On-going Professional Development - My Contribution


Different types of leadership styleshttps://www.smallbusinesspro.co.uk/marketing/leadership-styles.html
As a new teacher-librarian, I still feel insecure about my ability to be a leader in my school. I feel like I have several years of learning ahead of me before I will feel like an authority or a specialist. I am comfortable working one-on-one with fellow colleagues in curriculum collaboration, but leading the whole staff is daunting. I will have to push myself in the coming year to step forward into leading workshops and inservice around new strategies, resources and school technology.
There are some areas which I have spent some time in the last year that are important to me. One of which is the building of our indigenous collection; fiction, non-fiction and teacher resources. This last month I have re-organized the collection into easily accessible bins, sorted by topic (Inuit, Intermediate level, Science Connections...etc.) I have attempted to engage my staff to use these bins in their classrooms. My staff is slow to change (as many of us are), and have not yet fully embraced these wonderful resources. I will continue to compile and share lesson plans and teacher-friendly materials that can be used with our books. I'm hoping that if all the resources are together, easy to use and accessible, that our collection will be happily consumed by teacher and student alike.

Image result for secret of the dance book           

On staff, I work with some teachers who are very comfortable with technology and know more than I do, and some that know very little. I would like to help bridge the gap amongst my colleagues. Our district has a set of Spheros that they lend out to schools for the students to try their hand at coding. We do not currently own our own Spheros and many of my colleagues have not had the time to learn how they work. I would love to give a workshop on the Spheros in order to share my knowledge and let those colleagues who need more exposure do so in a comfortable way.

Intro to Sphero...



Some Sphero experiments...


Because I have much more to learn in the realm of new technology, I would like to continue to explore Digital Citizenship (internet safety), curricular games like Kahoot and experimenting with green screens, book trailers and student filmmaking. I work with a varied staff and many of the teachers could use more education and information on Digital Citizenship in order to protect their students. We found that some educational games, like Prodigy, allow messaging, putting our young students at risk. Teachers need to know how to program game settings for safety and which pitfalls our students need to watch out for. I would like to be able to do some more learning and training and pass this knowledge on to staff. I believe internet safety is a vital part of our role as educators and I'd like to help pass on this information.


Works Cited

Jordan-Fenton, Christy, et al. Not My Girl. Annick Press, 2014.

KDSpencerVideo. “Sphero - Fun STEM Robots for Kids.” YouTube, 17 Nov. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHVSX0ABWWE.

Smarte Sieck, director. YouTube. YouTube, 22 Mar. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTtSOC8gpQo.

Spalding, Andrea, and Darlene Gait. Secret of the Dance. Orca Book Publishers, 2013.

Waboose, Jan Bourdeau. Sky Sisters. KidsCanPress, 2000.


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