Strategic planning for libraries

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.
Woody Allen

John Crowley asks on the TeacherLibrarin Ning (and to me in a personal e-mail):

I would like to start a discussion around the ways you approach the need to develop a plan for your Library. I have been asked to update my book Developing a Vision: Strategic Planning and the Library Media Specialist and would like to write a book that would offer suggestions for in-depth and "dirty and cheap" planning for your library. I would be willing to share my experience with four different iterations of strategic planning. More important, I would like to see what others do to prepare their libraries to thrive in these turbulent times.

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My response

I wonder if the term “strategic” is intimidating to many practicioners? I know it is the accepted term and an important concept, but it does sound pretty scary, formal and labor intensive. Anyway to combat that perception?

My own writing about planning doesn’t use the “s” word and is probably less formal (and less effective) than your approach. You can find my writings on the topic at:

Plan and Report to Build Program Support
What Gets Measured Gets Done
Maslow and Motherboards

I’d suggest addressing these important questions in your revision if you haven't done so already:

• How do we tie library planning to building/district planning and goals?
• How do we work with the technology folks to design coordinated plans?
• How do we make the measurement our impact on student learning part of our planning?

Not sure if this is helpful or not, but there you go.

All the very best and good luck with the re-write.

Doug

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OK, readers, please leave John some suggestions about what you would find helpful in a book about strategic planning either here or on the TeacherLibrarian Ning.

Nearest book meme

A few other changes were made to the 1855 plate, but this map's primary purpose was to record for posterity the political decision associated with Minnesota taking its place in the Union, an event long predicted by the series of morphing territorial maps.

Minnesota on the Map: a Historical Atlas by David A. Lanegran.

Rules:
* Get the book nearest to you. Right now.
* Go to page 56.
* Find the 5th sentence.
* Write this sentence - either here or on your blog.
* Copy these instructions as commentary of your sentence.
* Don't look for your favorite book or your coolest but really the nearest.

It's the book I keep on the coffee table - a beautiful, fascinating history of the state of Minnesota told through maps made of the place. It only sounds boring.

Thanks to Stephen Abrams of Stephen's Lighthouse for this rather interesting (and easy) meme.

Bloggers, you're it.

Create better schools by creating better societies

If you want to change the world, change the world of a child. – Pat Schroeder

I've always believed that one can create a better society by better educating the members of that society. I still do. But I wonder if the reverse isn't just as true and important: the only way we will create better schools is by first creating a better society. (OK, so I know this is not a new concept, but we are all entitled to our own little epiphanies.)

The Gates Foundation tackled school improvement head on by working to create small, project-based schools in areas of high poverty that focused on relevance. Didn't work.

It's time to try the alternative approach well-expressed by Kevin Riley on his El Milagro blog where he recommends these "school improvement" efforts to President-elect Obama:

1. Provide health care for all of my students [at his charter school] to address the scourge of childhood obesity, diabetes, and poor nutrition;

2. Ensure that every child has access to comprehensive eye exams and appropriate interventions when they are struggling just to see– let alone to read;

3. Ensure that every child has regular dental checkups and access to highly qualified dentists so that my students’ baby teeth aren’t rotting in their heads;

4. Provide the funding support and infrastructure so that all of my students can attend preschool like the affluent kids do;

5. Create a way for every child in America to have a laptop and access to the Internet so that poor children aren’t pushed further behind by the technology divide that favors their more affluent counterparts;

6. Divert the 10 billion dollars we are currently spending every month in Iraq and re-invest in the modernization and construction of state-of-the-art school buildings in every community in America;

7. Guarantee a college education of the highest quality for all children so they are motivated to apply themselves academically;

8. Eliminate unemployment so that the parents of my students can properly provide the basic necessities for their children-food, clothing shelter;

9. Significantly raise the minimum wage so that our parents are not forever struggling against the tide…fighting the unwinnable battle to stay ahead of a runaway economy and its stunning indifference to the working poor…

And… let’s see… I guess this is a big one…

10. Eliminate politically motivated accountability systemsthat, for the most part, test our students’ ability to test while ignoring all of their other assets: like their creativity and their critical thinking and problem solving and communication skills; and their proficiency with technology and their ability to speak in multiple languages or lead others or serve their community…”

Eight of the ten suggestions Mr. Riley makes are fixes to society, not schools. And I bet each suggestion would actually make a genuine improvement in how well kids do in school.

I would riff a bit on Riley's tenth suggestion:

"Make all state and national tests be "value-added" rather than "normed." Let's work on getting the personal best from each child, rather than continue to sort the winners from the losers."

What is the one suggestion you would make to the incoming Secretary of Education that would actually have a chance of improving education for all kids?

Image "Impoverished mother and children from an etching by Jacques Callot." Life Magazine images available on Google Image Search