NEA Foundation Learning and Leadership Grant and the 2015 PaLA Conference

I am very fortunate to be one of the 2015-2016 recipients of the NEA Foundation Learning and Leadership Grant. This grant provides teachers the opportunity to participate in professional development activities that they otherwise would not have had the means to fund themselves. Considering the state of Pennsylvania is now five months without a budget, schools are cutting "non-essentials," like PD. As a school librarian, my job entails collaborating with teachers, librarians, administrators and other professionals. Thus, I consider learning about new educational technology, new books, and new teaching methods or project ideas to be an essential part of my job. Collaboration is ultimately the reason I decided to seek out alternative means of funding conferences this year, and it is the theme for the PD I have selected to fund with this grant.

My first order of business was to attend the Pennsylvania Library Association conference in State College, PA. I have never attended this conference before. While at PaLA, I was able to meet librarians in all fields of librarianship, including public, outreach, academic, research, special, and more, all from towns throughout the commonwealth. I leaned from my colleagues that despite our different library fields, we face so many of the same issues: waning budgets, the need for diverse materials, changing patron interests, new technology and more. I also discovered that our differences can be mutually beneficial. Public libraries offer students a place to research, read, and use the internet when the school library is closed. They can offer special teen programs after the school day is over. Academic libraries provide research materials that students can borrow and special archived collections that a school library would not have room to carry. And of course school libraries offer teens instruction on how to properly use library materials in school and afterwards.

In terms of sessions, by far I was most excited about the "We Need Diverse Books" YA authors

panel. I was introduced to a number of PA authors who feature diversity in their stories, even if diversity is not the focal point. The authors stressed that diverse books have so much to offer teens beyond being a reflection of a reader's own diversity. Librarians should seek out diverse books because they are good stories, and they can perhaps encourage teens to see a world beyond their own. I will be able to incorporate these stories into a fiction project I collaborate on with one of our language arts teachers.

Additionally, I attended the PA Forward Cream of the Crop session. PA Forward is an initiative that brings librarians together to promote the five literacies. Librarians had just a few minutes to share an exemplary program or resource that they use to address basic, information, civic, financial or health literacy. Some of the ideas that I found most interesting and relevant included a volunteer fair, grant tips to acquire maker materials, and a photo station in the library. I could see setting up a selfie station in the library before winter break with a green screen app. From ideas I gathered at this session and others at the conference, I am also tossing around the idea of holding a college application-writing session one evening. If I were to create a volunteer fair of college-application session, I would need to collaborate with administrators, counselors, teachers, community members, and college personnel.

Finally, one of the evening activities was entitled "Paint Space." During this session, participants watched YouTube videos on how to paint tree branches. Then, we had the chance to recreate the tree branches on our own canvases. This was a fun and also an easy-to-recreate maker activity. As my library is in desperate need of a makeover, I have already purchased art supplies for students to paint pictures for our walls. Although I am not an artist, YouTube instructors take some of the pressure off of the librarian! I cannot wait to update our artwork! Although this would not be so much of a collaborative lesson for me, maker activities are often inherently collaborative for students. I may also request the help of the Art Club sponsor to spread the word that her members could leave their mark on the library - quite literally!

Overall, this was a fantastic conference, and I was happy to see other sides of my profession.