Professional Time during COVID-19
How can you be of continued service to your school and local community during this pandemic?
You've been training for this type of adventure, right?
You're a leader. You're a well of knowledge.
You know how to transfer your skills to support your teachers in ways that you might not have been able to before due to time restraints.
Now's the time to really showcase your talents. And, don't be shy, make sure your administration knows about all in the ways in which you do this. Advocate for yourself and your library!
You've been training for this type of adventure, right?
You're a leader. You're a well of knowledge.
You know how to transfer your skills to support your teachers in ways that you might not have been able to before due to time restraints.
Now's the time to really showcase your talents. And, don't be shy, make sure your administration knows about all in the ways in which you do this. Advocate for yourself and your library!
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| Image by Ronny Overhate from Pixabay |
SUPPORTING STAFF
- Offer Zoom “office hours” for teachers and offer HELP hours, teach the teacher mini-lessons, or highlight resources.
- Support curriculum by curating resource lists especially for teachers.
- Support teachers by creating print or video instructions for accessing district-owned databases or SD State Library databases.
- Make phone calls to teachers to offer your support or help them troubleshoot.
- Make phone calls to students and parents who are struggling with technology and resource access.
- Creating quick go-to video tutorials for teachers to share with students and parents.
- Help teachers create choice boards for their students. These tools allow for flexibility and ownership.
- Assist with teacher and student technology needs.
- Create read alouds for library use and classroom use.
- Create digital book talks to be shared via the library or via the classroom.
- Create a SHORT one or two question survey about how you can support teachers. Let them tell you what they need.
- Take a look at the SD State Library webpage aimed to help school librarians during COVID-19.
- Dive into TIE's Transition to Online Learning website. It's loaded with goodies to help teach and be of help to other educators.
LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY & ADMINISTRATION
- Update and enrich your virtual library (webpage, blog, social media, etc.).
- Offer Zoom “office hours” for students and parents trying to navigate distance learning.
- Set up and promote a Live Chat service on your library website.
- Create and share video tutorials on your virtual library. Try out FlipGrid Shorts!
- Develop a template for your school library newsletter that you can reuse each month.
- Make a plan for your library's social media use. Will you highlight each Prairie Book like this?
- Learn a new technology to use in the library next year. Maybe FlipGrid for book reviews or Book Creator to have students create ebooks or Wakelet for curating resource lists?
- Take some time to browse SDSL School Libraries Curated Resource Lists.
CURRICULUM
- Study the SD School Library Standards.
- Update library lessons to reflect new standards.
- Update your Scope and Sequence.
- Take a hard look at your yearly calendar. What can be revised? What's necessary? What's fluff? What's fluff but too awesome to not do.
- Needle your way into classroom teachers' lessons to incorporate library standards.
- Offer online book clubs or just reading meetups.
- Create, ahead of time, a collection of FlipGrid Shorts videos to promote the new Prairie Books.
DISTRICT
- Work on district-level library planning.
- Catch up with fellow librarians via Zoom, Hangouts or Skype.
- Advocate for budgets with an increased demand for ebooks and audiobooks.
- Study or refresh on library policies.
COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT
- Start or expand or expand your digital book collection. Consider TIE's Shared Collection for Schools.
- Clean up records in your library catalog.
- Create summer reading lists.
- Develop book orders for summer or fall purchases (Here's the new Prairie List!).
- Run circulation reports. Study trends. Make future plans.
- Run collection reports. Audit collections.
- Weed the collection if available to you.
- Take requests from teachers and order those materials to support their curriculum.
COMMUNITY
- Plan for summer reading programming on your own or in conjunction with your public library.
- Deliver books alongside meals in conjunction with school food services.
- Research equity issues in your school and local community. Open hours? Ancient policies? Digital access?
- Stocking little free libraries in their neighborhoods
