It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's Our Annual Report!

I've been getting a fair amount of (friendly) grief this week as I've been toiling away on my library's annual report.  Why?  Well... because annual reports are not required in my district.  Apparently, to some people (and you know who you are!) crunching numbers, making graphs and reflecting on school years past (when you don't actually have to) is tantamount to madness. But the truth is, I love this stuff. Digging through data, discovering correlations and proving (or disproving) that what you believe, in your heart, to be true about your work is, well... fun!

Of course, my joy and naivety related to this process may be (at least partially) attributed to the fact that I've never done one before.  Yes.  This is my first annual report.  And since there was no one around to tell me how I should do it or what to include, I got to make up the rules as I went along, which was great, because it made me REALLY think about who my audience was going to be.  In the end, I realized that the group I most wanted to target with this information was administrators - both at my school and at central office, which reminded me of one of the first budget related conversations I ever had with my current principal (who is super supportive, by the way).  I remember going into her office armed with file folders full of evidence and research, ready to blow her high heels off with data proving that whatever I wanted deserved her time, attention and (most importantly) money.  After about 2 sentences she stopped me and asked "what's the bottom line?"  She wanted, what I might now refer to as, a tweetable budget request:  Short, sweet and to the point.

So... I wrote my annual report with this personality type in mind, making certain that:

1. All data is organized into bite sized chunks.
2. It's visually interesting and fun.
3. The "bottom line" is easy to recognize
4. What few narratives there are, are short, sweet and to the point.
5. I tried to focus on data they would actually care about.  (For example, instead of bemoaning the state of my 400s or shouting about the number of times A Diary of a Wimpy Kid was checked out, I focused on student impact, the relationship between library services and academic success and how our library meets the identified needs of students at our school). 

And finally, I took a page from the book of Gwyneth and decided to, if nothing else, lend a comic nudge/wink to my report.  I didn't use Comic Life (as Gwyneth swears by) and I'm nowhere near as talented as she is, but I did try to capture the spirit of her SPECTACULAR comic tutorials, in the hopes of making this report fun and easy to digest.

And who knows, Batman!  Somebody might actually read it! :)

MGMS annual report 2010 11

As always, everything I do, this is licensed under Creative Commons, so please feel free to use, share, mash-up and/or make this better.  Also, it's worth noting that lots of other FANTASTIC annual reports can be found here.  Have fun!

When the Crazies Come Knocking, Will You Be Ready?

"Interrogation" cc  images from http://ow.ly/4UG6x

I first became aware of "The Disgraceful Interrogation of L.A. School Librarians" when Neil Gaiman tweeted the link along with the note "this makes my blood boil."  Within hours, my twitter and facebook feeds were full of responses, one of my favorites having to do with how clearly the crime rate in LA must have dropped to something less than miniscule proportions.  How else can you explain school librarians being interrogated like criminals?  Anyway, soon I was led to this blog post that recounts the experience in LA first hand followed by this letter to the editor in my local paper (from a former principal!) which (although unrelated) basically says fixing my state's fiscal woes is easy because we don't need school librarians (or guidance counselors or nurses!) anyway.

Needless to say, it's been a rough week for educators, and for school librarians in particular.  And lots of (really smart) people have been writing about it to express their outrage and frustration.  Unfortunately, however, while this is an extreme example to be sure, it's only one in a long line of beatings that all educators are currently taking from lawmakers and a populous who want to balance state checkbooks without taking any of the blame for mismanaging the funds.  I hate to say it, but I think this is only the beginning of such "interrogations."  While, hopefully, most of us will not be dragged down into a basement and forced to prove our worth under hot, and really unflattering, florescent lights - rest assured, we WILL be asked to prove our worth.

I guess the question we have to ask ourselves now is: can we?

Now is the time of year when many in libraryland start thinking about end of year reports.  And gosh, there's lots of really cool examples out there that showcase the work that goes on in our libraries.   This year,  however, as I put these numbers together, I will be thinking a lot about how to draw the line between the data I've collected and student learning. This year, whatever form(s) my report takes, its ultimate purpose will be to prove that my work is a) the solution to the problems that keep my principal and superintendent up at night b) directly linked to student achievement and c) an indispensable part of our school culture and mission.  More than ever, I think these reports need to take the extra step of bridging the gap between simply presenting the facts and linking those facts to student achievement.

Along those same lines, if you're anything like me, then this time of year also leads to endless prognostications about how I'll do things "next year."  It's funny, but I can remember, being told my first year teaching "not to worry," that after five years I'd "get my groove" - which in this case meant that after 5 years, I'd have a cadre of resources at my fingertips and I would no longer have to create new things every year.  Unfortunately, if that's the definition of getting one's groove, I've yet to achieve this zen like state.  Rather, I'm the kind of teacher who is constantly reinventing the wheel.  No matter how successful or enjoyable or impactful a program/project/collaboration may be, I seem to always be able to think of ways to make it better.  And this year is no exception.

Even as I start gathering together the fruits of this year's labor, I am overcome with thoughts of how I will collect data next year.  I'll be writing about this in more depth later, but for now I think it's well worth mentioning that if I am lucky enough to still have a job next year, I'll be taking extra care to ensure that I collect data that spotlights the impact of my work.  Not only because it's the right thing to do, but because when my seat in the basement is ready, I want to make sure I'm prepared.