Vision Summit Report 
| Vision Summit Report |
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Vision Summit Report By Valerie Diggs Chelmsford Public Schools Destination: Chicago’s Crowne Plaza Hotel, adjacent to the O’Hare Airport Dates: Saturday, Dec. 2nd and Sunday, Dec.3rd Traveling companions: Susan Ballard representing the New England Educators of Media AssociationOur tickets said Friday morning, Dec. 1st, an 8:30am flight to Chicago for this exciting adventure! It was not to be so. Thursday night before departure we were listening to the weather announcers calling for a major snowstorm for the Chicago area. Will we get on the 8:21am flight Friday morning?? No luck; our flight is canceled. Will we be able to get out on the 11:22am flight? Still no luck! There are no flights leaving for Chicago today. The best we can do is to take a 6:48am Saturday morning flight to Chicago – and arrive an hour and a half late for our Saturday session. After calls to AASLs headquarters in Chicago, we are told that due to the snow an travel conditions, the Vision Summit will not begin until Saturday morning, and we are asked to PLEASE come, despite the slightly late arrival and snowy conditions. So, déjà vu, and all that, back we go to the airport Saturday morning. Our plane leaves on time, and actually lands 10 minutes ahead of schedule. The runways are covered with snow and ice, and we are greeted with 16-degree temperatures on the ground. Bundled up, we trudge off of the plane and onto a shuttle to the hotel. Our minds are racing with thoughts of what we will be asked to produce, and how we will possibly envision the future of our profession. Shouts of hurrah and welcome greet us at the seminar room door. Executive Director of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), Julie Walker, shepherds us in, and Deputy Executive Director, Beverley Becker, gives our badges and workshop material. We are immediately instructed to join a group of our colleagues gathered around large round tables. Present are school library teachers from across our great country: from Alaska to Florida to Maine to Hawaii and every state in-between! The room was abuzz with excitement and anticipation. Our first task is to look at the history of school libraries. This became an interesting exercise, as the “younger” members of our group relied heavily on older members for accurate historical landmarks in the history of school libraries in public education. A list of Key Milestones was created, and is as follows (in no particular order): • Integration: Cultural/Ethnic in the 1960’sWhat will change? How will trends affect current conditions? How will the situation change politically for School Library Programs and staff? These are just a few of the questions we were confronted with after lunch on Saturday. After much discussion in groups, a preliminary list of what attendees consider their “Primary Roles” as Library Teachers today was developed. This list is as follows (again, in no particular order): • Leader: being a leader both in your school and within your profession; encompasses everything; the creation of new partners with other professional organizationsProducing this list was no easy task. We now proceeded to address the issue of trends that affect our current roles. These were initially identified as: State Standards and Accountability, data-driven trend identification, classroom collections, filtering issues, funding, students becoming producers and creators of technology, the development of the trend towards participatory culture among our students, the diversification of formats of communication (including books), Library 2.0 trends, 24/7 access to information and 24/7 availability, and the changing face of advocacy from preaching to engagement of administrators, among others. Discussed in-depth was the increasingly diverse student population, a diversity that drives collection development. As for collection development, it is becoming progressively more fee-based with many emerging formats. Also noted was evidence of the greater use of federated search engines. Our profession is encountering competition for speed of delivery of information, and accessibility to information. Considering these basic trends, what additional factors set the stage for our roles as Library Teachers and how are these roles perceived by our teaching peers, administrators, and the community? These additional factors were now defined by each group, and a summation of those discussions produced. This is what was finally determined to directly influence our work as Library Teachers: Resources, both staff and budgets; technology; accountability; preparing students for the workforce; globalization; facilities; learning styles; professional development; increased diversity of students; socioeconomic factors; the “purpose” of education; safety; advocacy; alternative schools; “doing more with less”; collaboration; recruitment, training and retention of future Library Teachers; and more. Our brains were fired-up, and we were thinking as fast as would could around those round tables!! Time was marching on. We had “lost” Friday evening to the snowstorm, thus it was decided to extend Saturday’s session to 6pm. We were all bleary-eyed by the end of the day. Our next task was to begin a dialogue on what the future of school libraries would look like. We view an engaging video clip on schools in the year 2020, which provided just the right impetus for the ensuing discussion. Each group was challenged to produce a skit, role-play, etc. for the following morning. These performances would outline our perspective of the school library of the future. And here is where my story, sadly, must end. We were all sworn to secrecy by Julie Walker. Sunday’s activities and resultant discussions are to be cloaked in mystery, with all participants sworn to silence. Alas, the disillusionment of the anti-climactic story. It is with this suspense that I leave you all. AASL has committed to revealing the best part of this story, but when and how remains to be seen. When the time comes, look for Part II of this saga. Until then...the future awaits! Valerie Diggs Chelmsford Public Schools |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 01 May 2007 ) |
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