Advocacy

Advocacy:

I found the article "Five ways to up your advocacy" from the List-serv as a thread discussion on a blog by Naomi Bates, Follett School Solutions Consultant.  What really gets to the heart of the matter is that you have to take time to advocate for your program.  So it gets me wondering what am I doing that I can never seem to get the time to do these sorts of administrative things.  I could try to make it more of a priority, however I wonder how that will impact the rest of my planning and prep time for my actual students.

Her discussion points:

Change the Library Environment- agree with this.  Always works to freshen the place up by moving things around in ways that promote access to different parts of the LLC

Harness the power of social media- bit of a stumper here, I agree to use PLNs to share and teach with others, but it can also be a bit of a time taker and I find keeping this group smaller works better for me.  So many ideas overwhelm.  Just take one thing and try it.

Send out Monthly Newsletter- perhaps points or info-graphic that could be included in the school newsletter to highlight upcoming events or initiatives. This requires you to be continually documenting photographically which I need to be better at.  We just had the book fair where parents worked so hard and did I get one photo? Would have been a great way to say thank you and highlight their involvement.

Share Success in new interesting ways- using video to share how teachers or students have benefitted from the LLC on info.flipgrid.com I have not done this but like the idea very much. I could see how I would make a digital book to add onto using book creator to accomplish this.

Be approachable- show others you are not busy in an office or shelving books, generally be available in places you might not normally be.  Not a problem for me as I don't have an office and students generally check out their own material. I have started to attend grade grouping meetings because I feel like I should, but now I have a more concrete way that I might interact with colleagues at them.  Being at a new school this year, I seem to get the look like "what are you doing here?"  Well, I'm trying to be approachable.


I was happy to see that just the other day I was already at the BCTLA  site printing the D.E.A.R Poster for this October 23.  I am having the LLC monitors distribute it to each classroom this coming week to pump up the program.  I will also get it onto twitter and school website as I believe it is too late for the news letter.  Looking at the various brochures to advertise and promote our position, I appreciated the Comox Valley option to the others.  I found it to be very upbeat and positive, whereas the dated version of the Surrey Schools brochure had a negative spin to it highlighting what we are challenged by and how funding cuts affect students.  That may be the case, but I will certainly use the template of the Comox one to create my own upon.  I appreciated how it detailed our work and how we can be of help through collaboration, technology, resource management, reading and instructional leadership.  Perhaps a bit wordy, but great all in all.  I might include links to our LLC website and twitter. 

Discussion responses: I think a background in business would be an excellent asset as a TL.  Always being aware, making active decisions about how your program is perceived.  I absolutely see this position as a balancing act and have referred to it in the past as a teeter totter.  On one side is the heart for the program, school and all parties involved and the other is balancing the books and all the administrative parts that are equally important such as the program marketing. I agree with you about the positive reaction by parents, students and teachers about showing up.  I also went to the same event at our school a few weeks back and was so happy to see the number of students bringing in their parents to introduce to me.  I just had a few activities out: a kids show on Netflix, colouring and some coding activities for students to use and show their parents.  I also brought along my own kids to see the space and meet the kids.  I was greeted so warmly by all people and it helped give me some context about some students.  Some parents thanked me and mentioned that their child was really enjoying Library.  A positive experience that helped reinforce to me the impact that I can have on students, as well as how much weight their voices carry when advocating for their LLC. What does your parental advocacy look like at the moment?  I have been thinking about this a lot lately as I have been in two schools where parental support of the LLC program was abundant and one where it seemed nonexistant.  Looking back I can see that the school that had little support was an inner city school where language barriers may have contributed to the lack of involvement.  Whereas now, I am in a school with huge parent involvement and I would say largely due to the fact that it is an affluent area and language isn't as much of a barrier for most people.  I like your idea of having a brochure to present at PAC or parent teacher meet though.  I could certainly see including information about navigating digital resources for the parents.