SL2.0 Suggestion Camp: Reading

As everyone gets going on a new school year, I wanted to kick things off with a week of School Library 2.0 suggestions. I know the meme recently has been to call these things “boot camps” but this is more like the boot camp that a pacifist Unitarian would run – a Suggestion Camp. That’s what these are, after all, suggestions from a different view point on how emerging technologies and practices can be brought to bear in school libraries. As always, the goal is increased student achievement.

NOW LISTEN UP YOU BOOK-LOVING LIBRARIANS! I WANT YOU TO DROP AND CONSIDER GIVING ME 30 MINUTES OF READING RIGHT NOW!

That’s right, the School Library 2.0 Suggestion Camp is kicking off with a focus on reading. But wait, you ask, where is all the sexy technology? Where are the blogs and the podcasts? What about the wikis!?!? Certainly we will be talking about those tools this week, but never forget that SL2.0 is about results and not about the tools. Besides, none of these technologies can work without reading.

We need to march into our schools this year and take back reading.

I’m sorry, but this is too important to even consider phrasing as a suggestion. One of the pressures forcing a School Library 2.0 re-shift is “reading instruction.” Between Reading First, Reading Recovery, Reading [insert word here], and other programs, libraries are being left out of the loop. A school that last year cut their librarian positions and went with a librarian split across two buildings K-12, was applying for a Reading First grant. Guess how much money was going to be spent in the library? $0. None. Zip. Absolutely squat. Over $100,000 for books and reading and none of it was going to go to the school’s long established center for reading.

Why? We don’t own reading anymore. But wait, you say (and rightly so), didn’t you tell us we had to own blogs and podcasts? Aren’t you the guy who talks about moving away from the “book” image? Yes. Perhaps I should have been a bit more clear in my thinking. We need to own blogs and podcasts as the next generation…of reading. When I say move beyond the book, in no way am I calling for an end to reading, but rather an expansion of “reading (books)” to “reading information sources in text and audio, analog and digital, commercially published and peer crafted, and everything else in between.”

Suggestion Camp: Reading

1) Re-establish ownership of reading
Make sure you understand current reading instruction programs through whatever method works best for you. I am a member of the International Reading Association and make sure I establish time to at least skim their journals and book offerings. If you have the time/resources, consider a graduate refresher course on reading instruction. Before I left the classroom, I was pursuing a Masters in Elementary Education/Reading. But that was a few years ago, and things have changed quite a bit with NCLB. Consider inviting a professor who teaches reading to a library association meeting for a 2-hour review session.

2) Revive your professional collection
More on this later, but take a quick look through your professional materials on reading and reading instruction. Whole Language is pretty much dead and gone; if when it does come back, there will be new books on it. A great way to re-focus the reading teachers on the library is to make it a place for them to come for their resources. Consider becoming an International Reading Association institutional member and offer to help manage routing and cataloging of new books and journals.

3) Speaking of cataloging
Reading teachers seem to have rather a few books. What they tend to lack is a program for inventory management and usage tracking. A great way for the library to be a key player in the reading program is to assist the reading teachers in tracking what their students are reading. Do they need MARC records for all of their leveled readers? No. But a quick record with the title, reading level, and a barcode would allow someone (I vote for the student!) to scan in each leveled reader they work with. Over time, an Excel graph of scan date vs. reading level will show progress (or the lack therein, which is also critical data).

4) Find the reading
As I wrote this, I worried about the use of the phrase “reading teacher” to denote those faculty members that work with students as part of a pull-out reading instruction program. We are all reading teachers in schools. We have to all be reading teachers as nothing else works without reading. Combined with this is research showing that “there is no single method or single combination of methods that can successfully teach all children to read” [IRA] but that “significant amounts of voluntary reading are associated with greater interest and skill development” [IRA]. The IRA knows that libraries are a critical part of providing access to voluntary reading materials. We have to reinforce the message. So when you are talking about those new technologies that are all the rage…make sure you point out that they are all based on reading. So work with the reading teacher, as well as everyone else who is teaching reading.

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