AAIM Digital Journal

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Arkansas Association of Instructional Media Volume 51 Issue II Winter 2018 Volume 51, Issue II

Contents A Message from the 01 President

When it Rains, 13 It Floods

AAIM 2019 03 Conference Preview

Library 15 Collaborations

By Ashley Cooksey

By Anne Canada

AAIM 2019 06 Pre-Confernce

By Anne Canada

By Tiffany Whitehead

By Chelsea Turner

19 Around Arkansas 23 AAIM and School

Library Advocacy

What Are You 07 Reading

By Brian T. Johnson

Professional Review:

09 Hacking School Libraries

AAIM Members Win 24 Awards

25 Show Us Your Space

By Karen Wells

AAIM President, Ashley Cooksey AAIM Conference Chair/ President-Elect, Anne Canada Treasurer, Devona Pendergrass Past-President, Heather Hughes Secretary, Sara Dickey Journal Editor, Jennifer Lyon The AAIM Journal is published bi-annually by the Arkansas Association of Instructional Media. All rights are reserved. Submissions for the articles should be emailed to the Journal Editor.

Cover Photo: Gardens in the Winter

by Nina Magie

A School Celebrates:

Day 11 Veterans

By Dr. Velma Jones-Crouch

Arkansas Association of Instructional Media Journal

Volume 51, Issue II

A Message from the President

Ashley Cooksey AAIM President

Hello, AAIM members! I so enjoyed seeing may of you this summer at co-ops and various professional development sessions. This has been a whirlwind fall semester. I hope that your school year is off to a smooth start and that you have found your groove.

almost daily. Seeing questions posted always reminds me of the volunteer-led sessions at our annual conference. Each concurrent is lead by one of our own Arkansas teacher-librarians or technology instructors. How amazing is it to think that each year we have over 70 concurrent sessions being led by YOU? AAIM is solely run by volunteers, which is an amazing feat within itself.

If you have never volunteered for a committee, serving on the conference committee is a great way to get

at conference, on social media, and via the AAIM Listserv to fill that gap. AAIM members, you are my tribe! And I am so happy to be part of yours. I cannot Speaking of volunteers, our pres- wait to see you this spring! Don’t ident-elect Anne Canada has forget, our conference isn’t just been hard at work planning our for teacher-librarians, we have 2019 Annual Conference where something for everyone. Invite we will Curate Community. Anne your administrator and show off has curated a great line-up of all of the amazing things school concurrent session speakers, libraries are doing! keynote speakers, vendors, and community partnerships. I #CurateCommunity think I am most excited about #ConnectedEducators the pre-conference at beautiful #ArkansasLibs Crystal Bridges and our keynote speakers. Each year, I leave our annual conference overflowing with information, new ideas, lessons to try, and new connections with my tribe.

It is often said that as teacher-librarians, we are the only fish in our pond. We can’t run across the hallway when a lesson goes awry and seek help from a fellow teacher-librarian. Many times, we are the only teacher-librarians on our campus, and sometimes, we are the only teacher-librarians in our district. We rely on the connections we make

I love the collaboration I see coming across our listserv 1

started. Facilitate a session, take up tickets, hand out name tags at registration. The opportunities are limitless.

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2019 AAIM Conference

Curate Community

revised my vision. Revised and improved.

You see, I made a common mistake. I made the mistake of thinking that we have to look outside ourselves or our state to find rich resources. When I sat down and took stock of the wealth that exists here, in our peer community and in the community that is our state, it became clear that I would indeed be chairing a rock star conference, a rock star conference of us.

for the vision of those young patrons. As our learning support role continues to evolve, change, and grown, it is helpful to look to widening professional fields for inspiration and insight for that work.

Following the opening keynote, our concurrent sessions begin. These sessions are by us for us and feature the best teacher librarian practices from around the state.

Our evening general session is the Student Media Awards Ceremony. In recent years this awards celebration has been moved from off site and off times to a place of prominence at our conference. It is a time

to celebrate our students’ work with them and their families. As with all things AAIM, the Student Media Festival is only as successful as we make it. If you’ve never been involved before, I encourage you to submit your students’ work. Everything is submitted digitally and judged by a panel for quality and impact. Your students are doing the work, give them a chance to be recognized for it! Sunday’s culminating event is the Opening of the Vendor Hall and President’s Reception. Student Media Awards honorees and families are invited to attend the reception.

Sunday’s opening keynote speaker is Reese Rowland. Reese is a principal architect at AAIM President-Elect Polk Stanley Wilcox in Little Rock and has Conference Chair earned over 60 national, regional and state design awards, but I became aware of how When I began picturing what I’d do if I was he works when I enlisted his aid in redein charge of the AAIM conference, I had rock signing my middle school library space. I star ideas of keynote speakers like John knew function, but I had no idea how to Greene and Kwame Alexander and Michelle create a space that fit my vision and my Obama. Large spaces filled with technology learners’ needs. I watched as Reese turned for attendees to play with and take home. my words into design. While I shamelessly I imagined the clever invitations I would took advantage of the fact that Reese was a send to authors and companies and how Paris alum when I asked for his help, I came they would be so excited to be a part of the to understand that it was not hometown conference (and meet me) that they would affiliation that drove Reese’s enthusiasm wave honorarium fees and bring skads of for the project. Reese understands that giveaway product and come to this literary design is a representation of narrative. He librarian love fest in Arkansas. It would knows that the spaces we gather in help us be awesome! That’s right. Your president to not only tell our stories, but to forward elect is a bit on the delusional side. But and grow them as well. It is no wonder only a bit. that he was the architect of choice for the Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library When I was elected to this actual conferand Learning Center. I smiled as he shared ence position with actual responsibilities, that his firm had sophisticated plans drawn (and after receiving polite “No Thank You” up, went in and talked to the kids, and after polite “The fee will be $_0,000”) I scrapped the adults’ plans to make room

Anne Canada

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Monday’s full day of conference begins early with the vendor’s hall opening at 8:00am. Our morning general session keynote speaker is Elizabeth Eckford. Elizabeth is back by popular request. Ms. Eckford was one of the Little Rock Nine who desegregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957. She writes about her experience in The Worst First Day, a book co-authored

by Dr. Eurydice Stanley which received the top award for Multicultural Non-Fiction in the Children’s Book category at the 2018 Moonbeam Awards for literary excellence.

Other local authors including Carla Killough McClafferty will be featured at sessions and in the vendor hall on Monday. Monday is a full day of concurrent sessions by our finest with a midday break for our AAIM Awards Luncheon. Our afternoon concurrent sessions end with our vendors’ closing reception from 4:00pm to 5:00pm, but the work doesn’t stop there. For those of you looking to learn how to be more impactful learning leaders, we offer a Leadership Bootcamp from 5:30pm to 7:30pm. Attendance is not required, in fact, there is very limited space.

Sign-up for this extra, after-hours work will be offered at the conference only. Leadership is not for the faint of heart or those who weary easily, but if you are drawn to this challenge, look to learn much from the co-facilitators of this session. From 8:00pm to 9:00 pm join Ashley Cooksey and Jen Lyon for #ArkTLChat and #AAIMChat live Twitter Chat. The beauty of this Twitter conversation about craft and concerns is that you can participate in your jammies or while out enjoying the Northwest Arkansas nightlife.

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Tuesday begins with concurrent sessions 8:20 am-9:30 am, but then we open things up a bit. The vacated vendor’s hall will serve as the location for the double-blocked How To’s and Hands On open session. How To’s is a place where conversations happen. Poster sessions will be offered at booths and a digital playground of gadgets will be available for attendees to get their hands on. The poster sessions are for those of you who do great things, but are not inclined to host a full-on conference session. WE NEED YOUR EXPERTISE! Please consider taking pictures and sharing your awesomeness. Bring students if you like!

Bring teachers you work with to your booth!

SHOW US WHAT YOU DO! This year’s digital playground promises more gadgets and more experts helping you to wrap your wits and your hands around the capabilities and possibilities of the gadgets. We end our time together with an expanding community vision. Shannon McClintock Miller will be our closing keynote speaker. Author of the blog The Library Voice, and Future Ready Librarians Spokesperson, Shannon will fire us up as we go back out to do the work of supporting learners and learning.

2019 AAIM Pre -Conference My middle school has a tradition called “School on the Mountain.” At the end of their eighth grade year, students take part in five days of team building and learning outside, much of which takes place at Mount Magazine State Park.

Students identify leaves, test water quality, take history hikes, create press paintings, write descriptions in prose and verse, build fires with almost no supplies, build shelters and ambulatory transports out of natural materials: you get the idea. I’ve worked with the team of teachers with this for several years. Recently I remarked to a fellow teacher that, isn’t it interesting that there are never discipline issues during this week.

He said simply, “School’s aren’t made for boys.”

That struck with me. What type of student is our current school “made” for?

What’s missing, and who is missing out?

That week I watched students in hands-on, out-of-doors activities growing and learning and laughing. I thought about the different styles of learning that were being less and less supported in the school environment as the move to streamline and automate and replicate identical instruction with the hope of producing identical outcomes becomes the norm. I thought, how can we, the librarians, the support staff for learners, provide rich, stimulating experiences for these different learning styles? That ques-

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tion bumped around inside my head and hit up against my experience at a Crystal Bridges Teachers’ Institute. The question hummed in the background when I took students to the Heifer Ranch in Perryville and visited the Heifer International Campus in Little Rock. When I attended a STEM fair at the Jacksonville Air Force Base I watched students engage and question and wonder, and the question nudged me to act. As anyone who works with learners of any age can tell you, we learn differently. I did some re-reading on Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, and I reached out to some of the resources that had inspired me. What came together is an exciting collaboration.

This year AAIM is offering a unique opportunity, a pre-conference facilitated by professionals from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Heifer International, and The Stem Coalition of Arkansas. These organizations are state and global innovation leaders. The learning will take place at Crystal Bridges in Bentonville. The cost for the event is only $45 (which includes lunch) and is open to the first 100 participants who sign up. The training is 8:00am-3:00pm and will consist of three rotations. Each rotation is designed for participants to experience learning through multiple senses with the goal of aiding teachers in creating learning experiences that engage multiple intelligences.

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What Are YOU Reading?

Written in rich, gritty, poetic form, Long Way Down will hold the attention of reluctant high school readers and fans of Port City Novels, Bluford High Series and other urban fiction stories.

by Brian T. Johnson

NBCT Library/Media Specialist Lakeside Junior High, Springdale, AR @GoldenEagleLMC @Brian_librarian Lately, I have been reading books in pairs.

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds and Symphony for the City of the Dead by M.T. Anderson although they portray different worlds contain powerful, timely messages about gun violence and protest.

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds “Realistic fiction-novel in verse” Admittedly, I am a big fan of Jason Reynolds novels having read The Boy in the Black Suit and All American Boys already. Long Way Down continues in the tradition of these works with its gritty urban setting and difficult choices.

Long Way Down follows Will, whose older brother Shawn is a victim of a shooting. He faces difficult ethical decision about what to do next using the ethics of his neighborhood: Rule 1 Don’t Cry, Rule 2: Don’t Snitch Rule 3: Revenge (no matter what). Will grabs a pistol and stuffs it in to his waistband intending 7

to travel the seven floors down the elevator to carry out Rule 3 on his brother’s killer. (revenge) As he enters the elevator to carry out his revenge, he meets a series of ghostly characters from his past. Among them are his father, his uncle, his father’s killer, a girl he grew up with and finally his brother. Reynolds has created a Christmas Carol like world in the space of the elevator where each new “ghost” adds further intrigue to the story.

These characters act as foils for Will’s planned revenge revealing details about their actual past shootings.

They cast doubt on his plans as they tell the parts of their stories that are less well known. They cast doubts about past shooter’s intentions, their regrets and their mistakes related to their past actions. All these characters’ appearances add to the story.and promote Will to stop and weigh the gravity of acting out his revenge.

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hero, depending on the whims of the communist leadership. This trend even goes so far that his status in the eyes of the government fluctuates with each new symphony he produces.

Shostakovich fully takes on these roles and Symphony for the City of the Dead over time, he comes out against the comby M.T. Anderson munist leadership which threatens his very life. In the early days of communism, Stalin Symphony for the City of the Dead is a nonencouraged his citizens to report any anti fiction work that follows composer Dmitri communist comments or behavior from Shostakovich’s life and his involvement their friends or family creating a culture of with the city of Leningrad.. The story opens distrust and fear. Shostakovich is forced to with the swirling winds of revolution as Le- walk a fine line between expressing his disnin ousts the Romanov sent against the regime monarchy and installs and muffling his disgust a communist governin the interest of saving ment in Russia. The both his family and his story carries through own life. the horrific siege of Leningrad by the Nazis Without giving too during World War II. It much away, Shostakovhighlights the resilience ich channels his disof the citizens of Lensent through his music ingrad during the most instead of his words desperate moments of producing a beautiful the city’s history. story about music, loyalty and protest.

M.T. Anderson, most famous for his fictional It might be the perfect works including Feed book to continue the and Variant, has turned current discussion of out a true nonfiction student activism. gem. He digs deep into the contradictions of Nonfiction, World War II communism and the History, For fans of Unstate’s relationship with the arts. broken, Ghosts in the Fog, and other World War II stories.

At different points, the arts are viewed by the communist government as either a mouthpiece or enemy of the state. Shostakovich himself is treated as both the spokesperson of the revolution, or an antiVolume 51, Issue II

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Professional Review Hacking School Libraries

by Karen Wells One of my librarian friends from Missouri recently posted on Facebook about an awesome new book she had just started reading. Imagine my overwhelming sense of pride when she mentioned that one of the authors of the book was none other than AAIM’s very own Stony Evans from Lakeside High School.

I immediately ordered my own personal copy and placed it at the top of my list of professional materials to review for the AAIM Journal.

Hacking School Libraries: 10 Ways to Incorporate Library Media Centers into Your Learning Community is volume 20 of the Hack Learning Series which presents realistic solutions to the problems that face today’s educators.

With chapters titles such as “Transform the Space,” “Establish Global Connections,” and “Empower Student Leaders in the Library” the book’s table of contents reads like a road map of how to create a Future Ready library media center. Chapters offer a step-by-step blueprint of how to implement each hack, making it easy to accomplish

the hacks that are most needed in your library media program, and chapter sections entitled “What YOU Can Do Tomorrow” provide the often overwhelmed library media specialist with a motivational push to get started.

Chapters also include a section on “Overcoming Pushback” that is certain to arise when exchanging traditional policies and practices for a more innovative and collaborative environment.

This section is particularly useful because it provides library media specialists with responses to the most common pushbacks they may encounter from parents, colleagues, administrators, and even students.

“The Hack in Action” stories in each chapter highlight personal stories that detail how the hack is being executed in library media centers around the country.

ing School Libraries: 10 Ways to Incorporate Library Media Centers into Your Learning Community is a great way to get started!

Condensed from Amazon.com Kristina A. Holzweiss is a high school educational technology enrichment specialist on Long Island, New York and was named the School Library Journal Librarian of the Year in 2015, a National School Board 2016 - 2017 “20 to Watch” emerging education technology leader, and a 2018 Library Journal Mover & Shaker. She is also the winner of the 2015 NYSCATE Lee Bryant Outstanding Teacher Award and 2015 Long Island Technology Summit Fred Podolski Leadership and Innovation Award.

Stony Evans is a teacher-librarian at Lakeside High School in Hot Springs, Arkansas, who received the Arkansas Library Association’s Retta Patrick Award in 2017 and was a finalist for the AASL 2017 Sensational Student Voice--Social Media Superstar award. He was selected as the Arkansas Association of Instructional Media’s Library Media Specialist of the Year in 2013. He has been a school library advocacy columnist for School Library Connection magazine since 2015 and is a Mackin TYSL Advocate, a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert, and a Skype Master Teacher.

Whether you are an elementary, middle, or high school library media specialist or an educator who wants to explore how to implement Future Ready opportunities, HackArkansas Association of Instructional Media Journal

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A School Celebrates

Veterans Day

by Dr. Velma Jones-Crouch Cabot Junior High School - North Library Media Instructional Technology Specialist Cabot Junior High North Media Center hosted a Veterans Day event on Monday, November 12. Students with military family members and their families were invited for breakfast and to recognize those who have or are now serving our country.

Deployed parents were recognized on a poster with pictures and names. The national anthem was sung and students introduced their military person(s) in attendance. CJHN’s Parent Involvement members brought food and helped during the morning. CJHN’s art department made a beautiful patriotic mural for cover the outside doors to 11

the media center as a “greeting” for visitors. Posted on the media center’s walls were color sheets by students who listed their military family members with service branches and other details of service.

Other decorations included red, white, and blue helium balloons, a wooden Uncle Sam statue, a table featuring a large flag afghan, and flag napkins folded into circular table centerpieces. About 100 students and family members attended.

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When it Rains It Floods

by Tiffany Whitehead Two years ago, those of us in the Baton Rouge area were still in the midst of flood recovery, three months after the August Flood of 2016. In south Louisiana, we are accustomed to weather-related disasters, although they typically come in the form of a named hurricane. Rains from “The Flood,” as we now refer to it, dumped over 30 inches of rain in 36 hours. Most of the flooding was not immediate but took place in the hours and days after the rain stopped and the rivers continued to rise from the runoff.

The Advocate, our local newspaper, reported the following year that roughly 67,000 structures, including homes, businesses, and apartment buildings flooded in East Baton Rouge, Livingston, and Ascension parishes.

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Our first day of the 2016-2017 school year was canceled because of the storm, and we remained out the following week because of the flooding. Although a number of buildings on our campus took on water -- the building housing many of our lower school classrooms, the world language building, both gyms, and other parts of our athletic facilities -- we were able to shuffle spaces and make arrangements to get up and running quickly. Many of our faculty member’s and student’s families experienced flooding in their homes and the week of canceled classes meant time spent helping others by putting soggy furniture to the road, pulling out floors and drywall, and trying to save any salvageable items.

When we finally held our first day of school, different spaces in our library served as temporary classrooms for four of our world language teachers. This was not the library transformation that I had envisioned, as the flood year was my first year serving as librarian at this school. For the first six weeks of school, I made the best of a difficult situation, visiting classrooms and spending lots of time building a new library website. The teachers were facArkansas Association of Instructional Media Journal

ing difficulty as well, sharing spaces and not teaching in ideal conditions. We were so much luckier than many other schools in our area, where their entire facilities, including their libraries, flooded and were a total loss. You face huge obstacles like flooding the same way you deal with much smaller daily struggles -- one step at a time, one minute at a time.

and FEMA claims have been processed, we all know it’s impossible to come out even after such devastating loss. Looking back at such a catastrophic event, though, each difficult memory is also matched by one that perfectly illustrates the strength and resolve of our community and the kindness of strangers.

We all learned so much during the aftermath of the flood, about compassion, community, loss, patience, exhaustion, and what it truly means to care for your neighbor. Recovery from a disaster like this is not quick or easy. Two years in, we are still dealing with the effects of the flood. Those who experienced flooding in their homes are often anxious when another storm is on the way. Some schools in the harder hit areas still have students displaced from their pre-flood schools. Although insurance Volume 51, Issue II

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Library Collaborations

by Chelsea Turner

My name is Chelsey Turner and I am the teacher librarian at Washington Middle School (5th- 6th grades) in El Dorado, AR. I have been in this position four years now and have honestly loved every minute of it!

I knew I wanted to change how our library functioned, so I started changing things pretty quickly.

Schedule Something I knew I wanted to do right away was collaborate with the teachers in my school. With my schedule, collaboration wasn’t going to be able to happen. There just wasn’t enough time. We had a fixed schedule with literacy teachers rotating through every other week. All 5th grade teachers one week and all 6th grade the next. Because library time wasn’t the literacy teacher’s conference time, they came with their class. This gave me the idea to move to a flexible schedule.

We tried one entire year with a flex schedule where everyone in the entire school scheduled time when they wanted it. This wasn’t ideal. Literacy teachers would forget to schedule time and then they had kids without library books. I will say I did a lot of really cool collaborations with teachers and classes I would have never thought, but literacy was left out a little. So the next year we made a compromise that has been amazing!

We now have express checkout once a week and grades switch every other week. In one day I see every single student in that grade. We only check books in and out

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and each class gets 15 minutes to browse.

This sounded crazy and I was so worried about it, but it has been awesome! 15 minutes is plenty of time for students to get books and it frees up so much of my time! I still teach library lessons periodically through literacy classes, but most of my days are free to collaborate with teachers of all content areas.

Student Self Check In & Out One glaring problem I saw with our schedule change was that students still needed access to books but I would be busy or with other classes. So after looking at videos from other schools around the state and country, I saw self check in and out and decided to adopt it for our school. I’m not going to lie: it takes a lot of practice for our students to get it down! But once they do, we are an effective, efficient machine here in the library. Students can be sent by their literacy teacher (or really any teacher) to the library at any time to check in or out books. I don’t have to be tied to my desk, which means I can be working with other Volume 51, Issue II

classes on collaborations!

Collaborations Makey Makey Interactive Posters My favorite thing about education is technology. It only made sense that my first collaboration would start with technology.

I asked a teacher buddy if we could do this really cool project where students made interactive posters using a product called Makey Makey. After I explained it to her she told her

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teaching buddy and before I knew it I was working with half of the 5th grade population on interactive posters! This collaboration was so much fun! Students read biographies and created a poster where they compared and contrasted these historical figures. They wrote scripts describing how they were similar and different. Students then came to the library with their poster and scripts. I showed them the Makey Makey and how it makes a circuit to replace keys on your computer keyboard. We used Scratch to code our computer to play a voice recording of similarities and differences when a certain key was pressed. We then hooked our Makey Makeys to our computer and to our poster using conductive materials such as brass brads and cooper tape.

Our posters were then interactive! We had staff and other students come in the library and learn about all the historical figures

by pressing the buttons on various student posters.

This was so much fun! Later I was talking with the teachers and we realized that we didn’t have a single behavior problem. The students were so excited and having so much fun, no one was willing to misbehave and not participate.

Drone Study Another awesome collaboration was our drone study. Our principal wrote a grant for a class set of Parrot Mambo Drones. I worked with our technology coach to go into every 6th grade science class to explain what drones are and how we would be coding our own drones in the library. The class was then split in half. One group would go with me to the library to code the drones while the other group stayed to research how drones are used in society today. We would then switch groups the next day.

Science teachers were given a list of Traveler databases and a research guide. In the library we moved all the tables and chairs out of the way and we started coding our small drones to do various things. By the end of the day I gave students their challenge. On the last day we would all meet together for our drone competition. For the competition students were assigned a random square on the floor and they would have to code their drone to fly from that square to the landing box. If they made it in the box, their team would receive a prize.

Students worked so hard and I loved seeing them rework things when it didn’t work the first time. The most rewarding thing was when they actually landed their drone in the square after all that hard work! These drone days were the hardest, longest days, but also my favorite of the school year!

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Library collaborations have allowed me to use my love of technology and teaching to reach students in all subject areas in our school. It brings our teachers together and makes the library a vital part of our school that has so much more to offer than just books.

These are only two of my biggest, most successful collaborations. If you would like to read more about what’s going on in our library, you can check out my blog on the WMS Library Website by going here: http:// wmslibrarymediacenter.weebly.com/blog

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Around Arkansas 19

Academy of West Memphis Submitted by Norrita Langston The library hosted a Silent Art Auction. The art students produced over 100 pieces of art and teachers and students bid on the pieces. The money raised went to purchase more art supplies.

AWM Library also hosted a voter registration drive.

Over 25 students registered to vote during this time. This event was a collaboration between the library and local sorority.

Rose Bud High School Submitted by Alicia Turley Students have worked with Micro:Bits a lot in the library.

They have coded a Celsius thermometer on it- converted it into a Fahrenheit thermometer- and then went outside and compared it to their weather app on their phones.

They have coded their Micro:Bit to read “Late” and crafted a Pocket watch face to fit over it to go along with what happens in chapter 1 on Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland.

The library collaborated with the criminology department and brought in a guest author. Mr. Merle Temple has published four books and spoke with the Criminology students about his time working for the police department. After speaking to the students there was a book signing in the library.

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They have coded their Micro:Bit to show Alice’s growth spurts from chapter 2. She shrank when she drank from the bottle, she grew when she ate the cake, and she shrank again while fanning herself. After writing the appropriate code for each outcome, they crafted their bottle, cake, and fan and used a ground to complete the circuits to make the outcome they wanted to work.

They have coded their Micro:Bit to make a pedometer so they could not only have a race like they did in chapter 3 in Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland, but could see who could do it in the fewest steps.

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Louise Durham Elementary Submitted by Tiffany Williams

Boone Park Elementary NLRSD Submitted by Darby Wallace

Tiffany Williams advocated for the importance for school libraries and the impact of the media center at Louise Durham Elementary School by sending administrators a presentation of events that took place in the media center.

Students at Boone Park Elementary created their favorite book character using a pumpkin

Bay High School Submitted by Tana Kundert

BookJackets, sponsored by Tana Kundert from Bay High School, attended an author visit with Jeff Zentner at the Jonesboro Public Library

Students from BookJackets made our library display for Banned Book Week.

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AAIM and School Library Advocacy

AAIM Members Win Awards Ashley Cooksey was awarded the Retta Patrick Award for the second time from the Arkansas Library Association in September. Ms. Cooksey has also been award the Social Media Superstar Award as an Advocacy Ambassador from the American Library Association.

AAIM’s Advocacy Committee met with Commissioner Key, Stacy Smith, Ivy Pfeffer, and Gina Windle at the Arkansas Department of Education twice to discuss the role of school libraries in the learning community. During the first meeting, members discussed the issues facing school libraries and teacher-librarians in the state of Arkansas. With the recent changes in the State Accreditation Standards, it is vital that we all raise our voice to concerns that are happening around us. School libraries do not a a line item to guarantee funding in the state budgeting matrix; however, libraries are a great support system for teachers, students, and school programs. The computer science and RISE Arkansas initiatives are great jumping-off points for us to use 23

to gain momentum and establish the relevance of school libraries. Many have placed school libraries in the out-dated, antiquated category along with text books. It is vital that we showcase our work and how we are changing with the times to fit the needs of our patrons, often without funding support.

Ronda Hughes was awarded the Rising Star Award from the Arkansas Library Association at their annual conference in September.

Please keep a close eye on this group and look for more information about upcoming projects. Follow #ArkansasLibs (Arkansas Libraries) on social media and use it to post along with what you are doing in your school library. Encourage teachers and students to share their stories of their school library.

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Show Us Your Space

A Collection of Library Media Spaces from across Arkansas

Submitted by Darby Wallace

For my display this season, I created a “Cozy Christmas Corner” by making a fireplace out of copy paper boxes (we always have a bunch of those-lol), a brick painted sheet, and real firewood wrapped with orange strand lights. The students LOVE it! I also included a picture that shows the Christmas train on my display shelf. I’ve ALWAYS had a train under my tree at home ever since I was a baby. As you know, not all students have something like this, and you’d be amazed how a cheap train set from WalMart enamors high school students. It’s the little things!!

Submitted by Ashley Lewis Submitted by Tiffany Williams

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A Message from the Editor Jennifer Lyon

AAIM Journal Editor

As always, when putting this journal together, I am extremely proud to belong to such an amazing network of professionals. I love receiving and reading through articles. I cherish the photos sent in of the amazing things going on in libraries around the state. The creativity and passion of my fellow library media specialists encourage me to keep going and stretch myself farther. I hope you are equally inspired by the articles in this Winter 2018 AAIM Journal.

If you’ve ever thought of writing an article for the AAIM Journal, I encourage to you submit one for our spring journal which will be released after our 2019 AAIM Conference. Consider sharing your expertise with us so that we may all grow and learn together.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this journal. I would love your feedback so I can continue to make this journal a highlight of your professional reading life.

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