Interveiw with Pie Corbett

Interview with Pie Corbett, UK teacher, Principal, and advocate of creative writing by students...

http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/news_blogs/email_updates/interviews/pie_corbett

One question / answer from the interview :

Literacy is clearly a key influence on the future success of the nation, as well as individual success. Do you think literacy is primarily an issue for schools or should it be seen as a social justice issue and treated as a cross governmental priority?

When I was a child, we lived in a two-up, two down. We had no bath - it was a tin tub in the back yard. The toilet was at the end of the yard. The first six years of my life, we used to go over the road twice a day and fetch water from the well. We were too poor to own books. However, every night we were read a story, and those stories came from books, and those books came from the library. It was being read to that made the difference to me and I would say that the reason that I eventually became a teacher, a headteacher, an inspector and a writer, I can track back to our weekly visit to the library. Without that library, the world of literacy would not have opened up for me. Literacy is essential for a healthy, thriving society that gives everyone a chance. All children deserve the right to an imaginative and literate childhood. To reduce the long tail end of illiteracy, I do think that we have to tackle this in an orchestrated manner and ensure that goes beyond it being seen as merely a school issue. It is too important and I would love to see further work on this to establish a full frontal, coherent approach.

School assigned reading - great article

Do read this great article by Steven Wolk, about the reading that schools assign - and what they don't assign...
It includes lots of up-to-date suggestions of reading material across the curriculum to engage students with reading...

What Should Students Read? By Steven Wolk
in Phi Delta Kappan, April 2010 (Vol. 91, No7, p. 8-16).
http://www.kappanmagazine.org/content/91/7/local/complete-issue.pdf
Note this article is no longer available online for non-members, but is available through EPIC.

When looking at what students are required to read in school in 2010, it might as well be 1960. We need visionary educators who see bold purposes for school and who understand that what students read in school has profound, lifelong effects, both good and bad.

Try this link :
Is your reading list a little outdated?

Great Libraries of Learning - G8lol

I've done a post before about G8LOL - Great Libraries of Learning - I find it SO inspiring...
Here is the wiki http://21cschoollibrary.wikispaces.com/

Here is a link to a powerpoint show of libraries for the 21st century
http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dhkzq3nr_162x9257hm

Great Libraries of Learning - G8lol

The G8Libraries of Learning is a wonderful, challenging, thought-provoking brochure promoting change and essential development to ensure quality school libraries in the 21st century. It is published by the team at the Far North Queensland FNQ Learning Development Centre – ICT

Here is the link to the wiki : http://gr8-libraries-of-learning.wikispaces.com

I came across this at the amazing blog Hey Jude which has a post about it
http://heyjude.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/gr8-lol-great-libraries-of-learning/

I joined Scribd so that I could download a copy of it from her post.

Library Research Service reports

The (USA) Library Research Service http://www.lrs.org/impact.php generates library statistics and research for library and education professionals, public officials, and the media.
One of the topics of continuing interest to the LRS and its clients is the impact of school librarians on student achievement.

From this site you can download articles, research findings, powerpoints and pdf planning sheets with information about libraries and student achievement, the key roles of library staff, library advocacy, the need for evidence based practice, next steps for research etc...

Here is one example of advice on increasing the school librarians' profile :

10 easy leadership ideas to help school librarians become leaders on their campuses :

1. Meet regularly with your principal.
2. Attend all faculty meetings.
   
3. Serve on curriculum and standards committees.
   
4. Present professional development for teachers and librarians.
   
5. Engage in collaboration with teachers and the technology staff.
   
6. Meet with school library colleagues.
   
7. Visit other school libraries.
   
8. Link to initiatives that are implemented on your campus or in the district.
   
9. Give recognition to others for their successes.
   
10. Attend and participate in district, state, and national associations and conferences.

by Nance Nassar, Colorado Department of Education, School Library Senior Consultant

Why libraries matter

Here is a link to an article "Why Academic Libraries Matter" by Barbara Fister, Librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN from the Library Journal, 8/13/2009
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6675616.html

She ends the article with "...in a world where information is abundant, the library—your library—also has symbolic meaning that transcends its day-to-day uses. That symbolic meaning matters because in world of abundant information, the library's role in our culture goes far beyond mere information. For those drowning in information, the library is land, a place where you can clamber up, catch your breath, gather your wits—and drink deeply."

Within the body of the article are various interesting links eg :
Steven Bell's blog posting about the three values libraries provide - totality, meaning and relationships... http://dbl.lishost.org/blog/2009/05/08/three-ways-libraries-can-be-different/
the Darien Statements outlining the purpose of the library, the role of the library and librarians... http://www.blyberg.net/2009/04/03/the-darien-statements-on-the-library-and-librarians/
Wayne Wiegand's recommendation that we focus not on how users can be made to fit into our library but on how the library fits into the life of the user http://tiny.cc/wiegand - he goes beyond information role of libraries and looks at reading and place...

David Small and Sarah Stewart

I enjoy the books produced by husband and wife team of David Small and Sarah Stewart. The Library is one of my favourites, also The Gardener, and The Journey, The Friend...
Sarah writes the words, David illustrates them.

David has just produced an autobiographical graphic novel - Stitches - and it is very different in scope and style from his gentle, humorous, lighthearted illustrations for the titles above. I haven't seen it yet but it sounds bleak and powerful - Stitches is being compared to Maus, the graphic novel which won the Pulitzer prize... See this link for a review on Booklist -
http://www.booklistonline.com/default.aspx?page=show_product&pid=3604681
which concludes with the sentence "If there’s any fight left in the argument that comics aren’t legitimate literature, this is just the thing to enlighten the naysayers." Ian Chipman.
Here is another review... http://bookends.booklistonline.com/2009/07/31/stitches-by-david-small/

David's own website is at http://davidsmallbooks.com/ and it includes some background to Sarah, with a picture of her (she looks just like characters in their books) and her amazing garden http://davidsmallbooks.com/sarah_bio.php

From here http://www.pippinproperties.com/authill/stewart/ you can get a wonderful idea of the sort of person Sarah is... She is an author who early developed a love for quiet, orderly places. The former Latin and philosophy student loved libraries and her grandmother's garden as a child, two loves that have carried over into the children's books she's written in collaboration with her husband, David. She has five gardens and an orchard in which she works daily from May until October. "Then much of the late fall and winter is spent in my library, daydreaming and reading and writing, on the second floor of our home. Like a small animal in hibernation, I make a warm nest in the old wing chair with my grandmother's quilt and the lamp and my beloved books. It is paradise."

Sarah talks about three things libraries and gardens have in common - quiet, order, and hope.

Bradbury, Cleavers, and libraries as educators

Kate De Goldi is talking to Kim Hill this Saturday about the authors Vera and Bill Cleaver - husband and wife writing team perhaps best known for their novel Where the lilies bloom about an orphan family growing up in the Appalachian Mountains, earning a living from finding medicinal plants... Though neither of the Cleavers finished college, they both put a great emphasis on self-directed learning, claiming to be "graduates of the public libraries of America."
In the quirky way that things connect, the same day I read about the Cleavers, a friend sent me an article by Alison Flood at the Guardian newspaper on Ray Bradbury, the author of Farenheit 451, who has launched a series of fund-raisers with a passionate defence of the US public library system...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/22/ray-bradbury-defends-libraries

"Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years," he said. "I read everything in the library. I read everything. I took out 10 books a week so I had a couple of hundred books a year I read, on literature, poetry, plays, and I read all the great short stories, hundreds of them. I graduated from the library when I was 28 years old. That library educated me, not the college." Ray Bradbury