The summer vacation of most educators is filled with more than just jaunts to the beach, visits to amusement parks, and trips with family and friends. We spend some of our time catching up on our leisure reading but also our professional reading. Here are three professional books from AASL that we may want to purchase for our summer reading. (Descriptions and images courtesy of the ALA/AASL Store)
Empowering Leadership: Developing Behaviors for Success by Ann M. Martin.
This book takes the mystery out of leadership by illustrating the visible and invisible components of leadership. Essential questions, reflective strategies, and practical tips within each chapter will bring school librarians to their next level in leadership while they recognize the hidden leadership opportunities in daily tasks that are already central to the profession. Empowering Leadership offers lessons and examples to improve the leader within and encourage development of each librarian’s unique leadership style.
Developing Collections to Empower Learners by Sue C. Kimmel
Developing Collections to Empower Learners examines collection development in the context of today’s shifts toward digital resources while emphasizing the foundational beliefs of the school library profession. Writer Sue Kimmel includes practical advice about needs assessment, planning, selection, acquisitions, evaluation, and continuous improvement for collections to support 21st-century standards. Questions are raised about shifting roles of the school librarian and the place of the school library. What should school libraries collect and how can we support the creation and dissemination of knowledge in our communities? Particular emphasis is given to questions about access, equity, and learning in order to ensure that all students will be effective consumers and producers of information and ideas heading into the 22nd-century.
Library Spaces for 21st Century Learners: A Planning Guide for Creating New School Library Concepts by Margaret Sullivan
Library Spaces for 21st-Century Learners: A Planning Guide for Creating New School Library Concepts focuses on planning contemporary school library spaces with user-based design strategies. The book walks school librarians and administrators through the process of gathering information from students and other stakeholders involved in planning a resource rich learning space. Information includes how to create needs assessment documents that compliment AASL’s Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Programs. Suggestions for adding meaningful aesthetic components and colorful renderings of sample environments are also provided.
Author: Deanna Harris
I have spent my career in education as a middle grades language arts teacher, a middle grades teacher librarian, and a coordinating teacher at the NC Department of Public Instruction. During my twenty-three years, I have focused on teaching and learning, student achievement, and teacher leadership. I have worked with beginning and veteran teachers through mentoring, internships, staff development, and professional learning teams.
Categories: Advocacy/Leadership
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