It’s always very energizing and encouraging to attend a conference. Mostly it’s because you are immersed in a group of people who all care about the subject of the conference. I LOVE going to the American Library Association because it’s a huge chorus for books and reading and children. We’re all, so to speak, on the same page. What’s more, as a well-established children’s book author, I need only say my name and people know who I am. (Very gratifying for the ego — I love to talk to librarians because they truly value us authors.) Librarians constantly work at knowing children’s literature so that they can target books for the reluctant reader, the kid doing a research assignment, the bored kid who has no interests or the kid with the Harry Potter halo effect, looking for more like HP after having read all seven HP books umpteen times. When we come together it is an unabashed love fest.
Lately I’ve been attending education conferences. It has been a humbling experience. After decades of putting my best educational practices as a trained teacher into my fun science books for kids, I’m starting over. My mission is to do what many school librarians have failed to do — get literature into the classroom, particularly nonfiction literature. Why doesn’t this happen more often? Beats me. Teachers would probably say that they have no time. They are already so overburdened that learning about children’s literature is not their job. They don’t know what they’re missing. Teaching with top nonfiction children’s books could make their job easier and more fun. I have long believed that school librarians should conduct professional development sessions for their own teachers on specific good books for their curricula. There is a lot of evidence that proves libraries and librarians enhance learning. And the better schools of the nation do have close collaboration between the librarian and classroom teachers. (These faculty members also turn up at education conferences. They’re the ones who know my name.)
But my goal is not to preach to the converted but to reach the vast number of schools who don’t have close relationships between librarians and teachers, don’t have librarians, are doing away with their school libraries thinking they can just download content off the Web and are narrowly focused on preparing their kids for the assessment tests, which is not preparing them for life.
So I’m reaching out to the people who aren’t listening. I attend Twitter chats and ask questions (that get re-Tweeted). I’m buttonholing, one by one, anyone at a conference who will give me an elevator moment. I notice at education conferences that books are almost never discussed, that there are rarely authors or publishers in attendance or giving sessions, and that people are polite or dismissive when I mention that there are wonderful books for kids on the subjects they’re required to teach. What I’m trying to communicate is that we already have resources in place that could transform education by engaging kids, inspiring them and challenging them. It just requires thinking out of the box to incorporate these resources into lesson plans. I may be the only children’s book author who is doing this. (It’s a lot easier to make a school visit where they’re paying you enough to be treated as if you’re valuable.)
Every teacher has a voice to reach kids. Each child pays particular attention to the teachers who resonate with him or her. It’s a highly individualized process. Literature is also comprised of many voices. (Textbooks don’t have “voice.”) Where is it written that a particular single voice is the only one a person should listen to? If we want to teach critical thinking, why don’t we ask students to read at least two books (articles? chapters?) on a subject and compare them?
The value of collaboration lies in divergent points of view coming together to solve a problem. The problems of education won’t be solved until the different species of “birds” concerned with education start tweeting to each other. So I keep piping up.
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