Catch the Possibilities

One of the things I've been thinking about a lot lately is library buildings, services, patrons (and non-users), design and the future. Bryce's thoughtful look at the ACE study (here) got the ball rolling for me on trauma-information library service and what that might look like and the two have been swirling around in my brain all summer.

This is my attempt at a "twist" cone, if you will, of the two concepts. I did a bad librarian thing and forgot to write down the citation information for one of the books, so I'll list all the resources I've read so far at the end in my feeble attempt to give credit where credit is due, albeit in a roundabout fashion.

Observation: Many of our patrons, young and old, exhibit signs of having experienced trauma, either in the past or currently

Here’s a tiny bit about what researchers know about trauma:

-Anger is a cover for feelings of despair and/or fear resulting from these unresolved issues:

1) abandonment

2) betrayal

3) helplessness

4) shame

5) hopelessness

6) disappointment from broken promises and unfulfilled assurances

7) sadness or depression

-When in a state of anxiety, the brain cannot recall information processed and stored successfully during less stressful times

-Trauma impairs the ability to order things sequentially or to use sequential steps to solve a problem --Reaching and Teaching Children Who Hurt: Strategies for Your Classroom by Susan E. Craig

-Parents who use corporal punishment rather than reasoning to set limits for their children also spend less time talking to them. Consequently, these children exhibit socially maladaptive behaviors such as outbursts or meltdowns that occur when the cognitive demands of the situation exceed the child’s capacity to respond appropriately. --Reaching and Teaching Children Who Hurt: Strategies for Your Classroom by Susan E. Craig

-Children whose early language experiences are more limited have a harder time discriminating between important and unimportant stimuli in the learning environment. They miss the point because they attend to irrelevant stimuli. This leads to frustration and an inability to complete tasks in an efficient and independent manner. --Reaching and Teaching Children Who Hurt: Strategies for Your Classroom by Susan E. Craig

Here’s what research has to say about children’s environment and trauma:

-Environments conducive to emotionally responsive practice need to have defined areas that contain invitations for expression

-Opportunities to play or participate in other role-taking activities are essential to developing the ability to appreciate another’s point of view.

-Games and puzzles require a systematic approach. Talking about problem-solving strategies and applying them in play situations help children develop the ability to think outside the box and generate a variety of solutions to the same problem. --Reaching and Teaching Children Who Hurt: Strategies for Your Classroom by Susan E. Craig

-Language-rich family environments provide children with opportunities to develop the vocabulary they need for using language to organize their experiences and mediate their emotions. The result of families with a more instrumental understanding of language is a roundabout discourse style with the story parts ordered by emotional intensity rather than procedural sequence. Children with an instrumental language style need a lot of practice experimenting with words and learning how words can be used to build connections between people and things. --Reaching and Teaching Children Who Hurt: Strategies for Your Classroom by Susan E. Craig

-“A play space created to achieve optimal learning would encourage children to set their own goals, choose their own materials and means to achieve them, and follow through on their plans.” –The Power of Play: Designing Early Learning Spaces by Dorothy Stoltz, Marisa Conner, and James Bradberry

What others need to feel safe coming to the library:

-A clean and safe environment

-Supportive people

-A place to “vent”

-Respect

-Empathy

-Non-judgment

Philosophy for the Future?

-An active library invests in people’s success rather than just the library’s success. That’s how it measures itself. The objective is to focus on the complex dynamics of the systems around us to better understand the types of engagements or improvements that are necessary. Rather than seeking just to increase our current transactions (answer more reference questions, teach more classes, support more digitalization projects, the goal is to determine barriers that people are facing (beyond just using the library) and then working to reduce roadblocks.” –Encoding Space: Shaping Learning Environments That Unlock Human Potential by Brian Matthews and Leigh Ann Soistmann

“While scientists once believed that brains were fixed, we now know they are constantly morphing. As we interact with the world, our brains respond, making each one of us unique. So, in libraries, we’re not just helping people find and use information, we’re empowering them to rewire their brains and changing how they relate to and experience the world.” –Encoding Space: Shaping Learning Environments That Unlock Human Potential by Brian Matthews and Leigh Ann Soistmann

Design for the Future?

What would a library look and feel like that was specifically organized and designed as a place that reduces roadblocks to engagement and empowers people to rewire their brains from their experiences of trauma?

How could projects like Building Dignity serve as a model to inform the way we want to utilize our space?

I've got a legal pad full of notes on these two topics, so this is highly condensed, but I'm hoping this might spark some conversation in the comments! (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge). :)

Resources:

Creating Schools That Heal: Real-Life Solutions by Lesley Koplow

Starting Out Right: Nurturing Young Children as Peacemakers by Kathleen McGinnis and Barbara Oehlberg

Annie E. Casey Foundation 2016 Kids Count Data Book

Reaching and Teaching Stressed and Anxious Learners in Grades 4-8: Strategies for Relieving Distress and Trauma in Schools and Classrooms by Barbara Oehlberg

Ending the Shame: Transforming Public Education so it Works for All Students by Barbara Oehlberg

Continuing to reflect on what I've learned from Debbie Miller's, Teaching with Intention book, she's got a section in there on lesson design.

Teaching with intention : defining beliefs, aligning practice, taking action, K-5

We've all experienced that moment where everything seems to be working so well, and chalk it up to luck. Which, it could be; a happy happenstance. But is there a way to be more intentional to work toward those positive, cohesive programs?

Ms. Miller says there is. She uses a lesson design tool which asks her to consider the following questions for each lesson:

What is the focus of the lesson? What do I want students to learn?
Why is this important? How will it help students?
How do I use this skill or strategy myself?
What connections can I help students make?

Then she thinks about how to do this in a group setting:

What books and/or materials will I need?
Are there structures or formats that I need to show students how to do?
How will I release responsibility to students during the lesson?
Will students and I co-construct an anchor chart? What is its focus?

Then students have guided or independent practice:

What books and/or materials will students need?
What do I want the students to do? Individually, and/or in pairs, and/or in small groups
What will I do? confer, listen in, observe, meet with students in small groups

And lastly, reflect, share, and teach:

What did you learn (content)? How will you teach us?
What did you learn about yourself as a reader today that you didn't know before (process)? How will you teach us?

Then you reflect from an educator perspective:

What did I learn from my students during the workshop?
Where do I/we need to go next with our learning?

So. We're not classroom teachers. We might see a group of kids for 60 minutes and never have that same combination of kids again. We almost always have wide age ranges of kids in our programs, which means that we might have some kids who can read, some who can't, some who have learning disabilities we don't know about, or who will need 59 minutes to feel safe and comfortable expressing their thoughts. Is it still possible to be intentional about our program design?

I think it is. Hopefully Ms. Miller doesn't mind me borrowing some of her ideas!

Here's my first attempt at drafting a document that I could imagine myself realistically using to plan programs, but also reflects intentionality. What do you think?

I'm reading through a book called Teaching With Intention by Debbie Miller, recommended again by the fabulous Scott at Brick by Brick.

In her section on creating classroom culture, she makes the point that, "when we want to cultivate dispositions for thinking in our students, we want to show them what good thinking sounds like, why it's important, and where it can lead us. Yes, we can tell them the importance of being curious or reflective, or even explicitly teach lessons focusing on attributes like these, but unless we also share our literate lives with children and think aloud to make our dispositions for thinking visible in authentic ways across the day and over time, it's unlikely to make a real difference." (pg 51).

I've been consciously using phrases like "good thinking!" or "I never thought of this in that way, that's an interesting choice!" when interacting with kids making projects or answering my questions in storytimes, but I'm reflecting now on how to take that a step further.

In the mixed-ages environment that we often see in storytimes, is is possible to incorporate authentic moments of transparent thinking without losing the group?

Here's where the librarian in me started jumping up and down while reading this chapter. When learning about comprehension strategies of proficient readers, Ms. Miller had an "ah!" moment. As she reports, Pearson, Roehler, Dole, and Duffy (1992) learned that active, thoughtful readers use just a handful of comprehension strategies, like:

activating their prior knowledge and making connections between what they know and new information they encounter in the texts they read
drawing inferences from the texts they read to form conclusions, make critical judgements, and create unique interpretations
asking questions of themselves, the authors they encounter, and the texts they read
determining the most important ideas and themes in texts they read
summerizing and synthesizing information within and across texts
monitoring the adequacy of their understanding
creating visual and other sensory images during and after reading (pgs 52-53)

Sound familiar to anyone? Librarians who are familiar with Every Child Ready to Read and Every Child Ready to Read 2 skills and activities are likely already incorporating practices in their storytimes building skills that address these strategies, albeit in a developmentally appropriate way.

But have we transferred those skills into our other programming? STEAM programs are easy to put your thinking on display, since those types of programs are naturally curious, questioning, and problem solving based. But a Ninjago program? Star Wars Reads Day? Gingerbread houses? I'm challenging myself to work at engaging the learners in my programs by putting my thinking on display. We're a WiFi library; why not take a moment in a program to say, "you know what, I don't know what a fox sounds like, but I would like to. I wonder if it sounds like a dog or more like a wolf? I bet I could find a video of a fox on YouTube. Let me get an iPad and we can look it up and listen together." How would that change the culture of the program, or the relationship I have with the kids in the program?

Do you put your thinking on display? What challenges do you find in finding places for authentic thinking with multi-aged groups? Why do you keep doing it?

Um... developmentally appropriate practice would be the norm? Policies and standards would be written and evaluated by experts in the field, instead of legislators and stakeholders with little knowledge on the subject? Librarians would be included in the pool of experts?

I'm not sure exactly what would happen if everybody understood child development, but I'm glad people like Rae Pica, and the guests she interacts with through the BAM! Radio Network are asking big questions and engaging in discussion.

What if everybody understood child development? : straight talk about bettering education and children's lives

If you haven't heard of the book, What if Everybody Understood Child Development, put it on your to-read list. It's a slim book, weighing in at just 137 pages, divided into 29 short essays on a variety of topics-- from standardized testing, teaching handwriting, to so called "gun play." Each essay includes a list of resources, and some ideas of how to implement change right away.

This book will keep me thinking for a long time, and I keep asking myself new questions. I've purposely archived Scott's thoughts on Brick by Brick from his book study to read now that I've finished the book. And the Early Childhood department at DCTC is in the middle of a book study of this, too.

One of the things I remember learning/hearing/saying a lot when I was in graduate school and first practicing was public librarians saying, "I'm not a teacher," which, in one sense is true of many of us. Many of us have not had the educational coursework that would prepare us to take the teacher licensing tests for whichever area we live. Funnily enough, at the same time I was hearing that message, I was also hearing the same pool of professionals urging us to remind parents that they are their child's first teachers. Now, surely, some parents are trained teachers, but we weren't just speaking to them. We were speaking to each parent in the room, because we understood, from the research that culminated in Every Child Ready to Read, that how parents interacted with their children mattered to their child's readiness for formal learning.

Would the world stop turning if public librarians learned to first characterize themselves as educators, and secondly, include themselves in educator community?

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Catch the Possibilities

Trauma and Library Design

Bubbles!

Flannel Friday Roundup

Lesson (or Program) Design

Putting our Thinking on Display

Science Experiment Books for Preschoolers

What if Everybody Understood Child Development?

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