Our annual April celebration of AASL’s School Library Month begins in less than a week!
This year the School Library Month theme is Making Connections at Your School Library. The committee chose this theme to express that school librarians do not only make connections with learners, but with educators, administrators, families, community members, local businesses, authors, illustrators, and organizations worldwide.
Each week of School Library Month focuses on a different subtheme:
Week One → Making Learner Connections at Your School Library
Week Two → Making Educators Connections at Your School Library
Week Three → Making Community Connections at Your School Library
Week Four → Making Global Connections at Your School Library
The committee has put together a calendar of weekly activities to help school librarians showcase their libraries during School Library Month. For each week we have provided three activities for elementary, middle, and high school libraries. Each activity comes with a brief description. The purpose of these activities it to not just have a fun day in the library. But, to really show the impact that school libraries can have on the school community. It is also important to know that school librarians could celebrate one activity a day, or one activity a week, or create one long-lasting activity for the month. But either way, this needs to be celebrated out loud! By that I mean flyers, posters, emails, newsletters, announcements, balloons, invitations, and social media posts. No one should get through April not knowing that we are celebrating school libraries and librarians. So, do whatever works best for your school community.
Each week there will also be a Knowledge Quest blog post providing more detailed information about the theme of the week with a deeper look at some of the activities. We will also announce the weekly webinars that will connect to the weekly theme. So please check those out too!
We will also have three daily social media posts for your reposting pleasure. We have school librarians and programs across the country that have been selected to be spotlighted. We will also be sharing quotes from authors who value school libraries and librarians. We also have the ambassador program that allows for community members to share their words about the importance of school libraries and librarians.
And last but not least, our spokesperson Jason Reynolds. I could not have imagined a better author to advocate for the importance of reading, school libraries, and librarians. His PSA is beautiful – please make sure that every person you know takes a moment to watch it. It is not just for school librarians, but for the world.
All this information and more can be found on our website at www.ala.org/aasl/slm.
During April please use the hashtags #AASLslm and #SLM18 to let the world know how you are celebrating AASL’s School Library Month!
Author: Jillian Ehlers, School Library Month Chair
Categories: Community
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