Miscelaneous Topics

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  Catching up or leading the way : American education in the age of globalization by Yong Zhao (ASCD, 2009, 228 p., $_____, ISBN: 9781416608738).

  Born in China, Yong Zhao is now a distinguished professor at Michigan state University. He is intimately acquainted with both Chimes and American cultures  and as such, provides a contemporary view of what global challenges face the U.S.. He is an admirer of the long tradition in the U.S. of creativity and higher-level thinking that has produced a nation at the top of the world, but in the past ten years, with increasing competition just to pass tests, he warns that the “edge” may be lost. His prescriptions for American education are to help young people understand other cultures, speak other languages, and in particular, understand the new rules of engagement in the global world of technology. It is comforting to read someone with this larger perspective, particularly when listening to the conflicting voices of behavioral teaching vs. constructivist education. The author is squarely in the latter camp and we can all hope that innovations and excellence notions will return to our public education in place of struggling to reach minimums. An interesting and broadening read.

   

  Discovering careers for your future. Library and information science by Ferguson Publishing (Ferguson, 2008, 91 p., $_____, ISBN: 97801607282)

  Wow! Would I ever like to become a librarian, but not any of the brands of the profession described here complete with pictures of professionals standing at catalogs and support personnel using computers! And, the wonderful thing about library media specialists, according to this book is they help folks find information. Now that is a modern idea along with our work with filmstrips. Well, at least this is about as modern as the description of our work on Wikipedia. Perhaps a group of us ought to get together and do something to present a cutting edge view of what we really do. If we can’t bother to change the stereotypes in our own collections, then perhaps we deserve what others think about us. This is the kind of book to weed from your collection if you have a copy. Quick, before anyone things they have a winner here.

• Fun with finance : Math literacy = success by Carol Peterson (Teacher Ideas Press, 2009, 347 p., $_____, ISBN: 9781591587590)

  There are many calls during this economic downturn to teach kids a lot more about the difference between wants and needs and the wise use of money and credit. This book comes at just the right time when the topic is so current and needed. That said, this book is disappointing from a number of perspectives.  The various topics here are fine and some of the activities including a reader’s theatre a few engaging activities, and a game to play, but that’s all this book is: activities. Here is a chance to make math and library work together. We did not see the math/library connection here. We can imagine creative ideas form making math and library research real, particularly in the use of Web 2.0 tools where kids to do all kinds of analysis in Google spreadsheets, for example in order to see a larger picture and create action plans for home and personal financial perspective building. Yes, there are some starter ideas here but it should be considered as an idea starter and a plain Jane one at that. Our advice is to start with real ideas, real situations with kids and teens and use both the library and the math classroom to do research, collect data, do analysis, and draw conclusions about a very very important topic pressing everyone today. Pass this one bye.

• The high-performing school : benchmarking the 10 indicators of effectiveness, by Mardale Dunsworth and Dawn Billings (Solution Tree, 2009, 361p. with CD, $_____, ISBN: 9781935249146)

  With the Race to the Top initiative looming, schools will be faced with various types of assessment if not more. Assessment is going to be both formative and summative and will be tied to national standards in language arts and math at first. The authors here have been providing professional development on quality indicators of schools for a decade. Here are their ten performance indicators they use to probe school performance: a written curriculum; instructional program; student assessment; school leadership; strategic planning; professional development; student connectedness, engagement, and readiness; school environment; family and community involvement; and, district support. Under each one of these main topics, the authors provide a research foundation for the direction and definition of what they mean and then they proceed to provide discussion and rubrics to be used complete with printable resources on the accompanying CD. At the same time, Solution Tree is also publishing the major Robert Marzano Suite that looks at teaching going on in the classroom. Clearly, this company intends to be at the center of the Obama initiative. The teacher librarian should be aware of the many assessment initiatives out there as we move from a single test to multiple ones. It will all affect how we collaborate with the various teachers across the disciplines, now we interact with the professional learning community, the collaboration with all the school’s specialists to directly affect teaching and learning and thus the school-wide push toward excellence. Put your ear to the ground on the various school improvement strategies out there. If you don’t know of any, this one is a start. Bottom line: every teacher librarian has to understand various frameworks for school improvement to be able to have any impact on them and be at the table. If not this book, get one that is in favor at your school.

   

• Start-to-finish YA programs : hip-hop symposiums, summer reading programs, virtual tours, poetry slams, teen advisory boards, term paper clinics, and more! By Ella W. Jones (Neal-Schuman, 2009, 216 p., and CD, $_____, ISBN: 9781555706012)

  Wow! What a title. Yes, here are a group of program ideas for teens, mostly for the public library but also for schools serving teens where you want to get some activities that attract going. Here is how I would suggest you use this book. Cut it up into the various chapters and pass the chapters around to a teen advisory group during a planning meeting. It is good for an idea starter, albeit an expensive one, in order to stimulate ideas for library programs that would attract a crowd. Yes, there is a poetry slam here, and performance programs by the teens themselves in a kindlier venue than American Idol will be appropriate, particularly if you can archive some of this stuff. Yes, the teen school library/learning commons plus the virtual learning commons needs to be a place of performance, fun, and involvement. I can’t forget the school board member I met in a high school library one time who refused to come to the fourth annual poetry slam the next day where students would read their own poetry. She said, “I refuse to be in tears for a whole day for the fourth time as the kids bare their souls!” Perhaps the school learning commons should gain such a reputation. Perhaps it doesn’t have to be just a place to escape from a class or the place to neck in the stacks, or…about anything else disruptive one can think about. The accompanying CD has lots of posters, forms and brochures that duplicate the ideas in the book. Your students can create better ones than these, but they give the idea. So, here is one idea source with some traditional and some unique ideas. Just get started.

   

• The Education week guide to K-12 terminology by Mary-Ellen Phelps Deily (Josey-Bass, 2009, 133 p., $14.95, ISBN: 9780470406687)

  You probably already have a dictionary of educational jargon on your shelves but probably not one quite as recent as this thin handy volume.  While I found this dictionary missing a number of terms I was interested in (information literacy), I have found and enjoyed reading the author’s perspective of what various terms mean in her survey of the literature. For example, librarians talk about collaboration and define that in many ways. I have adopted the term co-teaching to signify the highest level of collaboration between classroom teacher and teacher librarian. According to Phelps Deily, that term comes from special education and means the joint teaching by two adults for a learning activity or unit of instruction. So, I recommend this inexpensive dictionary and I keep it close by not because it is complete but because of its currency. The coverage of terms, legislation, and trendy ideas helps us as teacher librarian speak the language of education.

   

• Teen spaces : the step-by-step library makeover by Kimberly Bolan (ALA, 2009, 225 p., $_____, ISBN: 9780838909690) You are trying to transform a tired library into a learning commons  or public library teen space that is going to pull them in. You are looking and looking for ideas. This volume is probably worth consulting to get creative juices flowing but not necessarily following its suggestions. We envision a learning commons facility that is extremely flexible and can be rearranged regularly to accommodate ally types of activities. Picture after pictures shows bookshelves creating nooks and crannies where teens will lounge,  but too often quite permanent solutions that will be dated as soon as the remodeling has taken place. There are a number of hints toward flexibility and multiple use, so that is why we recommend it for a starter. Read this and then get radical. And, go tehno along side the studious, the playful, the program activities…We could go on and on. There is room for a real 21^st century approach to the facilities if we are going to attract a broad range of teens.

• What successful teachers do : 101 research-based classroom strategies for new and veteran teachers. 2^nd ed. By Neal A. Glasgow and Cathy D. Hicks (Corwin Press, 2009, 254 p., $_____, ISBN: 9781412966191)

  The authors of this collection of research pieces obviously comb the literature for juicy morsels of research that they transform into useful strategies for classroom teachers. They provide a finding from one or several research studies, find classroom applications for those findings, and warn of precautions and possible pitfalls. After reading many of these 101 entries, particularly in the areas of technology and reading, the reader gets a sense to disconnected findings, often from a single study that is being generalized far beyond what can actually be inferred from a single study in a few schools or a group of learners. And, there is never mention of the expertise of a teacher technologist or teacher librarian to assist the classroom teacher in helping learners select quality information from the Internet, cope with plagiarism, teach media literacy, or find interesting books for kids to read. The school library is mentioned in one place we found, but the authors comment that previously almost all information that kids and teens used came from their textbooks or the school library but now they have access to the internet. The implication is that neither of the previous sources are of much consequence. The more one reads, in the book, the more the 101 ideas form separate unique quilt blocks that leave the read confused about any patters across research such as Marzano does in his books that draw research findings together. For all these reasons, we do not recommend the book as adding significantly to any kind of synthesis that would  be useful in advancing the discussions of professional learning communities. Not recommended.

• Revisiting professional learning communities at work : new insights for improving schools by Richard DuFour, Rebbecca DuFour, and Robert Eaker (Solution Tree, 2009, 520 p., $_____, ISBN: 97813400321).This trio has toured the U.S. for a decade teaching the idea of professional learning communities and learning from both research and experiences on the ground. Even better, they are “library friendly,” as they recognize the benefits of teacher librarians as active participants in the serious discussion of educational excellence. This volume brings together their reflections from a decade on the essential components of what a professional learning community does, how it succeeds, and how it makes a major contribution to school improvement.  Topics throughout are indicative of their approach: shared mission, collective inquiry into best practice, action orientation, a commitment to continuous improvement, results orientation. If your school has experimented with PLCs or is thinking about it, this is a major and important background read for the teacher librarian who understands how much a central role in the PLC can benefit both the school and the learning commons idea. A must read.

• Teaching the digital generation : no more cookie-cutter high schools by Frank S. Kelly, Ted McCain, and Ian Jukes (Corwin Press, 2009, 265 p., $_____, ISBN: 9781412939270) An architect, a teacher and a technologist combine their extensive experience to imagine a wide variety of organizational designs for a local to digital high school. They first set out their case that the traditional organization is no longer working very well with the types of learners we have to educate and then they lay out their proposals. Each organizational design is illustrated by an elaborate two-page diagram, so you first learn to read the diagram components and then you can quickly grasp how that organization might work. They begin with the traditional design followed by  academies, instructional centers, academic focus, learning labs, self-directed learning, time-less + more, individualized instruction, cyber schools, and diverse learning communities. For any community or school district considering some type of major organizational structure, this is an essential book of ideas to consider. Of course, as teacher librarians, we want to put our own learning commons ideas on the table to throw into the mix. In smaller communities where there is a single high school, the book does provide the idea that even in a single building, one does not have to rely on a single organizational structure but can have various smaller houses where a particular philosophy is implemented. For too long, a cookie-cutter approach to education has been in place, so it is great to stretch one’s minds and open them to new ideas and possibilities. Highly recommended for professional learning communities looking at change.