But what does it look like? Colorado paints the picture

Becky Russell, School Library Senior Consultant, Colorado Department of Education wrote this week to share an exciting project relating to the State’s retooled Power Library Program.

The program and its competencies are closely tied to the newly revised Colorado Academic Standards, which integrate 21st century skills across grade and content area.

It is a highly inclusive program.

Becky writes of the urgency for action and for gathering as many as possible at the table, regardless of their skill level:

In Colorado, school librarians are in a crisis, to put it mildly.  Currently only about 30% of our schools have a licensed librarian at their respective schools.   We have been looking at ways to provide growth opportunities for our school librarians while simultaneously changing the mindsets of non-librarians (and, unfortunately, some librarians).  This new “Highly Effective School Library Program” model encourages participation by ANY school librarian, no matter what their growth or educational level.  We hope to provide learning opportunities for participants in the forms of webinars, mentoring, coaching, and workshops.

The program happens to be launching at a particularly opportune time, coinciding with the re-vamping Colorado’s teacher evaluation system.  Becky and her team hope that:

CDE will use these competencies/rubric as a guideline for school librarian evaluations.  The legislation mandates that a portion of teachers’ evaluations will also be based on evidence of student growth.  To that end, we will be tasked with showing how school librarians help raise student achievement. Therefore, in the rubric, we aligned our terminology of “Highly Effective,” “Effective,” “Progressing Towards Effective,” and “Ineffective” with the same language that the Educator Effectiveness Unit is now using as they develop the core teachers/principals’ evaluations rubrics.

Because Becky, together with Power Libraries coach, Judy Barnett, and a number of Colorado colleagues wanted to share what it looks like, they went beyond rubrics and print descriptions of competencies to produce a series of YouTube videos to illustrate what it looks like when it works.

We thought the videos would be an appealing and fun way to give non-librarians (and traditional librarians) a snapshot of how school librarians can impact student achievement in the 21st century.

Check out these films on the competencies collaboration and instruction:

Colorado’s inclusive statewide program presents a replicable model to inspire other state efforts.

Resources for Colorado’s Power Libraries Program:

• Directions for Participating in the Power Libraries Program (PDF)
  ALL school libraries welcomed and encouraged to participate!
• Highly Effective School Library Program Competencies (PDF)
  These competencies provide school librarians, teachers and principals a means for evaluating all aspects of a Highly Effective School Library Program. Go to page 3 of the “Competencies” document to see how a highly effective school librarian can help fulfill CDE initiatives.
  • Videos to illustrate competencies:
    #1 – Collaboration
    #2 – Instruction
    #3 – Instructional Delivery Strategies
    #5 – Individual Use/ Personal Enjoyment
    #13 – School Leadership
• Highly Effective School Library Program Evaluation Rubric (PDF)
  Use this in conjunction with the competencies document.
• From Specialized Program to Statewide Model (PDF)
  A comparison of the old program and the newly re-tooled program.
• Your School Library’s Goals for PLP Participation

Filed under: advocacy, instruction, school libraries, standards, teacher librarians, teachers