Presenter: Name: Trent McLees

Title: Library Facilitator
Organization/School: Knox County Schools

Program Description
Outreach to schools serving unique purposes and populations in a school district can feel overwhelming. With variables such as high student turnover, shifting schedules, specialized disciplinary models, and novel staffing structures, it can feel like a library program as we envision it in most schools simply cannot take root in alternative environments. While modifications have to be made, the reality is much more exciting: if it works at alternative schools, it likely works anywhere! So don’t throw out all your ideas, and certainly don’t give up on bringing library programs and resources to every student in your area. Instead, let’s go back to the heart of what we do and see how instruction, passive access, and collaborative planning can be a reasonable lift and the heart of successful libraries in all schools!

This program will move through three major limitations of library programs in alternative schools, and reveal how those can be scaled out to a traditional secondary school library program. As I have experienced expanding our services to include two alternative schools, one special school for students with emotional needs, and one special school for an alternative graduation path, I have found three main limitations to creating programs in these spaces: staffing availability, scheduling, and establishing a clear purpose. When puzzling through these, at first the degree of variables between four buildings seemed overwhelming. However, when applying the AASL Standards as a guidepost for what students should gain from a library program, it became clear that these limitations were often scaled up versions of limitations faced at the singular building level. When trying to build a schedule to give students consistent service even when the librarian was not in the building, for example, I was able to narrow my scope and think of similar solutions as I would have to ensure open access even when leading direct instruction with a class in a building-level position. This scalability of problem-solving thinking using design thinning will help librarians tackle limitations in their own buildings, and help leadership and administrators think about how to serve their alternative schools and special audiences.

It will then reveal some workable strategies for outreach to overcome those limitations, focusing on how those strategies can be made scalable to become part of a library program that started out serving a more niche use case before expanding into a complete program with broad reach and impact. Finally, attendees will use the tools and ideas shared in the session to create an action plan for a scalable outreach program of their own. The instructional approaches in this presentation pull heavily from the Competencies in the Explore and Inquire domains in the AASL Standards, and the guiding tool of Design Thinking to be shared with attendees will be a powerful asset for their own instruction. Design Thinking is a structured model that can be used by librarians to tackle problems of practice, librarians and collaborating teachers to iterate on their collaborations, and students to maintain a relationship with the library and their own work as they iteratively respond to challenges in their lives and academic journeys - ensuring that this takeaway applies to not only alternative school leaders and librarians, but to all of us who work with the AASL Standards and the Explore Domain in particular. By beginning the session empathizing with one unique group of users and circumstances, and then moving on to explore problem-solving through Design Thinking and the Explore Domain, school librarians in all environments can ensure that the ways they define themselves and their programs remain mindful of these students and adaptive to unique circumstances.

Learning Objectives
Attendees will be able to understand and envision the use of multiple key outreach techniques for serving both alternative and traditional school students
Attendees will apply one of the outreach techniques based in the Explore competencies from an alternative school environment in their own school or community
Attendees will evaluate their program’s reach to different student populations, identifying areas of strength and growth to take back with them

Program Outline
- Welcome and Introduction (5 minutes)
-- Introduce presenter’s background
-- Allow attendees to introduce themselves to one another
-- Thinking Question: Do you have an alternative school in your district? Does it have a librarian or library? Even if not, what unique populations does your library serve, and what constraints does your schedule create in serving these users?

- Agenda and Purpose Statement (2 minutes)

- Explanation of Knox County structure and the lack of library services at Alternative and Special schools (7 minutes)
-- Highlight how our district leadership identified this access gap
-- Creating a position to fill it (a new library facilitator)
-- Starting from ‘square one’ at multiple schools of multiple levels

- Connection Building (6 minutes)
-- Using a Design Thinking model, presenter will model identifying the key problem of access in this environment
--- Empathy: Students do not have access because of unique staffing circumstances and student needs
This is a problem because if we believe school libraries and librarians are important for all students, then we need to find ways to provide access to them for all students
--- Define: Therefore the problem can be defined as “Despite the value of school libraries and librarians as supports for student emotional and intellectual outcomes, some populations of students are not able to access a library or librarian, limiting the widespread implementation of inquiry-based learning and the development of critical thinking skills based in a love of reading.”
If this problem sounds familiar to you, because you are in secondary school with a flexible schedule, perhaps, then you aren’t alone!
--- Ideate: This is where it is time to recognize that limitations breed innovation, and it seems there are some similarities between the limitations of the alternative school and the limitations of a busy base school program. So the presenter will model how they ideated some solutions, and then attendees will take some time at the end of the session to…
--- Prototype: …prototype their own solutions based on their schools!

- Limitation One: Staffing Availability (6 minutes)
-- Alternative schools don’t always have a staff librarian. Even in your school, it might feel like you can’t be a librarian due to all the hats you wear!
-- How do we keep a library running when the librarian is occupied?
-- Exemplar solutions prototyped and modeled will focus on passive access and include self-checkout, passive request delivery, structured resource sharing between sites or classrooms, and teacher training.

- Limitation Two: Scheduling (6 minutes)
-- Alternative schools have students coming in and out all the time, and schedules that constantly shift. When you are in a flexible schedule building, you may see students once a month, or even once a year.
-- How do we keep students aware of resources and engaged in learning when access is so sporadic?
-- Exemplar solutions prototyped and modeled will focus on collaborative planning

- Limitation Three: Purpose (6 minutes)
-- How does the library, with its emphasis on exploration and freedom, fit into an alternative school, with an emphasis on behaviors and structure?
-- Exemplar solutions prototyped and modeled will focus on instruction, including creating effective staff surveys, and using LibGuides to promote and plan curriculum aligned instruction

- Ideate and Prototype (12 minutes)
-- As a wrap on the session, attendees will be given a mapping tool to think about a scalable outreach tool to help them address access for a given demographic in their population
-- They will be able to use the modeled solutions to consider where they would need to start back in their own buildings, and to project how they could scale the outreach to one specific need or group to include more and more users over time.
Alternative Outreach, Any School

Grade Level: 6-8, 9-12

Session Strand: Teaching & Learning

Presenter
Trent McLees

Trent is a library facilitator with Knox County Schools. In his career, he has taught courses from Digital Media to Yearbook, and has provided library instruction to students in Pre-K through high school. He is deeply passionate about serving all students, focusing instruction on authentic outcomes and skills, and aligning the library's services with both the curriculum of the school and the cultures of the student community. He is also a superfan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, LOST, and Spider-Man. Say hi, and ask him about any of this - he'll want to hear your thoughts too!


Description: Outreach to schools serving unique purposes and populations can feel overwhelming. With variables such as high student turnover, shifting schedules, specialized disciplinary models, and novel staffing structures, it might feel like a library program simply cannot take root in this environment. While modifications have to be made, the reality is much more exciting: if it works at alternative schools, it likely works anywhere! So don’t give up on bringing library programs and resources to every student in your area. Instead, let’s go back to the heart of what we do and see how instruction, passive access, and collaborative planning are at the heart of successful libraries in all schools! Through a guided exploration of the ways Design Thinking opened up programming opportunities in alternative schools in Knox County, attendees in all environments will leave with tools to build programs for all students and adaptive to unique circumstances.