Meeting notes

The keynote speaker at our Annual SLS Meeting, Allison Zmuda, was frustrating for me to listen to because her observations about student learning myths were so accurate, her descriptions of engaged learners were so familiar, and the environment for their cultivation is so nearly a vanished opportunity within our "closed classroom" school now.

That missing facet of our school culture; the expectation that our teachers and classrooms must be as "agile and adaptive" as we expect our graduates to be, is the caved-in keystone we keep side-stepping as we walk into our separate kingdoms each morning.

So much of what we do as librarian - creating student-directed opportunities for learning that insist on being transferable to new experiences - doesn't even get a shot at students within these walled-courses. That is why I was also inspired by something else Ms. Zmuda said about being a librarian," I am here to support student learning, not to support teachers so that they might support student learning." Hearing those words reinforced the direction I have been pursuing this year in this library; treating this library as it's own classroom, all students as my students, their learning opportunities as my priorities.