Plus ca change, as the French say...

There's a quote that has been thrown around for years describing the youth of the day as unwashed, ill-mannered and lazy (I'm paraphrasing here), The punchline is that, when you finally get to see who said it, it's attributed to Socrates. I was reminded of that today as I was reading an article that described the emergence of the term "tween" to describe kids in the 8 - 12 year-old range as having come from the steady slippage of adolescent behaviors into the pre-adolescent age range. The article, by Kay S. Hymowitz, describes the "morphing" of her daughter from a sunny child into a surly adolescent, culminating in the throwing of a sheet over the child's collection of American Girl dolls, as though she (the daughter) were bringing down the curtain on her childhood - all at the age of ten and in fourth grade. Hymowitz then goes on to talk about the increasing sexualization of pre-adolescents - boys as well as girls - and the inherent risky behaviors that accompany them, with the risks enhanced by tweens having even less sense of themselves than do 15-to-18-year-olds. She quotes one psychologist as saying that there is a trend to "kids getting older younger." (I have to admit, that convoluted phrase reminded me of the time my mother said to me, "When I was your age, I was older.") As a middle school teacher who sees evidence of this every day, I was nodding my head in agreement when I happened to glance at the date of the article. Autumn - 1998. My own daughter was in fourth grade that year, but somehow escaped the sort of transition Hymowitz describes. Maybe it was because she was involved in sports. Maybe we were just lucky. Or maybe I just have a very bad memory.

Whatever the case, the article serves to point out something we need to be aware of as youth librarians. Much as we'd like to turn back the clock or un-ring the bell, we have to remember who our clients are and meet them where they stand. That's not to say we need to give in to the over-sexualization and exploitation of tweens. But we need to strike a balance between, "Give 'em what they want" and giving them what we believe they should be exposed to.

Looks like this is going to be harder than we thought.

References:

Hymowitz, K.S. (1998). Tweens: ten going on sixteen. City Journal, Retrieved from http://www.city-journal.org/html/8_4_a1.html

BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATION: Hymowitz, K.S. (1998). Tweens: ten going on sixteen. City Journal, Retrieved from http://www.city-journal.org/html/8_4_a1.html [NOTE: Italicize "City Journal"] PARENTHETICAL CITATION: (Hymowitz, 1998)

We Built It and They Came

"Video games are now a part of the culture and the fabric of our society." So says Sandy Farmer in her article entitled "Gaming 2.0", published in the November/December 2010 issue of American Libraries. Farmer, Central Youth Services manager for the Houston Public Library, describes how the addition of two dedicated gaming spaces, one for children ages 5 -12 and the other for teens, has spurred a major increase not only in the number of patrons using the library but in the circulation of more traditional library materials. The "KIDS" area features Wii consoles and games rated either E or E-10, while the TEEN space offers Playstation 3 consoles and T-rated games, along with some E and E-10 choices. The games span the full array of available genres. An initial investment of $22K is now down to an average expense of $1 per client, and will continue to drop as usage increases. And any concerns about noise levels seems to have been assuaged - as Farmer points out, "When we are busy it would be hard to notice those individual sounds anyway." (Farmer, 2010)
Given my own aspirations of school librarianship, I began to ponder how game consoles might work in a school library. Putting aside the issue of cost for the moment, there's the space problem. Most public school libraries are small, and set up on an open space plan. But if you're lucky enough to have an adjacent room off the library (maybe you work in a former "open plan" school that has been converted), this could be doable. Even in a more traditional library, gaming could be limited to specific off-peak times. Gaming privileges might even serve as a reward - tickets entitling the student to game time could be given for improved attendance, improved grades, or improved behavior.
Okay, so now - what about those costs? Start small, and the costs could be no more than a tenth of the HPL's investment. Local businesses might be persuaded to donate materials. Students could fundraise. Some of the larger game producers might even be convinced that this was a perfect opportunity for some good publicity.
Wii Tennis, anyone?

References:
Farmer, S. (2010, November/December). Gaming 2.0. American Libraries, 41(11/12), 30 - 34.

All the World's a Stage

    Reading aloud to groups of students was one of the most enjoyable parts of my job as a Library Media Technician some ten years ago. But as much as the children seemed to enjoy my reading to them, how much more might they have enjoyed experiencing some of those stories through a Readers Theater? Even in the self-conscious tween years, there are always those students who enjoy being "on stage." And preparing a version of a well-known tale to present to younger children can often catch the imagination of even the most reluctant students. (The added benefit of this approach is that it allows even those students who read significantly below grade level to be fully involved.) Not everyone needs to be an "actor," either - although Readers Theater is sometimes referred to as "minimalist" and is intended to be presented without costumes or stage sets, there is still a need for a director, a prompter, and perhaps someone to create supplemental narration. There could also be a committee of students who select the books to be presented. Readers Theater need not be limited to fiction. Fictionalized biographies could be adapted to Readers Theater (Claire Rudolf Murphy's I am Sacagawea, I am York comes to mind here), as could some works in history.
    As Elizabeth A. Poe reminds us, Dewey observed as early as 1938 that the deepest learning takes place when students are involved in the creation of their own learning experience. (Dewey, 1938) Writing in From Children's Literature to Readers Theatre, Poe points out that teachers and reading specialists have praised the positive effects on fluency produced by the repeated readings that occur in rehearsals for Readers Theatre.
    For librarians, particularly school librarians, Readers Theater represents a chance to collaborate with classroom teachers, as well as an opportunity to get children more interested in reading. It's a win-win situation.

References:
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York, NY: Macmillan.

Murphy, C.R. (2005). I am sacagawea, i am york: our journey west with lewis and clark.. New York, NY: Walker Books for Young Readers.

Poe, E.A. (2010). From children's literature to readers theatre. Chicago, IL: American Library Association. excerpted in the May 2010 issue of American Libraries, 41(5), 28 - 31.

It's A Mitzvah!

In the Jewish faith, it is a mitzvah (both a commandment and a blessing) to teach one's children to swim - the underlying reasoning is that by doing so, one preserves life in a far more certain fashion than simply trying to build higher and stronger fences around the numerous bodies of water those children will come into proximity with. Interestingly, the National Research Council used the metaphor of teaching children to swim in its report entitled Youth, Pornography and the Internet, stating "Swimming pools can be dangerous for children. To protect them, one can install locks, put up fences, and deploy pool alarms. All of these measures are helpful, but by far the most important thing that one can do for one's children is to teach them to swim." (Thornbourgh and Lin, 2002). And it is this quote that, in turn, provides the focal point for Nancy Willard's article Teach Them To Swim, a discussion of how and why school librarians need to push schools to move beyond the reliance on filtering systems and engage in training classroom teachers and students how to safely negotiate the sometimes treacherous waters of the Internet. 

    Among the points Willard raises are the following: filtering leads to a false sense of security, as the perceived wisdom is that blocked sites are always of questionable content, while unblocked sites must be credible; filtering leads to overblocking, keeping teachers from being able to access legitimate sites when filters are set to block any site classed as games, or shopping, for example; filters are ineffective, failing to block all objectionable material, and they are easily bypassed by savvy high school students and many adults; filtering programs lack reasonable procedures for overriding or unblocking sites, causing aggravation for educators; and, perhaps most alarming, filtering companies are not publicly accountable for the material they choose to block - or not block. Willard goes on to discuss various alternatives to reliance on outside filtering companies, among the most interesting of which was the installation of real-time monitoring technologies on all school computers, with public, highly visible notice of the monitoring as a deterrent to misuse. And along with this locally controlled monitoring, Willard emphasizes the need to train students how to prevent and respond to accidental access of objectionable materials - teaching them to swim. Willard closes by making the case for the school librarian as Information Literacy Specialist, one who keeps administration and staff aware of what sources can be considered credible, and one who holds the authority to override filters as appropriate.

References:
Willard, N. (2010). Teach them to swim. Knowledge Quest, 39(1), 54 - 61.

Thornbourgh, D., & Lin, H.S. (Eds.). (2002). Youth, pornography and the internet. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

The elephant in the library

    Violence and the injuries resulting from violence are the leading cause of death among all young people between the ages of 5 and 19. (Cart, 2010) Risky behavior has always been a hallmark of the adolescent years, and 21st-century tweens and teens are no less likely than preceding generations to indulge in drinking, reckless driving, unprotected sex and other behaviors that put them in harms way. But the question inevitably arises - does the increased exposure to violence, real or imagined, in the world around them put today's young adults and pre-teens in more danger of acting out in violent fashion? 

    Researchers have been studying the effects of media violence on tweens and teens since the 1950s, and the connection between media violence and real-world violent behavior has been almost universally confirmed. Certainly it seems reasonable that the constant repetition of violence found in media and video games must at the very least desensitize the observer. So, if this is the case, is there any real reason to give shelf space to books that feature violent themes?          Author Michael Cart maintains that there is, because the printed word can give its readers something that no movie, television show or video game can - the experience of empathy and sympathy. (Cart, 2010) Bullying, cyberbullying, and the different ways in which teens and tweens respond to them have all been the focus of some truly remarkable books in recent years, and even teen suicide - that "permanent solution to a temporary situation" - long a forbidden topic in YA literature because authors, publishers and others feared triggering a copycat effect - is being treated with empathy and understanding in recent years. Cart concludes that the strongest argument for writing - and shelving- YA books that deal with even the darkest experiences of adolescence is that, by doing so, we may shed light on the darkness and share experience, strength and hope.

References:

Cart, M. (2010, May). A literature of risk. American Libraries, 41(5), 32 - 35.

"If all your friends jumped off a bridge..."

    Being able to hide behind the (supposed) anonymity of the Internet, to assume a persona, to create an avatar that is the polar opposite of one's true appearance - all of these factors have contributed to a blurring of the lines between free speech and socially unacceptable behavior by tweens and teens. Misguided by the belief that, on the Internet, no one knows who you really are, young people will engage in behaviors that they would likely never attempt in the face-to-face real world. The most common response to, "Why did you do that?" is, "Everybody does it." How do we begin to teach socially responsible social networking to children whose characters are still developing? And how do we know that the message we send has been not just merely heard but actually internalized? As author Annette Lamb points out, "...just because a student provides the socially acceptable answer does not mean the child understands the underlying moral issue discussed." (Lamb, 2010)
    Rather than focus on the right or wrong behavior in a specific situation, Lamb recommends providing opportunities for children to develop their moral reasoning abilities through the use of decision-making scenarios that are generic, rather than personal. Work should be done in small groups, using such methods as brain-storming, debates, discussions, role-playing and simulations. (Lamb also mentions lectures, but those of us who work with tweens on a daily basis know this strategy is likely to lead to them tuning out after the first few words.) As tweens and teens grow more comfortable with the process and feel more secure with the other members of the group, more personal topics may be introduced. Lamb concludes that it is not enough merely to provide students with guidelines for acceptable use of the knowledge they access and share - librarians must teach students how to make ethical decisions regarding that knowledge.

References:

Lamb, A. (2010). Everyone does it: teaching ethical use of social technology. Knowledge Quest, 39(1), 62 - 67.

Passing in Review

    One of the many jobs I've had in a long and varied work life - and one of the two that came closest to my actual dream job of being a librarian - was a stint as an abstractor/editor for a company that created online databases and a range of other library service products. As an abstractor, it was my job to take a stack of magazines, select articles, read the articles, and create an abstract for each of them that would allow a researcher to decide if a given article really spoke to the topic he/she was working on. The abstracts were synopses, not reviews - but the selection process, though theoretically guided by such quality-neutral criteria as length of article and type of article, became a sort of de facto review.

    Now Jeffrey Beall, a metadata librarian at the University of Colorado (Denver), is suggesting that the long-standing practice of librarians to create readers' advisories and reviews of books should be expanded to include shorter works, including magazine and journal articles, short stories, essays and individual poems. Beall maintains that the constantly increasing number of scholarly articles being published - he notes an estimate by University of Manchester professor Douglas Kell that five scientific papers are published every minute - argues greatly for the same sort of pre-screening process applied to books be applied to these shorter works.

    Leaving aside, for the moment, the very real concern of where to find time to do the necessary reading, I can almost hear librarians thinking something along the lines of, "But I don't know anything about (and here you can fill in the blank), how can I tell if an article is worth reading?" 

    From personal experience, I can tell you that the weak articles sort themselves out from the strong ones, regardless of the reviewer's level of knowledge. To give an example, I once had to abstract an article on the use of beta splines. To this day, I have no idea what a spline is, let alone a beta spline - but the article's emphasis on certain aspects of the usage of beta splines allowed me to ferret out the main idea and craft a useful abstract.

    To be sure, creating a review - forming an actual opinion on a work and stating that opinion in print - adds layers to the process. But even when the scientific detail of an article is beyond one's comprehension, the organization of the writing can be evaluated, the number of resources cited can be noted, and the overall reputation of the journal in which the article appears can be taken into account.

    Beall goes on to suggest that review journals such as Booklist ought to add sections for journal article reviews, separated by discipline, as are the book reviews. Anything indexed, he maintains, can be reviewed. Perhaps not surprising for someone dealing in metadata, Beall even suggests that reviews could be reviewed - although, personally, I think that may be drawing the paradigm out a bit too far.

And now you've just read my review of Jeffrey Beall's article "Let's Review Everything".

References:
Beall, J. (2010). Let's review everything. American Libraries, 41(5), 23.

Libraries Without Walls

    The Internet changed things for librarians - that much is no surprise. But some of the ways in which things have changed are shocking. Most of the focus on student use of the Internet in school libraries has been on protecting students from accidental exposure to pornography, or from Internet predators. But what about the ways in which students themselves use cyberspace? Several recent court cases have arisen from students using their personal blogs to malign or even threaten violence against teachers and administrators. And the courts have given widely different opinions on the authority of schools to punish such behavior when it occurs outside of school, including two completely opposite opinions from two different panels of the same Third District Court of Appeals, issued on the same day in two nearly identical cases.

    All of the cases involved either YouTube or Facebook, and most school district filters block these and other social networking and blogging sites (I can't even access my own personal blog from my classroom). But students are notoriously savvy about getting around and through filters. And e-mail programs are generally not blocked. Nothing prevents a student from creating a slide show or other document on a library computer, e-mailing it to him-or-herself, and posting it to a blog or other site from home. What possible liability would the teacher-librarian bear in such a case? (Note - I don't have any answers for this what-if scenario, I just find it very disturbing.) How closely is one supposed to monitor computer usage? What can a TL rightfully stop a student from doing, without risking violating the student's First Amendment rights? We are already extremely restricted on what we can say in the classroom - how much more will be added on?

References:
Simpson, M. (2010). Cyberspeak no evil. NEAToday, 29(2), 20.

Where Do I Go From Here?

One of the questions I keep asking myself as I progress through the SLIS program is whether I am on a fool's errand, trying to earn a secondary credential as a Teacher Librarian in a state where education is where the first cuts are when there are budget shortfalls, and librarian positions are generally among the first to go. Checking edjoin.org (the clearinghouse for teaching jobs in California) does little to reassure me. But an article in the October, 2010 issue of the California Library Association's Clarion seems to hold out more hope.
Author Lesley Farmer points out that schools are still being built, and teacher librarian positions still exist - and, in fact, sometimes take as much as two years to fill. State code requires the inclusion of libraries in all new schools built, and, although a loophole allows schools to contract with public libraries to provide library services, public librarians generally have to coordinate with classroom teachers so that instruction is being provided by a qualified educator. Yearly admissions to library programs averages between twenty and thirty students per site per year, which matches the market needs. New state and federal mandates for instruction in Internet safety and digital competency will also increase the need for school librarians at the elementary level (middle schools and high schools currently are more likely to have certificated librarians on staff than are elementary schools, except in more affluent districts).
What appalls me, especially in the face of numerous studies showing direct correlation between the presence of a credentialed librarian on a school campus and significantly higher test scores, is that California is not one of the states that mandate having a credentialed librarian at all school sites. (Most of those states seem to be in the Midwest, although New York was moving in that direction and may have completed the transition at this point.) I hate the thought of having to leave California in order to pursue my chosen profession.
Farmer's article also includes an overview of how library school programs developed in California - it's interesting to note that I am enrolled in one of only four teacher-librarian programs currently approved by both the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. What I still don't entirely understand is the need for fieldwork to obtain what is still classed as a secondary credential - that is, one must have a basic credential (Multiple or Single Subject) before the TL credential will be issued. But I guess that's just another hoop I need to jump through.


References:
Farmer, L. (2010). California teacher librarians: what's in a name?. Clarion, 6(2), 12 - 14.

Childhood's End?

“It’s cooler than ever to be a tween, but is childhood being lost?” – Sharon Jayson, USA Today

Tweens , generally considered to be boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 12 years old, have undergone many changes over the past two or three decades, and not all of them are good. Author Sharon Jayson describes a tween as being one who “…aspires to teenhood but is not quite there yet.” (Jayson, 2009) As such, this group has long been a target of retailers, but recently behavioral researchers and psychologists have begun to study tweens as a unique segment of the population. It is a growing segment, too - one that the U.S. Census estimated at 20 million in 2009 and predicted to reach close to 23 million by 2020.

The article notes that tweens are described as “…torn between family and BFFs, between fitting in and learning how to be an individual.” (Jayson, 2009). This is a description that in previous generations would have been applied to teens, not pre-teens. And at the same time that social pressures are shifting downward, so are scholastic expectations. Kindergarten, once seen as a mere introduction to the social aspects of school, such as waiting in line or raising one’s hand and waiting to be called on, now has a full set of academic standards that must be met. Likewise, middle school, which was once viewed mainly as a way for students to accustom themselves to the concept of multiple classes and different instructor expectations (so as to prepare them for high school) is now a place where high-stakes testing and pressure to perform has become the rule. It is not surprising that academic problems, as well as problems with substance abuse, become increasingly apparent in middle school. (Jayson, 2009)

Two statistics reported in a sidebar of the article have particular significance for librarians trying to determine how best to serve tweens. More than 1,200 tweens were surveyed in December of 2008. Of those responding, 46% of boys and 52% of girls had read a book for fun in the week immediately preceding the survey; during that same week 83% of boys and 39% of girls had played a game on a game console system. While it is encouraging that nearly half the boys and slightly more than half the girls actually read for fun, we also need to acknowledge the pull of video games on this generation. How do we pull in that other 56% of the boys, particularly those who are also included in the 83% of gamers? Many games now have novelizations available, and there are gamer magazines available – if we offer it, they will read. And what about the missing 48% of girls? What can we provide to pull them in?

What other needs can we as librarians address? We can’t entirely remove the pressure to “grow up- GROW UP – GROW UP!!!” but we can create a haven in which tweens are free to explore who they are and who they are becoming. Make the information tweens need available to them. Provide an atmosphere in which tweens can relax, as well as one in which they can study. Sponsor social activities based on different tween interests. Most importantly, provide a place in which tweens have the opportunity to be human beings rather than human doings.

References:

Jayson, S. (2009, February 4). It's cooler than ever to be a tween, but is childhood being lost?. USA Today, Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-02-03-tweens-behavior_N.htm