When I was a school librarian, every year I would look at my Year At-A-Glance (YAG) calendar for the upcoming school year. I would stick to my usual plan for various days, weeks, and monthly events to celebrate or honor in the library to help educate and bring awareness to my students and staff. Occasionally, I would update the events that needed it. And do you know what I would also do? Usually use the same resources and decorations for my displays. I would vary my activities and passive programming, of course, but at the end of the day, I was collaborating and co-teaching 70% of my time and I just didn’t have time to sit and ideate about what I would be doing with each event that I would promote in the library.

That was five years ago and if only I had known what the School Library Event Promotion Committee was! Now, I have the pleasure of serving my third year on the School Library Event Promotion Committee, this year as chair. Never heard of the School Library Event Promotion Committee before? Let me tell you all about it!

So, what do we do? Our current committee members, hailing from all four of the time zones of the lower 48, get together once a month with our calendar of events for each month and work on curating resources for school librarians for each of those events, whether it be a day, a week, or a month. Each event has four main components to the work – a description and history, professional learning resources, learner engagement resources, and book lists. Our hard working committee members also create social media posts for the @aasl social media accounts to post during each special event. Once we work together on curating the most current and relevant resources for each event, it then gets published on the School Library Event Promotion page.

Don’t know where to find it? Just head on over to the AASL page, click on the advocacy link at the top, and then select Event Promotion and you’ll see where the School Library Event Promotion events live.

If you’ve not taken a look at the resources the School Library Event Promotion Committee has curated for you this year, I highly encourage you to take a look at November. This month, we have four events we’ve worked on, to make celebrating and educating your students about the world around them a little easier for you.

National Native American Heritage Month
International Games Month
Election Day, November 5
International STEM Day, November 8

While you may not have the time to celebrate each of these events, you have plenty of resources to help you celebrate the ones you can make happen in your library. And, each year, the committee looks for new resources to keep these events fresh, current, and relevant.

Many thanks to the wonderful committee members of the School Library Event Promotion Committee and thank you to all of you, the school librarians, for the hard work you do each and every day for your students. Don’t forget to bookmark our page, because we have new resources for you each and every month.

SLEP Committee:

Heather Hornor, Chair
Fallon Farokhi
Mia Gittlen
Susan Hess
Kristine Konik
Katie LaFever
Sarah Levine
Beth Miller
Mandy Peterson
Hannah Pohl
Montana Rogers