The Empowered Librarian

Thinkfinity Teacher Excllence

2011-02-24T08:55:00.000-08:00

I just posted this to the VEMA list but thought I'd post it here as well. I couldn't report on this at the last Board meeting because it wasn't official yet. But now it is!

I’m spreading the word about Virginia’s new Thinkfinity Teacher Excellence Award because you may know someone who should enter—librarians are one of the two main persons who are being asked to nominate teachers for this award! The prizes are really nice and the recognition will be quite a nice thing to have on a professional record.

Details about the award are outlined at our Thinkfinity in Virginia website: http://www.thinkfinityva.org/teacher_excellence_award.cfm and have been sent through a Sup’s memo (http://www.doe.virginia.gov/administrators/superintendents_memos/2011/050-11.shtml). If you have any questions about the requirements or how to go about nominating someone, please let me know. The deadline for entries is May 30, which will be here before you know it, so start encouraging your teachers now! One reason we wanted to do this award is to recognize those teachers out there who often aren’t noticed because they are humble about what they do—they never think they’re doing anything special. You know better, so encourage them!

2011-02-14T08:55:00.001-08:00

Hello! I have successfully gotten into the blog! I'm very excited!

What's in a Name?

2011-01-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

What do we call ourselves? Is the name of our association important?

In recent years, we have learned that the school library message has been diluted by the number of job titles we use. Who hasn't explained that "Educational Media" was not school TV? Just over a year ago, AASL officially stated that we are "school librarians," as opposed to school library media specialists. Should we change the name of our organization? Does our name affect how we are perceived?

Lara Samuels, the Professional Advocacy chair on VEMA's board, did a survey to find out what other state school library associations call themselves. There are only nine other associations with names like ours, and half of school library associations incorporate some variation of school libraries/librarians or teacher librarians.

What do you think?

2010-12-08T08:04:00.000-08:00

I am forever having to explain that VEMA is the State of Virginia's organization of school librarians. I think that a more "explanatory" name would be VASL - Virginia Association of School Librarians. It would also correlate with AASL.