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Future Ready Librarians Challenge

The Future Ready Librarians Challenge Series is an ongoing series of bite-sized professional learning activities to help you learn new tools and strategies, focus your leadership, and connect with fellow librarians to share ideas and solutions. With a variety of themes over the 2020-21 school year, you’ll be able to stay professionally grounded by connecting your librarianship to the Future Ready Framework and building your librarian learning network.

Bookmark this site to stay current with the regular updates and challenges as they are released. While the challenges will take place over the school year with some time-specific activities, all challenges and resources will be archived to allow you to explore the challenges on your own timeline either this year or in the future. Updates and challenges will also be posted on the FRL Facebook page and Twitter.

Future Ready Librarians Challenge #1: Using Self-Reflection

The first Future Ready Librarians Challenge featured the Future Ready Librarians Self-Reflection, a short and simple survey to help you assess your practice in relation to the Future Ready Librarians Framework. Your challenge activities include reflecting, recording, and sharing professional strengths to better understand how you can lead, teach, and support students and fellow educators in your schools.

Future Ready Librarians Challenge #2

Future Focused Conversations

This Future Ready Librarians® Challenge is focused on building instructional collaboration and your skills as an instructional partner as you lead, teach, and support in schools transitioning from remote to hybrid learning. In addition to using the familiar Future Ready Librarians Framework, this challenge will also feature two other Future Ready Schools resources to help sort out the present and plan for the future.

  • Planning for High-Quality Remote Learning uses the Future Ready Framework as a way to examine current challenges and considerations as schools plan for both remote and hybrid learning.
  • SMART Goal Setting Guide is an easy-to-use tool to help educators identify and define Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Time-based goals for their programs and professional practice.

But you won’t do it alone! Recognizing the value of professional partnership and instructional collaboration, you will complete this challenge with another librarian peer, so you can help and support one another as you plan for 2021. In addition to sharing your own stories and plans, you will also practice your professional listening and collaboration skills. And true to Future Ready Librarian Challenges, these activities are still bite-sized -- 20-30 minutes max!

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Activity 1: Who’s My Library Buddy? 

We all need a buddy! Having a foil, thought partner, co-conspirator, and/or shoulder to cry on helps ensure you can be your best as a Future Ready Librarian. Let’s step out and connect with a colleague to begin 2021 with a win-win!

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Activity 2: Slowing Down. Sharing. Listening. 

While 2021 inaugurates a new calendar year, a new administration, and the distant promise of a post-pandemic future, the present may evoke the famous motto from Game of Thrones -- “Winter is coming.” Have a conversation with your #FRLbuddy and take stock of the present. Celebrate successes and acknowledge concerns and challenges as you work with students, colleagues, and your community.

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Activity 3: Imagining What’s Next

The pandemic has turned schools and teaching upside down. It’s hard to know where to start as you redefine how you lead, teach, and support students, colleagues and your community. Thankfully, Future Ready Schools has created a simple guide called Planning for High-Quality Remote Learning which is based on the Future Ready Framework.

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Activity 4: Getting SMART in 2021

While educators often set their goals in August and September at the beginning of the school year, the new calendar year also offers a midway opportunity to review, revise, or create new professional targets and outcomes. And this year, saying good riddance to 2020 was a resolution likely shared across the globe. Start 2021 with a simple, doable SMART goal based on the stories and conversations you’ve already explored with your #FRLbuddy.

 

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The Future Ready Librarians strand is generously supported by Follett