It’s March, everyone! It’s the time where some of us are already hosting spring weather and others are starting to see the end of winter with perhaps a few extra storms scattered in before spring is fully ushered in. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we are starting to see our flowers bloom earlier than usual, potentially signaling an early start to spring.

As we all start to count the days until our spring break, we have plenty of resources for you to use for yourself, colleagues, and with your students during the month of March. To kick off the celebrations and learning, we start with Women’s History Month.

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

From book lists for PK-12 students, to professional learning articles, to learner engagement activities, there is plenty to pique your imagination and provide material for you to plug into your library programming and lessons. Women’s History Month provides unlimited opportunities to focus on women accomplishments, contributions, and celebrations at the local, regional, national, and international level. Whether you choose to just focus on women inventors, legislators, educators, or the women in your students’ daily lives, we have resources to support that.

Just two days into March, we have Social Emotional Learning Day on March 2nd. While you may already have curriculum and daily activities that you are using, take a look at what we have to freshen up your material. Social emotional learning is everywhere in what we do with our students in our libraries and has been for decades through the books we select, our student procedures that outline how we want our students to act in our libraries, and how we’d like for them to participate in their library learning. These resources will be a wonderful complement to what you may already have.

Finally, on March 16th, we celebrate Freedom of Information Day. Set on our fourth president’s birthday, James Madison, this day celebrates our right to information about our government and what they do, a longstanding right in our country’s history. This day is purposefully allocated to the same day as President Madison’s birthday as he was a strong advocate for the public’s right to know about our government.

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

Use this day to inform your students about the Freedom of Information Act, passed in 1966. Take the opportunity to learn and teach about sunshine laws, a law that each state has for its residents to have access to what the government does on our behalf.

Codified in 1988 by President Ronald Reagan, Freedom of Information Day is indeed a day to celebrate with our students and faculty. Supplement the civic student learning standards that are taught in the classroom with our book lists, learner engagement activities, and professional learning resources.

The School Library Event Promotion Committee hopes you enjoy these March resources and stay tuned for April, which is our month where we will bring content that you can use to celebrate our big month!