MSLA 2019 Conference

New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Andrea Davis Pinkney shares in insider’s look at the bookmaking process, and imparts her wisdom on how to reach even the most reluctant readers through words and pictures.

This interactive session delivers hands-on strategies for engaging diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in your home, school, and community. With practical tools for educators and families, Andrea Davis Pinkney motivates participants to become engaged diversity practitioners in many facets of their lives —classrooms, living rooms, and libraries. The session provides tactics for confidently bringing diversity to others through books, over the long-term, and offers next-day strategies for implementing diversity and inclusion ideals right away.

Andrea will sign books in the foyer outside of the Worcester room after her session. Her books will be available there for purchase.

In order to create welcoming and effective learning spaces for all students, school librarians must show all students that the library IS a place for them. Learn how to use language, design, and early literacy best practices in your library to support the needs of teen developing readers. Develop collections, spaces, and services that are developmentally appropriate, culturally responsive, and respectful to the unique needs of teen developing readers.

The Millis MS/HS library began a Teen Library Council to attract and get teens involved with the library and its programs. The purpose of the council is to make decisions as a group to better serve their peers in the library. This presentation will provide information on beginning  a council, share events that have happened in the library, and focus on the possibilities for improving library services.

Research is beginning to show that reading science-related books for pleasure both predicts and boosts student persistence in science. What role can librarians play in encouraging students to try reading about science, and what are some fun, inspiring books that match the Massachusetts standards for grades 4-8? Come prepared to share ideas.

Today’s literature for youth often presents and grapples with difficult issues. How do we capitalize on these books to engage students in deep thinking, meaningful conversations, and a greater experience of connection? Middle-grade and YA authors Padma Venkatraman, Elly Swartz, Linda Mullaly Hunt, Ann Braden, and monitor, Jennifer Richard Jacobson will share convictions, classroom experiences, and perhaps most importantly, how they handle sensitive or sticky moments when they arise.

Authors' books will be available for purchase at the conference bookstore in Commons 2. The authors will be there to sign their books beginning at 3:45 on Sunday.

This session is about relevant literacy environments using low cost strategies that include evidence based literacy instruction and high quality literature to create literacy rich environments. The presentation will include examples from schools and highlight specific titles that will have students wanting to read. It will include both suggestions to alter the physical environment as well as how to create virtual spaces where students highlight and share what they are reading as well as spaces that motivate reading. The goal for the presentation is to explore strategies to create community literacy love that might increase the likelihood that a child or more will read and write more. Examples of strategies include Interest Development Centers (IDCs), Book Graffiti, FoundPoetry, and Pop Up Literacy Love spaces.

Want to bring the three little pigs to life? Have students build a house and test to see if the big bad wolf is strong enough to knock it down. Looking at real project examples and resources, attendees will learn how having a makerspace can add an entirely new dimension of literacy to the library. From storytelling to game design, students will be able to make meaningful connections to stories.

https://tinyurl.com/y8m58lfc

For many English language learners, choosing a book to read for pleasure can be more difficult than actually reading the book! Research skills, including plagiarism, paraphrasing, citations, in-text citations, and works cited pages, can be another minefield for English language learners. Come to this session to learn how an ESL teacher and a library teacher collaborate to guide English language learners toward becoming enthusiastic readers and ethical researchers.  

Make your library accessible with free technology to help empower special needs students. Learn how to make reading accessible with audiobooks and text to speech technology and how to use Google Suite to help students with executive function challenges.

PBS LearningMedia, produced by WGBH and PBS is a free site offering thousands of digital resources for K-12 across the curriculum. Come for a guided tour and hands-on time, and leave with resources you can share with your colleagues. One lucky attendee will take home a bag of public media classroom goodies.

The library was a second home for me as a boy, and as an adult I’ve written most of my books while sitting in a library. All good days begin when the front doors open at the BPL or Athenaeum,  and when I say “good morning” to the librarians and staff, and then I sit down and open a book, and then I open my journal and pencase and work some words onto paper, and at the end of the day the library closes … yet my mind, even at rest, is always drifting around like the library cat.
The first portion of my keynote will march through my primary publications thus far—and cast an eye toward future projects.
 
My career has had it ups and downs. My first twelve books were rejected—mostly for the standard reasons: uninteresting characters, loopy plots, themes with no point, and problems with no solutions. The usual suspects for “rejections.” Most recently, I’ve had a different kind of rejection—an adult picture book—"A Suicide Bomber Sits in a Library”--that was in a prepublication state when it was perceived to be unsuitable for publication due to cultural insensitivity content, and thus the illustrated book was cancelled, yet the story continues to exist in the Amnesty International Anthology on ‘themes of freedom’ where it was originally solicited and published.
             
The cancelled illustrated version of SBSL will be the second portion of the presentation.
 
The third portion will be a question and answer session led by Sandy Kelly, MSLA Past President