I recently had the privilege of being a featured author and key note presenter at a conference for the Massachusetts School Librarians Association (MSLA). I happen to admire librarians as much as I admire teachers. We are VERY fortunate at BAA to have a world-class, award-winning library, and attending the conference were current Library Director, Ms. Deborah Froggat, AND founding BAA Library Director and current Executive Director of the MSLA, Ms. Kathy Lowe.

With Deborah Froggatt (L) and Kathy Lowe (R), Librarians Extraordinaire!

My talk, “Literacy for Democracy: What are the Hardest Questions that Librarians Might Ask?” posed a series of questions for school librarians. Among some of the questions I asked this amazing group of educators were: “Are you leading the literacy programs in your schools?” and “Are you the vision keeper and communicator for the importance of being a passionate reader?”

I also shared some of the literacy practices developed at BAA over the years (some of which I describe in chapter four of my book), and discussed how so often our librarians have been the ones to articulate probing questions about our literacy programs. At BAA, our librarians’ questions have ranged from “How can we improve our students’ exposure to and excitement with literature?” and “How can our students be more competent users of technology and the web?” to “What do lunch-time Literature Circles look like?” and “How have students come to vie for this time to share spoken word and poetry?”

Always asking the hard questions!

At BAA, we feel very  fortunate to have had such extraordinary librarians. But I must say, I  left this conference feeling that the members of this Library Association were an impressive group altogether!