Scenic beauty and rural high schools are highlighted on this tour. Casa Grande, or “big house,” is a rural town located approximately 50 miles from downtown Phoenix. The tour will start with a stop at Casa Grande Union High School. This school had plans to eliminate the school library program. Students successfully advocated for the program to be kept open. Hear more about this wonderful story of student advocacy.

Attendees will then visit the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument for a picnic. Then, attendees will head to Vista Grande High School library, a joint-use library with a brand new maker space and a gaming space. 

This full-day tour will immerse attendees in art and architecture of the American Southwest. The day starts with a 1.5-hour tour of Taliesin West, the beloved winter home and studio of innovative architect, writer, and educator Frank Lloyd Wright. Nestled in the desert foothills of the McDowell Mountains, this national historic landmark’s monumental masonry feels as much an ancient ruin unearthed from the Sonoran Desert, as the twentieth-century icon of modern architecture it has become.  

Established in 1937, Taliesin West was diligently handcrafted and maintained almost entirely by Wright and his apprentices, making it among the most personal of the architect’s creations. During Taliesin West’s signature tour, guests will be drawn into to Frank Lloyd Wright’s world with visits to the Cabaret Theater, Kiva, and Wright’s private office, as well as Taliesin West’s landscaped grounds and desert masonry structures. Guests will also take special trips into the Wrights’ private quarters and living room, the gracious Taliesin West “Garden Room.”

In the afternoon, guests will travel to the home of Mary Wong, a former school librarian in the Phoenix area. Guests will receive a boxed lunch, before setting out to view more than 100 illustrations in Mary’s home. Illustrations include original artwork from more than 60 illustrators, including but not limited to Lynne Avril, Molly Idle, Wendy Watson, Juana Martinez-Neal and Mike Venezia. Guests can also expect a special guest illustrator (or two!) to join the tour to chat and share tales of inspiration with attendees. Books will be available for purchase during this part of the tour.

Kyrene School District has 25 elementary and middle schools located in Phoenix, Tempe and Chandler, Arizona. This tour will focus on three schools – Kyrene de la Estrella, Kyrene de los Cerritos, and Kyrene.

During this half-day tour, attendees will visit the Heard Museum, the world’s preeminent museum for the presentation, interpretation and advancement of American Indian art. At the museum, guests will embark on a guided tour of the museum’s largest permanent exhibit, HOME: Native People in the Southwest. The exhibit includes more than 2,000 treasures including jewelry, cultural items, pottery, baskets, textiles, beadwork and more reflecting the “home” for Southwestern Native peoples from ancestral times to today. Physical structures include a Navajo Hogan, Hopi piki room and Pueblo oven. The exhibit reflects the common threads in the lives of all American Indians – importance of family, community, land and languages. Stories are told through first-person recollections, works of art, and photomurals.

After the guided tour, attendees will have a chance to browse other highlights of the museum and visit the museum’s library and shop before heading back to the Convention Center.

Discover how Broward County Teacher Librarians are "Going Back to the Future" to transform their instructional practice and school library spaces. Jump on the "Fast Track" to "Future Ready" by sharing ideas and best practices through an interactive presentation designed to highlight school library success stories and empower teacher librarians to innovate, create, and support student centered, personalized learning. (*Flux Capacitor and Delorean time travel not required!)

For more than 70 years, the Desert Botanical Garden has providing research, exhibits and more designed to help visitors understand, protect and preserve the desert’s natural beauty. During this half-day excursion, guests will discover the unique characteristics of desert plants from around the world. The tour focuses on desert plant biology, exploring the great diversity of form, texture and color found in this wondrous array of cacti and succulents. Attendees will also learn how desert plants are uniquely adapted to survive and thrive in a harsh desert environment and the amazing ways people use desert plants for food, tools, and shelter. The loop trail, part of the garden’s 140 acres, features outstanding displays and exhibits including the Sybil B. Harrington Cactus and Succulent Galleries and the Berlin Agave Yucca Forest.

Betty Fairfax High School, located in Laveen, can only be described as an architectural gem. Truly a “WOW” space, this library is central to a school that has won an architectural award. This is a library that shouldn’t be missed.

Hamilton Public High School’s library is operated by the Chandler Public Library. Although programming serves the community of Chandler, this busy joint use library space caters to Hamilton High School students with lots of programming, including a Learning Lab, gaming events, and an Open Mic night. 

Setting foot on the Phoenix Country Day School campus for the first time, one cannot help but notice the beauty of the well-manicured grounds against the breathtaking backdrop of the Praying Monk and Camelback Mountain ranges.

Founded in 1960 by Mae Sue Talley and with other determined and forward-thinking citizens, Phoenix Country Day School has evolved into a distinct model of educational excellence, reflecting the unique culture of the region. PCDS students, under the guidance of an expert faculty and staff, compare to the best and brightest from any independent school in the country. 

Sit back and enjoy this two-hour journey through Downtown Phoenix's past and present culture and community. See entertainment and arts venues, professional sports stadiums, historic buildings and homes, fantastic public art, award-winning restaurants, the state capitol and monuments, and much more! Covering more than 20 miles, this fully narrated tour includes two full stops at local highlights.

Discover how Broward County Teacher Librarians are "Going Back to the Future" to transform their instructional practice and school library spaces. Jump on the "Fast Track" to "Future Ready" by sharing ideas and best practices through an interactive presentation designed to highlight school library success stories and empower teacher librarians to innovate, create, and support student centered, personalized learning. (*Flux Capacitor and Delorean time travel not required!)

We conducted a usability study of our library’s online resource portal and were stunned by the results. Features and designs that were believed to be student-friendly were actually distracting or overlooked. By observing how students interacted with our resources and soliciting feedback, we improved the user experience and lessened and cognitive burdens on novice researchers. Find out how to conduct a usability study utilizing screencasts to record and analyze student interactions with your library’s resources.

The Young Innovators Project teams school librarians with university researchers, mentoring experts, technology specialists and organizations supporting the work of young innovators, to create guidelines, training and resources for teaching/learning, mentoring, and inspiring the next generation of young innovators in their schools. The team will share the many facets of the project's website, "The Innovation Destination," launched during the conference, and engage the audience in generating and sharing ideas for its use across the curriculum.

To fully engage students in reading, we must provide alternate access points for making connections with literature and language besides simply having students write about it afterwards via reports, annotations, or written assessments. Come learn how three different projects were used after different novels and class texts to assess understanding of the reading, promote learner agency, and provide space for digital creativity. No boring assignments allowed!

Students who are English as a New Language learners make up approximately 5 million students across the United States. Nearly one in ten public school students are ENLs. Spanish is the largest language spoken but others include Chinese, Vietnamese and Arabic. School librarians can play an important role in making a difference in the lives of ENLs.

Authentic experiences provide great opportunities for learning. Beyond working for a grade, students are working to truly see the results of their work. This work can be real life examples in the classroom, but what if their work had visible results outside the classroom? Doing a collaborative project with community companies and organizations provides not only this opportunity, but the opportunity to experience what it’s like to do different jobs.

Has your school gone 1:1? Are you struggling to get classes to visit the library like they used to? Come learn how a middle school librarian transformed her role by putting efforts into managing her online space using free tools.

Inspiring students as independent agents, libraries are no longer spaces for consumable learning. Students, teachers, and administrators are using computational thinking to create solutions to problems. In three middle schools, teacher-librarians are bringing concepts into the learning space commonly found in STEAM, including Computer Science and Fab Labs. This allows all students to practice critical computational thinking through access and activity. Skills are honed through tinkering, creating, debugging and persevering to design.

Learn how faculty in elementary, middle and high school lead students in an interdisciplinary study of the global issues of hunger and poverty and how to take action as part of the solution. Using research, reflective writing and technology, students examine geography and current events, as part of their globally-focused service project. New resources from Heifer International assist students in their research and response to the complex and intriguing issues of global development.

Who? Your students AND you What? An easy technology to merge a subject on camera with a different background to create a video or still image Why? Create engaging digital storytelling, transporting the storyteller anywhere in the real world or even to historical or fantasy worlds for project-based learning How? Use simple equipment and software on iOS, Chrome or Mac. You’ll see how easy it is, and create your own during our session!

The purpose of this presentation is to guide media specialists and librarians in collaboration with classroom teachers to create inquiry units to support elementary grade levels standards. The units will include the creation of research resources and tools that will facilitate the student inquiry process. The session participants will know how to curate resources using MackinVia groups in a manner that personalizes the learning experience and clearly outlines the inquiry assignments.

As we look to select diverse books for our classroom and libraries, language, is a criteria we often overlooked. This presentation will look at language diversity in children's literature and criteria for positive representation.

The Columbia Public Schools' systematic implementation of an elementary STEM curriculum is supported by our elementary library media programs. CPS elementary school librarians are trained Project Lead the Way Launch facilitators who co-teach PLTW and Engineering is Elementary units in conjunction with classroom teachers. PLTW Launch gives our students foundational engineering knowledge that can then be transferred into our library makerspaces. Join us to learn more about our successes and challenges along the way!

See how hands-on STEM activities in the classroom or library can SPROUT: S (Stir up) P (participation with) R (real) O (objects for) U (unforgettable fun and) T (tinkering)! Learn how a public library brought a STEM program to 3rd-5th grade classrooms that uses examples, demonstrations, and student participation to show the fun side of science, technology, engineering, and math.

Wouldn't you love to offer a creation based opportunity for students in the library that appeals to literacy? The Davis Academy Author Podcast series has offered my students the chance to have a deeper understanding of the research, process, interview skill set, and technology necessary to conduct an author interview and create podcast. The product is then used as a marketing tool for our library programs, author visits, and book promotion.

While 3D printers and Raspberry Pi’s can be great additions to a library makerspace, they are far from necessary. This session will present ways to immerse your students in the maker movement with little to no technology. Even better - little cost! Come learn some specific examples of “unplugged” maker projects for primary and secondary students.

Learn more about the partnership between Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and Charlotte Mecklenburg Library which allows all 150,000 students in pre-K to 12th grade across 170 schools to use their Student ID number to access and check out Library resources; granting access to a world of books and information! Hear how the partnership has grown, technical logistics, successes and challenges, and tips for building a strong partnership between public libraries and schools.

What happens when you invite librarians, educators, administrators, parents, students, and community members to a maker meetup? Magic! Virtual PLN's are rewarding, but in-person meetups are priceless. Learn how to plan, advertise, and facilitate a maker meetup for opportunities to foster relationships among diverse educational stakeholders. Join us as you participate in a mini maker meetup. Walk away with new friends and a "make and take" activity to share at your next meetup.

Are you tired of research that has been “googled” and plagiarized? Do you wish students would use their research time more productively? Learn how to use OneNote’s many tools and add-ins to improve students’ research skills and provide continuing guidance throughout the research process. By shifting the emphasis to the process of research, teachers can guide students every step of the way and intervene early and often to steer their students towards conducting quality research.

Take Read Across America Week to a whole new level by literally reading across America with your students! Show your students a glimpse of our country by inviting readers into your school via Skype. Read on the beaches of Hawaii, a classroom in New York, at Puget Sound, and more. Learn how to find willing readers in all 50 states, manage the schedule, and incorporate cross curricular lessons.

Urban high school libraries are rarely seen as welcoming environments that encourage technology. The librarians at Paschal High School, a Title I school in Fort Worth have been attempting to break library stereotypes. Successes and failures, programming, and tips and tricks to reinventing the library in an urban environment will be discussed.

Take a ride with seasoned librarians and dynamic duo “Thelma and Louise” to plan a multipurpose school-wide STEAM Showcase, designed to enable students to demonstrate their projects, facilitate participation in hands-on activities, and include content area teachers in providing a display for their class projects. We will help participants understand the engineering connection to all three components, as well as how to create your own STEAM Showcase as a measure of program promotion and advocacy.

Would you like to start a Makerspace but your funds are limited or you aren't sure exactly where to start? This session will show how Indian Mills Memorial Middle School in Shamong, NJ implemented a new monthly STEM/STEAM Challenge in their Library. Participants will be given clear examples of challenges that can work for multiple grade levels and learning styles.

Join two librarians who lived to tell the tale of their first of 1:1 implementation as they share their successes and failures. Get tips on how to get teachers and students excited about integrating technology into their everyday school lives, and hear how you can use the 1:1 program to make your library even better than it already is.

Children need to experience literature. As a librarian it is our role to enhance, enrich and support what is being done in the classroom. Through literature we show children what they learn stretches beyond the four walls of their classroom. “Making” is an essential part of the library curriculum and daily lesson plans. Learn how to make literature come alive with creative projects that encourage making in the library through crafts and hands on activities.

School librarians looking to increase their impact and relevance in school leadership will learn how to use data to aid learning teams in setting site goals, finding trends, and providing evidence for interventions and curriculum supports to greater impact student learning.

Learn to use Twitter effectively as a key component of your personal learning network, to contribute and glean expertise in our field, as well as how it can engage students in personal learning, positive social media networking, building information/media literacy skills. Newcomers will get going on Twitter, and those already on will get tips to take best advantage of it for learning, networking, and teaching. Participate in a scavenger hunt and earn a digital badge!

Put children in the driver's seat of their own educational journey, by creating badges as sites to stop and explore along the way. Create a learning environment to nurture Future Ready students with Google Classroom and Digital Badging. Provide 24-7-365 access to learning, global perspectives and problem solving, innovation and exploration and most importantly differentiation and student choice in your classroom, all through a central dashboard!

Despite explosions in the electronic reading world, and emphasis on students developing 21st century skills, huge gaps in reading achievement exist among students. School Librarians are positioned to be the literacy leaders in our schools, bringing students to the skill that will sustain all of their education. This lively session will demonstrate how to create a community of readers by engaging and challenging students so that they develop into passionate, independent readers and learners.

Are your 21st century students Digiwise? Move beyond the horizon to help them become future ready! Join this presentation for a look at digital citizenship resources and how you can use them to advocate for digital citizenship within your learning community! You’ll learn how to use a questioning process to analyze your media program while also exploring digital citizenship resources through a GooseChase scavenger hunt. Come prepared to participate in the fun!

Handing young people diverse books is a fine beginning, but what makes it empowering is meaningful, culturally relevant conversations about their literacy experience. How do facilitators deepen insights into these cultural journeys while feeling confident taking on difficult questions and considering their own roles and biases? Participants will learn to bring culture and race to the forefront of literary conversations, and acquire strategies to successfully facilitate authentic, contextualized discussions about race, culture, and diverse books.

Are you a Future Ready librarian? After reviewing the Future Ready Schools federal initiative, this session will provide practical tips and strategies for initiating collaboration in your building. This session is ideal for middle and high school librarians working on a flexible schedule. Presenters and participants will share what works in their libraries. Come to inspire and be inspired.

Change is inevitable and not always easy. For young adults; innovation, risk, and rebellion temper that change with a twist. In this panel; authors Alexandra Bracken, Daniel José Older, and Mindy McGinnis share how they create books with a voice so readers can relate to characters who overcome adversity in their own way.

Hear from and interact with a panel of librarian advocates on the importance of leadership in the school library profession. Learn about how this leadership is being demonstrated in areas such as learning, literacy, advocacy, professional development, technology integration and intellectual freedom. Engage in a lively conversation with the presenters about your own leadership practices and future areas where you might lead alongside your colleagues.

Explore purposeful pairings of primary sources with the winners and honor titles of the Caldecott, Newbery, and Coretta Scott King ALA Book Awards from the past five years. Experience the power of primary source analysis and how it can enhance lessons, read-alouds, book groups, and displays for learners of all ages. Through the cultivation of visual literacy skills, students develop the ability to critically think about and engage with information in our image-based world.

Are you looking to help teens think differently and deeply about the meaning of information literacy? If so, check out this hands-on session and learn how to use drawing and short stories to do that. This presentation will help you challenge teens to read critically and think visually. We will work in small groups on a short story assignment and collaborative drawing assignment.

Looking for ways to take your library beyond the walls of tradition? Need some helpful tips to get you started? In this session we will discuss how to create a Future Ready library by building partnerships within the school and community you serve and redesigning your library to meet your needs. Attendees will hear examples of how to build these partnerships and have an opportunity to develop a visual plan of action to implement changes.

The one who retires with the most books does NOT win! The one with the most engaging collection WINS! Part presentation and part collaboration this session will harness the collective experience in the room to brainstorm weeding and collection development strategies for school and public librarians. Why we need to weed. How to make it happen. Come join the discussion.

Wanna live on the edge? The Future Ready Librarians Framework helps librarians explore #connectiondevelopment by aligning their practices with strategic building and district work. Learn how each research-based ‘wedge’ of the FRL Framework can connect the priorities of district leaders with AASL standards or program guidelines. Find a wedge that will give you an edge as you work with administrators and teachers--curating digital resources, building instructional partnerships, or empowering students as creators.

Learn how to promote and encourage reading by teaching students to create video booktalks, book reviews, and read-alouds using iPads, green screens, a combination of apps, such as Green Screen DoInk, Tellagami, and a QR code app. Get ideas to add a maker twist to projects with hands-on creations! You can try it yourself if you bring your iPad loaded with the Greenscreen DoInk app to the session!

A school librarian and Science teacher share a collaborative lesson that has proved to be successful for high school students. The lesson incorporates excerpts of Science related books into weekly lessons and discussion that expand the Science curriculum with real world connections, primary sources, critical thinking skills, content literacy and student collaboration. Technology is utilized in the culminating collaborative student project creating book trailers to post and share as appropriate.

Learn the key aspects necessary to makeover, organize and manage your library to maximize its potential. Glean tips directly from a “Heart of America” grant recipient on the best aesthetic and ergonomic arrangement of the physical space. Overhaul your library’s online presence to utilize technology that is meaningful to support learning outcomes. Tips on how to manage both spaces will be provided, along with information on maximizing collaboration with faculty, administrators and community members.

Diversity in collection development is a project that is never finished. You will learn how to diversify your present collection in a way that better reflects today's global world.Find out how to use these diverse library materials to support your students, staff and the curriculum and standards.

News impacts us daily, but news might not be as true as it appears. Studies found that youth have difficulty distinguishing which online resources are credible. Researchers stated a strong need for curriculum focused on developing students’ civic online reasoning. This session addresses this need for student news media literacy, and provides news media curriculum and tools to incorporate to help their students improve their news media literacy.

Take time to experience some the sites awarded over the past nine years from The AASL Best Websites for Teaching and Learning Committee. Make sure to attend this hands-on technology event to learn more and explore these winning websites in the fields of librarianship, education, and instruction!

Are you a ferry or a bridge? Both take people across water. The ferry operator is in charge, releasing travelers from responsibility; a bridge puts travelers in complete control. Do you and your teachers carry students through learning, telling them when/how to do tasks? Do you deliver lectures or create structures to engage and empower students? Learn about K-12 strategies including problem-based, felt-need tasks; self-assessment; non-negotiable lessons; and optional small-group mini-lessons. Become a bridge builder!

Members of the AASL/ALSC/YALSA Interdivisional Committee on School/Public Library Cooperation will discuss the benefits of collaborating, the steps of a successful collaboration, and highlight their recently published Collaboration Toolkit. Committee members will also share their favorite examples of successful school and public library partnerships, and session attendees will have the opportunity to do so as well. All will walk away with new ideas for successful collaborations in their library community!

Molly Idle, Debbie Ridpath Ohi, Christian Robinson, Dan Santat, and David Shannon compose this outstanding author/illustrator panel. They will discuss the powerful impact that illustrations add to the words when telling a story.

Some people worry that with the recent focus on school libraries as makerspaces, that the role of reading promotion and the love of literacy will be reduced. Why does it have to be either-or? This hands-on workshop will illustrate how to combine both, with a healthy helping of technology, to foster critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creation, innovation, and ingenuity in your learning commons. Come willing to read, make, and think!

School libraries are at the forefront of the making movement. It's a wonderful and natural transition and teacher-librarians around the world are building it into their programs and spaces. Discover how the Ontario School Library Association and pivotal documents such as Together for Learning, the Canadian Library Association Standards, and the TALCO/OSLA Inquiry poster help provide making opportunities in schools of all shapes and sizes.

This session will provide an overview of best practices in reading comprehension instruction. Interspersed throughout the discussion will be an introduction to current educational technology tools, all of which are freely available online. Presenters will demonstrate how to use this technology to teach specific comprehension-based lessons, and attendees will have the opportunity to use their personal technology devices to follow along with the demonstrated activities during the session.

Spatial skills not only impact STEM achievement, they impact reading achievement. Find out what the latest research suggests and what you can do to help your students...in particular, two underserved groups, low SES students and girls, stand to benefit the most. Simple, inexpensive interventions can reap huge rewards for your students over time. Join us in making a difference.

Take advantage of the new upswing in non-fiction. You will learn how to increase student and teacher engagement and knowledge by: -Discovering recent titles and how to market them, both in person and through technology -Using narrative non-fiction to teach information skills -Pairing non-fiction with fiction and primary sources to build reading skills and encourage students to continue thinking critically Because sometimes the truth is stranger (and more engaging) than fiction.

You contribute value to your school, but, as a “doer” you might not articulate your value in helping administrators carry out their mission. Highlighting your worth isn’t bragging, but rather makes the case that you play an important role in helping teachers teach and students learn. Learn how to support the mission and culture of your school, determine your unique value, draft and deliver talking points, and take away a model and examples to use.

The AASL Presidential Initiative Taskforce has curated high impact resources in an infographic that demonstrate to principals and other leaders the critical instructional role of school librarians in today’s schools. Participants will leave this interactive session with access to resources, advocacy strategies, and a plan of action to communicate the value of school librarians in ways that resonate with administrators.

Innovation requires effective questioning, creative thinking, and problem-solving skills, combined with imagination, passion, and perseverance. Young innovators, from both poor and affluent communities, need adult mentors to motivate and guide them. School librarians are perfectly positioned to fill this role. Through the use of a unique web resource, "The Innovation Destination," a team from the Young Innovators Project at Syracuse University will demonstrate key strategies that will help attendees become effective mentor-librarians in their schools.

Back to life, back to reality! You spend the conference collaborating, networking, and learning. As it comes to a close, you are energized and excited to return home and implement the ideas. Then, life gets in the way. Learn how school librarians in one district came together to create a dynamic professional learning community. Attendees will leave with over a dozen strategies to keep inspired and spread the energy to other librarians in their district.

We are all looking for ways to encourage reading, motivate readers, and promote libraries. Join this fast-paced session full of library sponsored reading motivation contests, games, events. While learning about the research and trends in reading, find out about ways to engage the library in successful, proven program you can to go home and implement immediately. Time will be provided for attendees to share their successful ideas with the group.

Librarian/teacher/author collaborations use primary sources and proven strategies to personalize and deepen understanding of content while strengthening information literacy skills. Through civil rights history and an overcoming adversity theme, learn techniques to help students formulate questions, focus inquiry, analyze photos, read for information, and direct their own learning to become effective users of information. Compare similarly themed F/NF to stimulate analytic and critical thinking skills. Handouts: Classroom ready lesson plans, discussion questions, and hands-on activities.

How do we prepare students to navigate the world of online news? The answer is simple. Teach students to understand the difference between fact, fiction and to recognize when a source is not reliable, accurate, or authoritative. In the age of “post-truth,” “truthiness,” and downright false news sites, it more important than ever to give students the tools necessary to separate fact and fiction. Participants will leave the session with lesson plans for all levels.

Discover ways to successfully obtain grant money to fund your innovative library ideas and projects. Learn how to research, find, and choose appropriate local, foundation, and government-related grants that improve chances for successful funding. Learn to match identified student and faculty needs to the funder’s priorities. Tips for best grant writing style will be shared as well as how to collect evidence and show how student learning has been impacted.

Current, curriculum aligned and accessible content for school library collections can hide in university press publications. These often overlooked gems might be right for inclusion in your collection. Once we select books together in this session it is off to marketing our new acquisitions. Leave this session with tools to choose your new university press books, marketing ideas and marketing templates and possibly a few new books.

Struggling with differentiation? Need fresh lesson ideas and activities for your school library? This session is for you! Participants will learn various elements of theatre - pantomime, improvisation, script format, etc. - and how these elements can be integrated into units like Informational Text and The Dewey Decimal System. By the end of the session, participants will gain confidence with Arts Integration and will have a toolbox of strategies to take back to their libraries.

Explore how to connect research to STEAM in your library. Using the topics of electricity and coding as the starting point we completed a research project and got to 'play' with Squishy Circuits and Ozobots. This was an amazing learning experience for all.

English Language Learning teacher, school librarian, and storyteller will present an interactive workshop where attendees will learn: strategies for digital and oral storytelling, integration of digital tools for learning and self-reflection, storyboarding, and ways to collaborate to form cross-generational partnerships. We will provide work samples and discuss ways to help students feel comfortable sharing stories and cultures both orally and written; imperative skills in today’s interconnected world. This unit is adaptable to other content areas.

Picture books frequently have minimal text but that text is often a powerful story. Drew Daywalt, Adam Rex, and Judy Schachner talk about creating stories for picture books.

As demonstrated by the John Lewis's March series, nonfiction graphic novels can tell powerful stories. In this session we will explore graphic novel conventions, examine how nonfiction graphic novels can support literacy strategies, and discuss visual literacy. Finally we will explore how students can use comic strip maker apps to explore and understand primary sources.

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) is a research-supported teaching and learning approach that focuses on including students’ cultural references as a way to engage diverse learners. Since CSP is not a one-size-fits-all approach, it can be difficult to know how to start integrating it into practice. In this workshop, presenters will share strategies participants can use to make existing curricula more powerful and effective. Participants will put their new knowledge into practice with guidance from presenters.

Learn about school librarians working on the forefront of curating and creating OER in their schools. Drawing from established open education principles and learnings from the collaborative project, School Librarians Advancing STEM Learning, this session will engage participants in strategies for open content use and discovery of exemplary OER units created by school librarians and STEM teacher colleagues to build inquiry and literacy through the integration of informational texts into STEM teaching and learning.

Are you looking for ways to enhance interdisciplinary teaching connections? Come learn about the transformation from what was a traditional research project to an 8th-grade capstone research-unit focused on human rights and social justice. We will discuss how collaboration among librarians, classroom faculty, and members of the outside community help to create an authentic research experience. Time to develop your own ideas and gain feedback from others will be included.

At The Willows Community School, a librarian, school administrator, and teachers collaborated to develop an information literacy skills program concentrating on Standards for the 21st-Century Learner. The Willows librarian and administrator will discuss the development and successful implementation of the program and offer tips for implementation at other schools. Participants will work on designing a template for their own school's information literacy needs that can be shared with teachers and administrators.

Plagiarism has become an increasingly serious issue with the availability of information on the Internet. Rather than focus on detecting plagiarism, learn how to combat it using instructional strategies that worked in K-12 school libraries and college classrooms. Learn more about the reasons for why students plagiarize, how to address underlying problems, and advance digital citizenship by improving dispositions and behaviors. Attendees are invited to brainstorm ideas to implement similar strategies in their school settings.

Come hear from a successful professional learning community of middle school librarians how we made our time together meaningful for all facets of our libraries including teacher collaboration, mentoring, serving special needs populations, promotion and marketing, physical space and funding, Leave with ideas you'll be excited to implement right away. If you're yearning to get off your "island", book passage with us and let's set sail!

Are graphic novels a staple in your elementary library or just an afterthought? Jennifer L. Holm, Victoria Jamieson, Kevin McCloskey, and Judd Winick will talk about why graphic novels are for everyone and not just for non-readers.

Tired of traditional book clubs? Try Fiction Feud: a Book Bowl for Novel Nerds. Support and promote literacy initiatives with a fun, new reading club and competition. Learn how five high school librarians conceived of and enacted a new intradistrict reading trivia program at their schools. Come learn and play Fiction Feud with us!

Join us for a hands-on experience using resources from the Library of Congress. This session is based on lessons learned at the 2016 Library of Congress Summer Institute. Participants will learn how to incorporate primary sources into library or classroom curriculum focusing on critical thinking skills and literacy. Ready to use ideas and lessons will be shared! Primary sources can be incorporated into all content areas and are great for all levels of achievement.

Autism Spectrum Disorder students are making up an increasing percentage of our school populations. This session will expose you to programming ideas and grant opportunities available to schools to help implement programming that targets students with ASD. Programming ideas include job skills, cooperative learning and the use of inflatable mascots (crazy, I know…but the science is there) to help ASD students interact with the community. Come think outside the box with us!

School libraries are in the midst of a revolution. Technology is overtaking our environments and many school leaders are opting to cut library expenditures to fund technology initiatives. This session will arm school librarians with the tools needed to demonstrate the value added to an entire school community by a well funded school library. Presenters will share examples of best practices and provide participants with a guide for speaking the language of decision

Lunch in the Library - Creating a Maker Space This presentation will feature maker crafts requested & evaluated by students. Attendees will learn how to develop these programs, resources for funding AND explore hands on maker crafts. Discover strategies for student peer teaching of maker techniques & skills: featuring how to directions developed by students Examine student projects, rubrics & reflections about library maker projects: including recycle bird feeders & LED projects

This program will emphasize hands-on poetry writing for attendees, using structured and formulaic approaches to writing poetry. This will be accompanied by PowerPoint examples and descriptions on how this approach has been used to foster creativity and a love of poetry in children, tweens, teens, and ESL young adults in schools and public libraries. Participants will be encouraged to share a few of the poems. Handouts will detail must-have poetry books and numerous online resources.

Discover how place based learning immerses students in investigations and initiatives that capitalize on their local heritages and cultures. Gain background information about how place based learning and inquiry frames foster curious learners and concerned citizens. Attendees are invited to brainstorm and share ideas about how this type of inquiry driven learning can connect classrooms, libraries, and communities in their own school settings.

After a tumultuous year at Boston Latin School around the issue of race, the librarian and 8th grade history teacher created a unit focusing on identity, race, and civil discourse. We selected a variety of media for students to analyze making connections between identity, stereotypes and individual world views. A variety of media, tools, and strategies from Facing History were integrated to ensure maximum student engagement, promote discussion, and build a foundation for continued discussions.

In today’s world, everyone can be a publisher – but not all authors are equally credible or truthful. This hands-on session introduces tools for teachers to build their students’ media literacy skills and learn to authenticate, analyze and evaluate content from a variety of sources and platforms. Then, guided by a Wiki expert, participants will get a deep dive into decoding crowd-sourced websites and behind-the-scenes investigative tips for using Wikipedia for classwork and research. BYOD recommended.

Advocacy is no longer an optional component of a school librarian’s job. But how does one advocate for the library program and students when so many school librarians work in a department of one? Partnerships are critical to your advocacy success, and it’s likely that you’ve already laid the groundwork for them. In this session, hear about different models and learn how to cultivate your own partnerships that will increase support for the library program.

Librarians have to be advocates for their libraries. Learn how to use various social media tools to tell the story of the learning taking place in your library. Learn how to use Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Pinterest, and Facebook effectively in your library.

Searching for materials addressing the social issue concerns of a specific era, including our own? Need materials which promote social justice, equality, and personal responsibility? Ease the search via Jane Addams Children’s Book winning titles, receiving associated database instruction, collaborative lesson plans and discussion guides.

What is the purpose of your library program? Why should administrators support that purpose? What does a FutureReady library program look like? By examining some essential questions about why our programs exist, how we impact student success, and what we are doing to deliver the outcome of a fully integrated library, a framework of quality will emerge to help us reach outside our silos and tell our stories.

You've heard the term "makerspace". Have you heard of "cosplay"? Often seen and admired at comic and anime conventions, cosplay is the practice of dressing up as a character from a movie, book, or video game. Cosplayers often make their own outfits, so why not combine cosplay and makerspaces at school? This mother-daughter team will tell their tales of creating costumes and share potential ways to incorporate it into your established or emerging makerspace.

When the L&N STEM Academy opened 6 years ago, the library media center was an empty room. The budget that normally would have been earmarked for an opening day collection and furnishings was reallocated to pay for Smart Boards, computers, and Apple TVs. Innovation and ingenuity led the day in establishing relationships and collaborations to create a library that would be attractive and useful to both the students and faculty.

Librarians can no longer hope that no one will be offended. As librarians and educators we must take a stand and declare, with passion, our support for the core values of our profession. By reviewing recent censorship cases and reporting tools, this session will embolden participants to stand up for the right to read and never let a book be removed from the hands of their students.

Everyone needs an ally to be successful. For a school librarian, that person is the principal of the school. What he/she thinks about you and your school library shapes the perception for the entire school community. Our interactive session will share tried and true tips and propose strategies for you to try that will get the principal "on your side" and singing the praises of new and veteran school librarians alike.

Through a grant-funded project, four professors collaborated with 20 middle and high school librarians to strengthen instructional partnerships with content-area teachers through high- and low-tech makerspaces and integrated multiple literacies. Explore how this project empowered librarians to enhance networking with other librarians and administrators in supporting innovative learning in library makerspaces. Learn top strategies and resources for the librarians and how professional development and implementation could improve in the future.

Mirror, mirror, who do you see in your books? Hear from authors who put themselves into their work to engage all readers. Go beyond Diversity 101 - learn how to take action and become a partner in the conversation about meeting the needs of all readers. Authors include Bill Konigsberg, Irene Latham, Ellen Oh, Icy Smith, Charles Waters, and Carole Boston Weatherford.

Finding digital images on the Internet for student use can be an intimidating process for students and educators. In this session we will share some of the best sources of digital images out there, AND discuss innovative ways to use digital images in your visual literacy and information literacy instruction. We’ll also highlight simple tricks to vastly improve your students’ and your own photography skills alongside simple tools to showcase digital image projects.

Interested in gaining support for your state or region's libraries and tired of preaching to the choir? Come hear members of the planning committee for "Libraries Transform New Mexico: A Statewide Conference on Libraries", discuss lessons learned and final outcomes of the conference, including how to get key non-librarian decision-makers to attend and really listen and the next steps recommended by the focus groups conducted during the conference.

Why are our students struggling to work with digital tools if they spoke internet before they could walk? How can we prepare students for a world they're going to enter when we can't even imagine future challenges? The answer is to approach each learning task and learner knowing that they must transfer to the next wave of development. Strategies abound to approach our discomfort with an uncertain future.

High school librarians must ensure information competencies of students before they head off to college. Digital badges used as part of a blended "Senior Research Qualifier" course measure and microcredential the information fluency of seniors before they can perform their senior capstone project. Learn how this course is organized, which skills are included, what assessments are used, and how badges work to help measure these critical skills.

Addressing the needs of students, and teachers is priority number one for school librarians, but how do you determine what those needs are? The One Question Survey format is ideal for soliciting quick feedback from any stakeholder group, and it can also be a fun way to engage students. Participants in this interactive session will create serious and playful one-question surveys and brainstorm ways to use and share results.

There are great leaders, good leaders, mediocre and bad ones. But even great ones are not the same kind of leader. Leaders fall into different archetypes and knowing which one(s) are yours will help you lead from your strengths. Combine that with being able to identify your administrator’s leadership archetype and you will be able to determine the best way to target your message and better position your library program.

George Santayana said "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it". This session is designed to help students learn from history and recognize the mistakes of the past. Participants will be introduced to a structured discussion technique for helping students analyze and interpret past events by examining multiple primary sources and to draw connections to current issues. Lesson plans, analysis templates, online resources and possible student inquiry projects will be provided.

Fake news has real-world consequences, but the fact is, most adults see themselves as much more media literate than they actually are. How can we provide effective coaching for teachers and librarians so that they are more able to assess their own levels of media literacy and can provide more authentic and productive lessons for their students? Engage in a series of collaborative table discussions and develop a PD exercise to take back with you.

In this age of information proliferation and the menacing propagation of “fake news,” it more important than ever that students learn to evaluate information quality. We practice close reading for manipulative language that colors an argument and slants interpretation, and we explore the logical fallacy as a framework for teaching high school students how evidence can be used and misused. This interactive session will provide practical approaches to use with your students.

Data, data, data! Is your school administrator asking you for data? How can busy school librarians prove on a regular basis that they are having a positive impact on student achievement? Join us in this session and explore how to harness the power of formative assessment and technology. Five, free, formative assessment tools will be demonstrated. Attendees should bring a tablet or laptop and be ready to try out each assessment tool.

Go beyond expeditions and discoVR a whole new world. A world you can create. A world you can explain. A world for all to explore. Harness the power of 360 creation and make virtual reality interactive. App smash 360 tools for increased engagement and intriguing learning experiences. Enable students to not merely be consumers, but also creators of Virtual Reality.

Author-educator Melissa Stewart shares fun, practical ideas for helping K-5 students develop information literacy skills as they read award-winning nonfiction books and produce their own informational writing. Attendees will go home with creative ways to support the Common Core Reading Informational Text and Writing Standards as well as the AASL Standards for the 21st-Century Lerner.

As you pursue your professional horizons, the expectation of leadership surrounds you as a school librarian. But what does this look like? Leadership may be volunteering for a task force, teaching your colleagues, writing an article, or even sending tweets. The school library profession needs an array of voices to grow and thrive—but it’s not always clear how to take part in the conversation. Learn how to shape reflective practice into valued professional contributions.

Teaching students to accept that the easiest path is not always the best path, to read critically, analyze evidence, and challenge assumptions is thorny. Students directed to focus on ethical use, audience, and impact when publishing their learning often ignore those prescriptions. Yet students need digital, media, and global literacy, In this session, presenters will highlight effective and engaging instructional strategies to help learners master them.

Do you hope to promote, encourage and foster critical thinking and creativity in your library? Visit this session to discover reader response, literature-based, and interdisciplinary activities appropriate to selected works of magical realism (grades 4-7).

MakerEd can embrace the whole child. The presenter will discuss her MakerCare initiative empowering students to #make a difference. Takeaways include how to build community partnerships, collaborating with staff in your school, and projects from simple low cost to 3-D models and wearable technology. From character education programs in the elementary schools to service clubs at the secondary level, participants will be inspired to build a culture of caring in their school library makerspace.

Do you see students and colleagues who are feeling overly stressed? What about yourself? Our library staff worked with departments across the high school to gather and then share resources to help reduce stress. At this session, you will hear about the steps we followed, plus receive access to the many videos, apps and online articles that we have recommended to students, faculty and parents. Join us and take some deep breaths.

Hear authors Dori Hillestad Butler, Richard Haynes, Fran Manushkin, and Megan McDonald describe their techniques in writing for beginning readers. Discover how authors develop series plotlines and characters. You’ll also learn about upcoming titles in their new and established series.

The research project is typically the English or social studies teacher’s greatest point of contact with the library, yet this period of collaboration is often limited and lacks continuity with the rest of the curriculum. Our yearlong curriculum integrates information literacy skills and rhetoric instruction and helps students use technology to conduct a pre-research process and to find an original argument, which is fundamental to authentic research.

Looking for multicultural titles for kids? Celebrate a showcase of great books by black authors and illustrators. Join award-winning children’s book creators Don Tate, Gwendolyn Hooks, Kelly Starling Lyons and Tameka Fryer Brown as they share their publishing journeys, explore why diversity and advocacy matter and salute titles that have been featured over the past decade on the The Brown Bookshelf (www.thebrownbookshelf.com) blog.

There is no better way to motivate students to learn and grow than to get their families involved! This session will provide examples of the successes of collaborative projects from an elementary school and public library. Together, they used social media, outreach programs, and fun events to engage the community in the reading lives of students. The result? A community that understands, engages in, and supports efforts to help their children become excellent readers.

Tired of having to administer someone else’s program to teach reading? Wishing you didn’t have to help students select books based solely on reading level? Then this session is for you! Get ideas on how to run a summer reading “Un-program” that encourages reading through individual choice of subject, format, level, and genre. From administering individual reading surveys to planning read-alouds and activities that engage students, this is not your typical “canned” summer reading program!

Are you stuck in a cycle of reacting to never-ending daily demands? Do you secretly wonder if there’s an easier way to do a job-related task, but don’t have enough time to find out how? Imagine how much more productive you could be with a year’s worth of planning already done! Learn from District Librarians how to use “hyper” resources to plan out an entire school-year and embed all your important resources.

There is a wealth of information in historical newspapers, but it can be challenging for students to find and access the information on the page. This session will explore how students can find content in historical newspapers related to topics of study and how close reading and other historical analysis approaches can assist students in coming to an understanding of the text’s meaning in the newspaper and of the historical event being written about.

What do popular young adult fiction, literary classics, and history have in common? The role of government powers, class structure, social injustices, diversity, and the concept of rights as citizens, of course! Collaboration between a classroom teacher and a media specialist resulted in hands on and digital activities that appealed to all students and demanded higher thinking order skills.

This panel of nonfiction authors will discuss how to incorporate nonfiction books into your STEM curriculum. Melissa Stewart moderates the panel that includes Brooke Bessesen, Katherine Roy, and April Pulley Sayre.

In the era of “fake news,” how can students be better analysts and creators of infographics and visualizations? Simple strategies like, “Check the y-axis -- it may not start at zero!” have helped high school librarians and students make progress in engaging with visual information around them. We’ll share high-impact rules of thumb that can be inserted into existing information literacy lessons to improve critical thinking and comprehension.

How might we improve the user experience for students, teachers, parents, and community in our school libraries? Design Thinking is an iterative, people-focused approach to problem solving and innovation. Learn the five step process by engaging in an introductory Design Thinking project and learning the applications to educational design challenges in your school library.

Vancouver (WA) Public Schools has been nationally recognized for systemically connecting librarians to innovative leadership. How do you translate leadership in the library to improve your school and district? Mark Ray and Traci Chun share stories, best practices, and lessons learned. What are the opportunities? How do you effectively lead and grow collaboration with teachers and administrators? Learn how to better lead, teach and support future ready learners in your district.

Fake news! Media bias! Coopted stories! Our students need to learn skills and concepts to navigate and anchor themselves in the constant pulse and flow of information. This session will present tools for librarians and teachers to incorporate in media literacy lessons to give students benchmarks to recognize bias, and spin, and to evaluate news based on an understanding of journalistic standards.

Regular library story time can be easy to achieve, but what do you do with your growing population of students who are on the autism spectrum or have non-categorical disabilities in their library time? Come learn some new techniques to adapt books and engage students on a sensory level to build a love of the library and literature.

Because the library is a unique space, librarians have the opportunity to foster collaboration by bringing students in to read and write poetry. By using poetry in day-to-day activities as well as during targeted programming, librarians can help students and teachers work through the stigma that poetry is inaccessible to modern audiences to find true joy. Ideas range from hosting a poetry cafe and a variety of poetry writing workshops, to celebrating poetic milestones.

This session describes a 2016 Will Eisner Innovation Grant Award project conducted at the Birchwood School in the S.C. Department of Juvenile Justice. Incarcerated students wrote a graphic novel based on their gang experiences. Then, two graphic illustrators worked with the students to illustrate their story, an anti-gang tool. Participants will learn how to replicate this program on any topic at their schools, and how to apply for an ALA / Eisner grant.

We'll share easy and inexpensive ways to streamline the look and feel of your space, prioritize access to the resources students use most, and invite new types of experiential learning opportunities to take place. Learn from the body of research from counseling about creating calming environments as well as the learning theories that call for the necessity of third spaces to promote higher order connections and analysis.

If you're waiting for administrator permission to initiate lasting culture change in your organization, you're going to be waiting a very long time. Revolutionaries don't wait for permission, they move ahead in a way that invites collaboration instead of confrontation, becoming leaders even without titles or authority. Join the discussion and lean ways to make your vision happen--without a title, without explicit support, and without losing your job.

Students as published researchers? Yes, that’s possible! Participants will examine teacher produced lessons and resources from the American Battle Monuments Commission and examine the criteria for student publication of WWII research on silentheroes.org. Using teacher designed World War II cross-curricular lessons as a starting point, teacher librarians will learn how to direct authentic student research over a World War II silent hero, write and edit their research and submit for publication

Does your school library program reflect the world around you? Does your collection have something for everyone? Have you ever thought about how your circulation and library policies impact your ability to reach students from diverse backgrounds? This session will present ideas on how to grow diversity in your school library program.

Student engagement is key to improving overall student achievement. Guided Inquiry Design (GID) is an effective, research-based model proven to help students become critical thinkers. This session will explore GID and its impact on collaboration, discuss what it looks like in practice, share ideas for shifting traditional research projects to inquiry-based, offer ideas for implementation, and see how alternative education students earned multiple-credits towards graduation through a Guided Inquiry Design unit of instruction. .

Begin to explore how privilege and unconscious bias shape the classroom experience. This session will provide some insight into identifying how our personal identities impact the education experience for students of color. We will introduce ways to explore and challenge our social identities and become allies that contribute to the positive impact of student experiences.

Click bait, misleading headlines, false news sites: recently, we’ve been bombarded with dubious news sources that demand we question media trustworthiness. Come and learn how one school started a conversation about media literacy with a student-organized Media Awareness Week that included speakers, activities, and discussions about how to approach media with a critical eye. Attendees will leave with fresh ideas of how to organize a Media Awareness Week in their own schools.

Students in the digital age have access to exponentially increasing amounts of political information. Learn how school librarians can help students navigate this information explosion and encourage successful civic-political agency in a digital age. A high school’s critical civic literacy curriculum incorporated with the MacArthur Foundation’s “Ten Questions for Change Makers” is proposed as an example to bridge between theory and practice. Participants will discuss practical steps to infuse the framework into their own programs.

In this interactive session, attendees will take some of the trend scanning from the Center for the Future of Libraries – as well as their own community insights and evidence – and consider a positive innovation for the future of libraries. This activity helps demonstrate how we can all use a futures-focused approach, with our commitment to library values, to help build the libraries of the future.

Many of our school libraries still look like they did fifty years ago. We need to be leaders in technology, pedagogy and space design in our schools and transform our library spaces to meet the needs of today's students. We'll discuss how to redesign and rethink the physical space of our libraries, including practical and budget-friendly changes that can be implemented right away. No matter where you're at, you'll get inspiration from this session.

Which teachers like science fiction? Which students love graphic novels? Which parent would teach a German enrichment in the library? Answering these types of questions helps you better know your school community, support their needs, and cultivate relationships that build strong school library media programs. In this session, examples of relationship building and interactive activities will be shared, highlighting the ultimate impact on students. Attendees will reflect and record ideas to implement at their workplaces.

Investing in social capital brings leadership within your reach! To build an effective school library program that prepares students for college, career, and community, school librarians must be consummate collaborators. Understanding patterns of interaction and adult learning in your school is a first step. Participants in this hands-on session will think, create, share, and grow leadership strategies and leave the session with a plan for growing a culture of collaboration in their unique school settings.

Tweens and their peers feel they are the most knowledgeable about everything. They are changing physically and emotionally, and some days they want to be treated like adults, other days, they like the safety of childhood. Authors John David Anderson, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, Jack Gantos, and Stuart Gibbs share the secrets of their success in scribing for this elusive group.

Empathy is a core competency in the socio-emotional content of public and independent schools’ curricula. Empathy stems from the enduring understanding that each student is an individual with unique attributes and perspectives, some of which are visible and others are invisible. Books are portals--mirrors, windows, or doors--that provide the opportunity to transport children to special places both internally and externally and build empathy. This session explores the intersection of empathy and diverse literature.

Want to help prevent the summer slide? Want to build community and increase reading motivation? Bring books to your students in your very own Do-It-Yourself Summer Bookmobile. Tips on how to create, fund, plan, and operate a DIY bookmobile will be shared.

"Someone should do something about that!" That's what we often think, when we're frustrated by what is (or isn't) happening in our schools. Here's the truth: YOU are someone, and YOU have the power to take action. Any librarian can be a leader; in fact, it's our professional imperative! This session will help librarians find their personal leadership styles and gain strategies to lead change and empower learning in their schools.

TECH Squad's curriculum guide can be used as a class or club to help students and teachers collaboratively support each other in the utilization of the newest technology. Bring together standards, intrinsic motivation, and badging to support building confidence in using technology in education that is beyond the basics. The curriculum guide can be altered and differentiated to meet the diverse needs of students and teachers while building a technology community.

Become an educational leader! Learn how school librarians can create and model opportunities to provide professional development for colleagues in their schools and districts that align with local, state, and national standards and initiatives. Explore and identify innovative technology that can transform teaching and learning, and enhances opportunities for personalized, student-centered learning. Take home shared documents and resources that will guide professional learning in your local district.

The Question Formulation Technique (QFT) offers a straightforward, step-by-step, rigorous process that blends effortlessly with your current inquiry practices. The QFT will motivate and challenge students to go beyond the horizon by using divergent and convergent thinking skills to formulate questions to guide their learning. Through examples presented in this session, you will see how the QFT can strengthen and enrich even the most ambitious teaching and curricular goals.

If you are staying over Saturday evening, consider joining fellow school librarians for another dinner with a local librarian in Scottsdale.

Cost is for the shuttle ride to and from the Phoenix Convention Center. Not interested in attending a dinner?

Limited seats are available for people who would just like to visit Scottsdale for the evening.