Why celebrate school libraries and school librarians?

• School librarians are teachers! The school library is the biggest classroom in the school, teaching both students and staff. School librarians were teachers before taking on this role!
• School librarians love books! We spend hours reading, listening, curating, and sharing books and understand books as windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors.
• School librarians are Future Ready! School librarians teach beyond literacy. We collaborate with teachers, build instructional partnerships, help students become creators and problem solvers, protect students by protecting privacy, teach students digital skills, and select, organize, and share digital resources, looking for ways to provide access to all students. We invest strategically in digital resources and build community support.
• School librarians support personalized learning! School librarians embrace the future ready landscape, embedding technology across the curriculum, creating and maintaining MakerSpaces, technology clubs, teach coding, and more. Students have the ability to not only learn the school curriculum but also explore personal interests from a variety of tools and resources.
• Mostly, school librarians love students! Students are our why. We embrace student voice in curating resources, creating library programs, and building collections that represent students and their interests, cultures, and emotional needs. School librarians support social-emotional learning with programming, collections, and building relationships with students.

Encourage them to apply for our SWAT Team! Our Students Working to Advance Technology Team is looking for new members for the 2020-2021 school year. Our SWAT Team is an integral part of the running of our school helping with transformative uses of technology and troubleshooting issues that arise within a 1-to-1 learning environment. Through this opportunity, students will gain valuable, real-life skills that will help them in the future as they learn to navigate customer service needs, learn to speak and present in front of others, and gain leadership skills as they help to implement our technology plan using their own ideas and creativity. Students do not need to know all things tech-related to apply, but do need some working knowledge of how to use an iPad. Our team values a kind heart and willingness to learn as the technology skills can be taught. Only a select number of students will be accepted onto this team following the application process, teacher recommendations, and an interview.

Applications can be found here: http://bit.ly/ammsswat2020.

See instant availability information for books, music, and audiobooks from catalogs offered by your local libraries as you browse various sites."