Aligning our Standards: Two new crosswalks

Yesterday, the AASL Standards Crosswalk Task Force launched two eagerly anticipated crosswalk documents on the new Crosswalks page of AASL’s National School Library Standards Web Portal.

In their May 31 blog post, Why Did the School Librarian Cross the Road?, AASL Standards Crosswalk Task Force chair Jay Bansbach, and AASL Standards editorial board member Kathy Mansfield explain the importance of the crosswalk efforts:

Aligning school library standards to standards for other disciplines is critical to success in the school library profession. Knowing and understanding content standards for multiple subject areas is part of what makes the role of the certified school librarian essential to a school’s curriculum. Also knowing how those various content area standards mesh with school library standards establishes the foundation for collaboration between school librarians and classroom teachers and strengthens learning for students through interdisciplinary experiences.

You can now download printable 11 X 17 PDFs of these two crosswalks:

• Future Ready Framework
• ISTE Standards for Learners and Educators

These posters align our Shared Foundations, key commitments, and domains, across AASL’s three integrated frameworks–the learner, the school librarian, and the school library–to facilitate connections and collaborations.

We can now easily and visually align our AASL National Standards for Students with ISTE’s Standards for Students. And we can see how our AASL School Library and School Library Frameworks align with ISTE’s Standards for Educators. as well as the Future Ready Librarians Framework, which in turn aligns with and supports the district-level Future Ready Schools Framework.

And there’s more to come.

Searchable, web-based versions of the crosswalks will follow in 2019, allowing users to filter their results for collaborative planning. More crosswalks are currently under review and will be posted on the portal as they are developed. Also in the works are resources to support the development of local crosswalks to supplement the national documents created by AASL.

Mind the gaps.

While crosswalks help us understand how our partners’ standards mesh with our own to facilitate collaboration, it’s very interesting to note the empty boxes that may identify areas in which the librarian offer critical competencies and the school library contributes critical alignments that are not fully addressed in other standards, particularly, in this case, the ISTE Educator framework.

You may also be interested in the Future Ready Librarians/ ISTE Standards for Educators Crosswalk released this past June.

Also, don’t miss the article on the National School Library Standards in this month’s District Administration magazine

Filed under: #AASLstandards, crosswalks, Future Ready, Future Ready Librarians, ISTE, standards