Michelle consider Skyping with our kids?

Michelle had an even more interesting idea: let Boxcar ghostwriter and editor Wendy McClure do the interview!

So we planned a three-day set of activities in lieu of the regular book talks we give when kids come to check out:

• Day One: Introduce/re-introduce kids to Chapter 1 of the chapter book, graphic novel, and Twitter feed
• Day Two: Talk about the role of an editor, with a role-play in which I played the author and Raya and the class played the editor.  (See our efforts on Etherpad - a wonderful tool! - here). Talk about what comprises a good interview question.
• Day Three: In classrooms, kids and teachers worked HARD to create great questions.  They then came to the media center for the interview!

Wow! Our kids did a phenomenal job.  Even with a double-class, they were glued to the screen, poised, attentive, and did ask great questions.  Best of all, they listened for the answers because the answers mattered to them.

We didn’t have the typical author visit, but we had something that empowered our kids to do their best and to think more deeply. And next time they get a paper back from their teacher with editing suggestions, I bet they’ll think just a bit more about how all authors have editors, even the famous ones!

Thanks so much to Michelle and Wendy for giving our kids the chance to dig into some authentic work and to feel proud of their results. There is a wonderful feeling that comes over a media center when kids are really engaged with what they are learning about, and we’ve had three great days of that.

You can view:

• our Boxcar Children Skype plans (they didn’t go exactly according to Hoyle, but it worked out OK!)
• our Etherpad page where we modeled the author/editor relationship
• our school library blog post with more details!

Curiosity may have killed the cat, (and in this photo, perhaps the bird, too) but it sure makes library learning better!  Unfortunately, too many school libraries still report seeing low-engagement, low-cognition projects that don’t challenge our kids.  

As much as we school library media specialists believe in inquiry, the reality is that sometimes, making the leap from low-level to high-engagement research projects is a bit more than a teacher can take on, for various reasons.  So how can school library media specialists implement the AASL Standards?

Perhaps it’s a case of the tortoise and the hare (sorry for all the animal metaphors).  Instead of leaping forward like the hare, a more pragmatic solution might be a gentle nudge in the direction of inquiry … and then another nudge …. and then another nudge, until the project evolves. 

That’s the theory behind a new page that will run in School Library Media Activities Monthly throughout the 2009-2010 season.  We’re calling it “Nudging Toward Inquiry,” and it’s our way of thinking practically about those small steps that can lead to a big change in student engagement. 

We’re seeking submissions for the first three articles now.  Click on the links below to read the scenario and share your ideas!

• Re-envisioning the Biography Report - closes Wednesday, June 17
• Re-envisioning the Country Report - closes Thursday, July 2
• Re-envisioning the Animal Report - closes Thursday, July 2

And if you have an idea for a “classic” but shopworn lesson plan that needs a tweak, leave a comment here or email me at slmamblog [at] gmail [dot] com!

Image from the calling and visiting cards collection of the George Eastman House, posted to Flickr Commons