NYLA-SSL 2012 Review

Syracuse students and alums at NYLA-SSL 2012

I was fortunate enough to attend the New York Library Association Section of School Libraries annual conference in Binghamton earlier this month. As always, there were many fantastic sessions, too many to choose from. Did I mention that I got to meet David Weisner and Joyce Valenza in one day? 

Here are a few of the highlights from the workshops I attended:

• According to Joyce Valenza, librarians should find our "sweet spots," where we can take ownership of certain content to enhance our effectiveness and be essential within the school community. Examples of "sweet spots" include digital citizenship, curation, intellectual property rights, search strategies, GIGO, networking, primary sources, and creativity. My new favorite quote from Joyce: "We have to be fierce. You can't be fierce in a holiday sweater."
• Speaking of Joyce Valenza, check out Curation, the Musical!
• According to three-time Caldecott winner David Weisner, he never knows what his stories will be until he starts drawing. He gets an idea then draws and draws and draws until the story reveals itself. And Flotsom was originally titled "Cheese" (because of the camera, not the dairy product).
• Consider creating an ePortfolio as a means of both promoting your program and assessing your practice.
• Don't wait until budgets are being slashed to present at your school board meeting! Make sure to wow them with technology and evidence of student successes. Advocacy is part of our job description. This session had lots of great ideas from Rose Luna, Margaux DelGuidice and Sara Kelly Johns.
• I'm very jealous of schools that use iPads for teaching! I learned about too many great apps to mention at Leslie Cataldo Savage and Lindsay Cesari's session on apps for the classroom (both 1:1 and 1:25).
• According to Olga Nesi, if we want to get our own library standards into the CC, we need to make a case for the skills we want to teach. Librarians should spend some time "unpacking" the Common Core standards. We should pick a few to focus on at first, lest we be overwhelmed.  This was a great hands-on workshop, and I'm looking forward to delving more deeply at the NYLA-SSL Summer Leadership Institute.
• Margi Preus, author of Heart of a Samuri, says that the tool most useful for the writer is the wastebasket. She lauded librarians for our encouragement of reading, saying that books develop empathy and help to nurture a caring world.

I wish I could have cloned myself that weekend, since I know I missed a lot of fantastic sessions, but in case you couldn't either, the conference handouts can be accessed here: http://conference2012.wikispaces.com/Workshop+Handouts. The Twitter hashtag for the conference was #SSL2012.