Saturday, November 8th
4-4:45 pm
*** Room Monitor"
Suzanne Flint, CA state Library
RK - RCLS!
Heidi Dolamore, Solano County
Luis Herrera, San Francisco
Sandy Hirsch, SJSU
Tonya Kennon, Riverside
Program was billed as a "lively conversation between library directors and the audience in which we can explore why early learning is a top priority".
The purpose was to tease out rethinking library services, staff development, to "impact the delivery of service to young children".
I think RK may have more to say as this was part of his presentation. I was a room monitor so I was helping to move chairs into a large circle int he room, pass out evals, and frantically hand off technology help for SF to anyone - THANKS Michelle!
This program had a really rough start, first trouble was the technology. There were problems with connecting the laptop, which MP SAVED the day on! The other problem was sound. This conference had VERY packed rooms and this session had a full house - great news that so many of us care and want to make a difference for young children! It did affect the sound and make it difficult to hear - I think the mic was not being used.
Suzanne started the panel off with what sounded like some impressive facts. Some of what I caught included that the number of words a child knows is the biggest predictor of success. The lower the family income the fewer the number of words - specifically 30 million fewer. 19% of children are read to less than 3 days a week (noooooo! :( ).
Next the floor was opened up to all of us attending to ask questions. RK presented on our library and how we developed a culture of play, why it's important, and where we are going.
Sandy spoke about the first child development course for library school being offered at SJSU. That beginning next year they would allow MLIS professionals to return to SJSU to take one of classes for continuing education!
Luis and Tonya spoke about feeding families. Luis is part of the summer lunch program and Tonya has been working with local organizations to help provide food and more importantly books (10,000 books!).
Some comments from the crowd included people talking about working with local organizations.
Really good topics, but each could have separated out into own sessions - working with organizations in community to help young children. Staff training / education to help young children. A discussion about MLIS programs and how they can change to help educate librarians to work with young children (I have a WHOLE LOT to say about that!).
The summer lunch program that gives out food and books together is a wonderful idea.
ReplyDeleteI was a bit peeved about this program because the presenters all met on-line twice to go over presentations and then all created a PPT. Well literally two minutes before the program begins, Suzanne Flint decided to completely change the format of the program. She said she would rather just make it a Q&A session and ditched the PPT. (This decision was driven by the room, which was admittedly small and narrow, and the size of the panel, which was too big!) Anyway, for some reason the panel agreed to this and Suzanne did her overview and then threw things open for questions for the panel. After Suzanne decided to change the program, I said at that time that I didn't think it would be effective because people had no context to ask questions. So basically once Suzanne opened things up, I just said "While you are thinking up questions, let me give you a little insight into how in Rancho we created a culture of play"... and basically did my three minute prepared presentation, and then as soon as I was finished, I set things up so Sandy Hirsh from SJSU could do her prepared presentation (I knew what she was going to talk about.) After this, I think people had a little better idea of what to ask but even then, I wished that Suzanne stuck to the script because I know Tonya did not get to talk about what she wanted to talk about (overcoming obstacles and staff resistance. Plus she was going to mention the PALs!)
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