>> JENNIFER

We have a learner guide, this is a tool for you to extend your learning on the topic.

Feel free to use it in your discussions, perhaps internally or maybe with your external partners.

Use this as a customize the guide and make it your own.

If you have specific questions or stes you would like to explore.

This is a tool to take those next steps and bring this learning to your colleagues.

I'm so excited to welcome our presenters today, Michelle D. 

Weissman Randall who is the head of research and evaluation at the bay area Discovery Museum.

Thank you for the resources Michelle.

We welcome Julia Shaheen, the Literacy Manager at the Stark Library in Ohio.

And Kate Greene Smith is the Youth Services & special Projects Coordinator at the Tennessee state library & Archives these fine folks bring their experience in this amazing resource and all the work happening in their communities.

Welcome to you, Michelle.

I'm going to shift us over and have you bring us into the session.

Welcome.

>> MICHELLE: Thank you, Jennifer.

We are super excited to be here today to talk about reimagining school readiness there is a lot of you attending and it is super fun to see.

And I'm not familiar with this platform, but it looks like in the chat, we would love to hear if you have experience with Reimagining School Readiness Toolkit.

To see how many of you have heard of it before.

That will be fun to see.

I'm the head of research and evaluation in the bay area.

One of my roles is caretaking of our translational research resources of which reimagining school readiness is one.

We have a whole series of publications available online for free for anyone to use.

We'll show you where this one is.

I guess they already popped that in the chat.

You can find a lot of great resources to use in the library.

We are here to talk about Reimagining School Readiness.

This started from a position paper published in 2016.

And this position paper really talked about the skills and concepts that are necessary for success for children in school and in life.

And what we found is people are really missing the mark.

Some people are missing the mark on preparing children for school when they are talking about -- 

when they are increasing that didactic instruction and hands on learning and opportunities for play and pretend play.

And what we found is that we should think of school readiness as this robust set of conceptual skills.

The robust developmental process that spans early childhood years and goes up until age 8.

So school readiness doesn't just stop when children enter kindergarten or nowadays when they enter transitional kindergarten.

What we think that children need up until those ages are things like conceptual math skill.

Children should be able to make and carry out plans, things like executive function, you have probably heard of.

They need to know how to get along with their peers and adults.

Not being able to write your name or count to 10 or count to 100, but complex thinking skills.

Importantly we think all children are capable of developing these skills with the guidance of caring adults in their life.

Which, of course, librarians are that.

This paper came out in 2016.

We were contacted by California State Library who was really excited about the work.

They wanted to create a toolkit.

We decided to create a toolkit together that we worked on for two years in California.

We worked with six libraries in California that came from diverse areas, diverse types of populations, sizes, different types of patrons.

And that two years listening to librarians about what they were doing and what they needed and wanted for their patrons.

And we tested the toolkit.

We got feedback from caregivers, from librarians, from children.

We revised the toolkit.

And sent it out into the world.

Along with that we also developed a half day workshop where we trained librarians of the findings in the Reimagining School Readiness paper and how to use the toolkit.

I forgot here how to advance.

Bear with me.

So the goals of the toolkit were really set here.

So to provide research-based strategies to support school readiness programming.

It is important to know this is not a curriculum.

This is a set of resources that you can pick and choose from to use no matter where you are in your library programming.

So libraries that have very robust school readiness program or very robust early childhood or youth programming can find something in the toolkit as well as libraries who are doing absolutely nothing.

It is a great way to find resources and dip your toe in and start getting going.

Libraries with large staff, libraries of just one person have been finding the toolkit useful.

It is really meant to enhance your work with children and families.

So we started off with the position paper and together with our colleagues from the libraries of California we created this Promising Practices Guide.

I will say it over and over again.

It is free.

Everything is online for free.

The Promising Practices Guide is geared toward library staff.

There are tips and tools and suggestions for activities on how to implement our findings into your work.

And everything in the toolkit is aligned with these six key findings.

This appears in that library resource guard, the Promising Practices Quite.

There are six key findings categorized into three categories.

Talk a and play, science and math and body and brain.

Looking at the first one, we won't go into all the findings of the paper.

The first one talks about child interactions.

It gives practical tips on the way we communicate with children.

You all know how important reading is and the toolkit really provides the research support for probably a lot of what you are already doing.

And I think that is important to remember.

Again, it is not a curriculum, but a guide to help you create programming or supplement programming to really support children in their development.

And what we hear from librarians and the time is that they are doing a lot of the things we recommend, but they just didn't know the why.

They appreciate knowing that what they are doing is really valuable for children.

So in the toolkit, all of the family resources, any resource that is facing your patrons, anything you would share with patrons as a sign or you might handout is available in six languages.

These are the six languages that we are most common in California at the time of development.

If you are wondering why, that's why.

And basically all of the resources are organized by age group.

Babies, toddlers, preschoolers and early elementary children.

I'm very aware that these are just rough guidelines.

We know that children especially in these early years develop at different ages so just a rough guideline when you are planning programming.

And also acknowledging that in libraries it is very hard for you to have a program that is just for babies and just for toddlers or just for preschoolers because we know families come with children of multiple ages, but generally that is how the toolkit is organized.

So there's a series of resources that you can share with your patrons.

And these are most of them here.

And, again, you can pick and choose, depending on where you are in your work with families in this arena.

So one very easy way to dive into the toolkit is through the use of bookmarks.

There's 24.

The one shown on the screen says preschool across the top.

They are organized by all four age groups and so there will be a series of bookmarks for each of the age groups.

And the bookmarks are -- they provide a tip for parents or caregivers on how they might interact with their children.

And they also give just like a very brief description of the research behind it.

And so it really brings them into the research findings.

The bookmarks are something that are so easy to use.

You can leave them out during programming.

You can have them at the desk when people check out books.

You can put them into books on hold.

It is a very easy entree into the toolkit and getting families to think about how to engage with their children in a deep way.

We have time to try math activities.

These come in several different formats.

If you poke around online, you can find them as signs, cards you can have on rings.

Again, you can leave them out for families to use.

You can build activities around them, hang them in different centers if you have -- I don't know, we have seen people hang them in play kitchen areas, depending on what the card or sign says.

We also have posters that are conversation starters.

Again, one of those findings about talk and play talks about the importance of conversation with children.

And especially open-ended questions to get children to think more deeply about the world around them.

This is a series of five posters so you are just seeing one here.

Again, they are available in the six languages.

Really, even for you as a library staff person to read the signs and think about how you might integrate these open-ended questioning into your programs.

But also to hang around the library or even put in little table signs so that families when they are engaging with their children can start using these open-ended conversation starters.

We have a series of flyers that provide the key findings by each age group you can hand out.

Super fun, we have a whole series of social media posts for Facebook or I guess now called X, Twitter, there are 96 of them.

Again, by age group, across all the languages and it is so easy.

You go in, copy and paste in any of the languages.

We also have a set of photos that you can accompany with the text.

If you are doing nothing at all to promote these skills, this is, again, a really easy way to have your library send out messaging.

You can coordinate with programming you have going on so sometimes if a library is doing a series of STEM programming they might pull out science and math messages and start posting in that arena.

I see someone posting they have been using the bookmarks.

I love that.

And then there is a whole set of resources for library staff.

We have talking point news, which is a flyer you can use to help support your conversations with educators or administrators from schools and talking about why you're doing the programming that you're doing.

We have a series of case studies that talk about integrating the toolkit into your work.

-- for when we first designed the toolkit so there's lots of tips from the original toolkit and two were designed -- two were created later after we were Piloting the toolkit in other states.

It just so happens this was occurring as the pandemic started so when libraries were starting to shut down.

So there is a bunch of tips in the most recent case studies about using the toolkit for virtual programming or if people with doing kits to check out.

Program surveys to help you evaluate your programming.

We have programming planning and reflection guide.

If you are starting to integrate reimagining school Readiness Toolkit into your programming, you can plan and reflect on what you are doing.

Not on this slide or the slide before -- I should mention we have a whole series of activities called an activity database.

It shows up when you go find the toolkit.

Not a database where it used to be searchablesearchable.

It is a long list of activities that we know is one of the most favorite things for librarians.

Some are activities you have heard of before, some might be new.

Hands of on actives to engage children in your library and programming that are aligned with all the findings we have talked about in the booklet.

So last year, last fall we finished a three-year grant.

We were really lucky to receive a IMLS grant in collaboration with California State Library and pacific Library Partnership here in California.

In the first year of that grant we did trainings in three new states, Arizona, Wisconsin and in Kentucky.

We trained librarians about the findings of Reimagining School Readiness and how to use the toolkit.

We recruited 12 libraries in those states to test out the toolkit.

We wanted to make sure the toolkit made sense in other places than California.

Again, this is where the pandemic shut us down part way.

We made another series of modifications to the toolkit following that testing.

And then we spent the following two years recruiting more states and engaging in a train the trainer model where we trained library trainers and state librarians in what in total turned out to be 19 states.

And they, in turn, went out and trained librarians in their state.

The findings of Reimagining School Readiness and on using the toolkit.

My co-presenters today Julia and Kate are part of that cohort.

Julia from Ohio.

Kate from Tennessee.

And they are going to share some great stories about using the toolkit in their state or how their colleagues have used the toolkit in their state.

And we hope that you are going to learn a lot and not be intimidated.

I will say to you we've done trainings from the museum, in several other states around the country.

And we have received only really positive feedback from the toolkit.

Everywhere we take it people are so excited about it.

And I think, you know, Julia and Kate can share the story of how it is used and appropriated into the work you are already doing.

So without further ado, I'm going to pass on to Kate.

>> KATE: Thank you so much, Michelle.

Hi, everyone.

I'm very honored to be here.

It has been a joy to work on this project with Michelle.

So first I want to tell you a little bit about how we implemented the Reimagining School Readiness toolkit in Tennessee.

I had co-SKON SPIRtors, Nikki Branam-Snyder and Jenny Gillihan who attended the training with me and rolled out across the state.

We trained 130 librarians in Tennessee in 2021 and in 2022.

Unfortunately, most of those early trainings took place virtually during COVID shutdowns but we were able to open up the last two trainings to in-person events.

For the virtual training we mailed kits with the supplies for implementing Reimagining School Readiness.

It included slide sessions and breakout rooms for the guided materials.

When we did in-person workshops we brought supplies and attendees got to go around to centers to work with supplies.

Our trainings during COVID, we didn't have opportunities for libraries to immediately share what they learned and how they implemented the toolkit.

The language and attitude around children's services have shifted.

We have a third to half of services staff new to their roles since 2020.

These new librarians have taken what they learned and run with it.

Many of the librarians that we've trained have told us about the ways they have incorporated a growth mindset into the language they are using with the children they work with.

These photos that you'll see are from one of the first in-person trainings we were able to do again.

The librarians are asking more open-ended questions when they are discussing the books they read.

And they are adding more hands-on activities to their programming, we're finding.

They are talking about ways to keep looking for opportunities to use appropriate language that encourages the social/emotional skills and executive function development.

They are reporting they have gained confidence in the way they speak to parents.

The toolkit is giving them the confidence to be able to connect the dots for parents by modeling conversations and explaining the value of what's being done in library programs.

So I asked the librarians across the state who have been using Reimagining School Readiness to tell me kind of what they are doing in their libraries right now.

Ashley Bishop is a children's coordinator in rural northwest Tennessee.

With a population of 30,000 people in their county.

She said her biggest take away from the toolkit were the extensive lists of activities, the talking points and the planning sheets.

She has tried about eight different activities with her story time kiddos.

Those are the youngest children and the wacky science, which is your age 4 to about 8 group.

The one she remembers doing with them have been wind chimes and what if animals using a sensory table and all of those resources being available have been very helpful for her planning.

She said that the bookmarks with the talking points have helped her so when she started her first baby story times, she said she felt like a fish out of water.

And that those talking points really helped her to feel more confident giving parents useful information in order to help them learn about developmental milestones.

She also said that the planning sheets and the program reflection sheets have helped her plan and understand her programs better.

She said she cycles through the various skills, the gross motor, fine motor and executive function skills in her planning.

She says as a planner she loves to have everything she needs, so it really helps keep her programs organized, educational and most importantly fun.

She said the training was really helpful and provided great information and resources and the last big lesson she's really taken from it is the concept of allowing kids to figure out what they need to do without the librarian showing them exactly what to do.

She said she remembers the video talking about asking probing questions to help them with just taking the project over and doing it for them.

So that has changed how she handles what she does and how she encourages the parents not to do things.

Patty Dalton is actually on the call here today, on the training today.

She is children's librarian at art circle in Cumberland County.

She's in the middle of the state, so we're going across the state with some of this training.

Patty said they incorporating more time with parents and caregivers about reading to children when she was doing story times.

She modelled how they should approach the reading, starting with the cover and moving into the inside.

She models wordless books because the caregiver reactions to the wordless books are so funny.

She encourages the parents and caregivers to make up the story with the child as they move through the pages because it can be a new story every time depending what the child notices.

This promotes the growth mindset for every parent and child.

During Patty's craft time they are encouraging the children how to make their craft on their own.

They tell the caregiver to assist with glue or glitter or paint, but let the child interpret the craft the way they want it to be.

That advice doesn't always go over with the caregiver.

Especially we know with our OCD perfectionists.

They encourage them to let the children do as much as they can.

Patty is making it a practice to speak with the parent caregivers while the children are doing the craft to get to know the parents better and answer any questions they have.

Because of all of this, Patty has received great positive comments from families who travel and visit other libraries and reported back to her they like her story time best because they can tell how much time she has taken to intentionally choose books, activities and songs that go along with what she's planning.

On this photo on the far left is vanessa cane, at McGIFR's Grant Public Library in Dier County, in the far northwest corner, very rural area.

16,000 people her library serves.

She says they posted the conversation starters in her play areas and they've got blocks, a dramatic play area and art centers that are set out.

Her hope is to encourage conversation between the youngest patrons and their parents and allow parents to see that the toys in the library weren't just babysitters, but specifically chosen to increase early literacy skills.

She wanted to show them there are teachable moments all around them and encourage the parents to embrace the role of being their child's first teacher.

She has encouraged her staff to model conversations when parents walk through the Kid Zone and see the kids playing.

Morgan Reichman is a family literacy librarian in middle Tennessee.

With the stokes Brown Public Library in Robinson County, again, a very rural area and they serve about 19,000 people in their city.

Morgan loves being able to use the reimagining school Readiness Toolkit because it has sparked ideas for home school times and story times, especially if she wants to focus on process-focused activities instead of the product-related results.

She reported just this past week or so she pulled a wind damage activity out of the resources list and adjusted it slightly for the materials she already had in the library so she would have a hands-on activity to go with the lesson that she was giving on making wind.

She loves the way that those activities spark creativity and innovation in thought processes.

And we did have some challenges reported.

We have so many small and rural libraries in Tennessee.

Some of our toolkit concepts and practices have been more challenging to implement, mostly because of time, space and budget constraints can be a barrier for implementing early literacy program.

The toolkit is making it very easy to pick and choose which components work best for each community.

I found that the great thing about Reimagining School Readiness is it lends itself so well to layering in other training concepts and practices to share with parents regardless of the library staff's level of comfort and confidence.

The printable elements like the bookmarks and the math activity cards and flyers have become a foundation for more parent-focused resources that are easy for libraries to print, share, and rely on.

I have encouraged the libraries to print out the early math cards on index cards with a ring to make those buildable.

And we are going to be adding more early math literacy cards with other projects we are doing statewide.

The activity database is a stand by for libraries planning STEM programs.

I'm hoping in Tennessee we can do another round of Reimagining School Readiness next fall to train all of our new use library staff we added since 2022.

I mentioned earlier, we got between a third and a half of attendees at other statewide trainings new to their jobs so it is time to bring this training back.

At the state level I'm going to make the toolkit the foundation of all the other training I provide.

And now on to you, Julia.

>> Can I jump in, the games that you mentioned with early literacy skills, any of you or attend des chime with in game ideas that work in this area as well.

Thank you so much and, yes, let's shift on over to Julia.

>> JULIA: Thank you, guys.

Hi, everybody.

So I'm Julia.

I'm the Literacy Manager at Stark Library.

I am one of four trainers who have trained library staff in the state of Ohio.

We've been doing that since 2001, I believe.

And we've actually trained over, I think 400 and it is probably higher now, library staff in Ohio.

I'm really excited about this toolkit.

And I don't just say that because I am one of the state trainers.

I use it all the time.

And the very first time I went to the -- we went to the online training to be a trainer, I came back to my boss and said we have got to implement all of this things in this toolkit.

So I think it is just very comprehensive and I'm going to show you some pictures and talk to you a little bit about how we have used it in Ohio and share about what my co-trainers -- how my co-trainers have used it as well.

So celeste, Pam, and Penelope are the other trainers.

You can see photos of kids and adultings working together.

We've done it through story time, through stand alone programs and other series.

We've done it through passive programming, through outreach.

And then I'm going to share a little bit about the workshops that we've done in addition to the library workshops we've done in Ohio.

So story time.

So storytime has become a lot more play based and we are including more engaging activities in stories.

So including the children in the stories so they are not passively sitting and listening.

Using open-ended questions like Kate mentioned.

Adding extension activities after storytime that are more open-ended and include problem solving or parent engagement in some way.

Gross and fine motor skills and creativity, you know, bringing in boxes and letting the kids figure out what to do with the box.

Bringing in leaves and letting the kids create their own leaf man based off of the book.

But really encouraging parents not to touch the childrens' art.

They can guide them and help them, but not to touch the art.

It has been hard and challenging.

Some of my staff have said that it was hard.

The parents didn't get it at first.

It was difficult for them to not jump in with the scissors, but in the end they understood.

I have personally told families, parents, sit on your hands if you feel the need to cut or write it out for your kid.

They'll get it eventually.

We're introducing vocabulary, especially like math terms.

Like more and less, bigger smaller, we are really encouraging staff to use the reflection and planning worksheets from the toolkit.

We had new staff at Stark start earlier and for fall and winter storytimes she used the planning guide to help break it down to make sure she was including all of the elements she needed to.

We are trying too incorps talk and play, science and math and body and brain into each storytime, or a little bit of one of them, making sure we are covering those skills.

For stand alone programs and series we're incorporating similar things.

Play-based programming, hands-on exploration.

We are trying to make it more child led.

Keeping it open ended.

We do a program here that is called messy play.

You can see it gets a little messy and one of my favorite pictures is the one on the top in the middle with the kids just going to town with the paper and they were discovering how, you know, which papers would rip and which ones wouldn't.

And how some of the cardboard didn't rip very easily and holding it properly.

So they were learning all kinds of different skills.

Even asking them questions like, you know, which one do you think was easier to rip and why?

Why won't this one rip?

It is like that plastic or foil wrapping paper you can't rip.

So we are asking them questions.

I think the parents love it because we have been doing it two or three years now at several of our libraries.

We just rotate it.

The parents love it because they get to make a mess in the library and have fun and not have to worry about cleaning it up too much.

That is why we're here.

We've done other things beyond what is in the toolkit, like some of the mirror play activities, just art, letting them explore.

Really trying to get parents to move away from doing the activity for the children.

It is harder for some of them, but we just try and explain to them why it is so important.

Even staff, staff had -- we talked about as we were planning the next sessions of messy play, they were struggling with the idea that parents are not taking the stuff home.

They are not taking the wet projects home.

It doesn't matter if they take the art home.

They had fun at the library.

We did an activity.

The children got out of it what they were supposed to and it was really about the parent-child interaction.

Asking staff to use the planning worksheets from the toolkit has helped.

And sometimes when adults have a hard time to not -- to want to do the kids' activities, we give them their own project to work on and they are working on it together.

We have tried that in some situations.

The parents do like the bookmarks.

I set the bookmarks out before the programs and they love the ideas they get from them.

We do homework help and home school hangout programs where we are encouraging children with guidance and communications asking questions about Discovery and providing feedback.

Your brain is growing.

Can you feel it grow?

It has grown so much since the last time I've seen you.

Trying to encourage them with some of the content that came out of the research about growth mindset and what not.

So those are some of the programs that the libraries in Ohio are offering and sharing.

And then we have passive programming because it can be really hard to program every single day or all the time with limited staff, limited budget.

So what some libraries are doing are offering more passive activities.

So you can see like graph activities, matching activities.

Using the Time to Try cards in this realm because there are posters, too, so you can put them up in the book stacks.

To talk about how many books one author has or which books are taller or shorter or which shelf has the most books or least books?

And we're trying to provide, again, those open-ended activities.

We put signs up.

We create in some cases we have created our own signs based on the toolkit elements.

It just helps with parents, caregivers and grown-ups asking questions and figuring out how to play with their children.

You can see the caterpillar butterfly activity in one of the photos.

Making that concept come to life so they can see it outside the book pages.

In my library I have a librarian who does an activities with chickens and eggs.

She gets the eggs hatch in a little incubator and the children get to see the chickens hatch from the eggs, which is really cool.

We work with our local university extension.

It is an awesome activity and, again, it brings that concept alive for kids who may not be aware of how chickens are born or how eggs hatch or how a butterfly hatches, not hatches, but morphs from a caterpillar.

Everything is really -- we try and make it open ended and play based.

We try and give tips to the caregivers as well to help them, again, engage with their child in this learning.

And then there's outreach.

Something that my library does a ton of because -- I know the other ladies do the training from the -- trainers do a ton of outreach.

But if the kids and the families aren't coming to us, we're going to go out and find them.

And one way that we did that, we've been doing it since 2021.

We got a grant from a local funder and then this past summer we worked with another library system and got a grant from the Ohio Department of Education that was giving -- grants out.

To increase more awareness around school readiness and bring the library to the children.

So we've been incorporating a lot of the activities from the toolkit.

We've done this now, we just finished year three and we've probably used over two dozens of the activities or thereabout or the activities that would fit themes of school readiness.

We created toolkits for the kids -- or excuse me, little bags of activities.

We take them out to neighborhoods.

This past summer we went out to the -- we went out to more camps and summer schools than we had in the past to reach as many kids as we could.

We reached more kids than we budgeted for, so that was a great problem to have.

You can see we are really creating in some of the neighbors the adult-child interaction they may not get.

We are giving them -- we are hopefully giving them the confidence they need.

I remember telling the kids, we were doing an engineering project and it could have been wind damage or one of the other ones.

One of the kids, I told them, you are like an engineer, like an architect.

They were in second grade, third grade.

They can't be that.

They are just a little kid.

I said, well, you are making a concept of a bridge.

Oh, I know.

It was bridge to nowhere.

You are making a little version of a bridge like architects and engineers do before they build the real one.

They were so surprised they could have a career like that and so something like a grown-up would do.

And one of my absolute favorite stories to tell is of a little boy I call hard pass kid.

He is in the -- it is in the bottom picture in the middle with the little stones.

The project was to do story stones and to create stories on six -- or to create a story using these different stones.

We had three for a subject and three for a place and we gave them special crayons and they could draw on the rocks.

And actually, I didn't get to see him, he didn't really want to interact with us in the very beginning of him coming to our stops.

And he was a hard pass on books.

He wouldn't take the books we gave him.

He sometimes took the food we gave him.

We got meal bags from our local Hunger Task Force.

And he took most of the activity kits, but it was a hard pass on the book.

The very last visit we had with him at that stop he came running down from his apartment before we left, like minutes before we left, so excited to share what project he had created.

He was just so into the drawings he had made and I said, you know, that looks like a vortex.

He said I thought it was a worm hole, but vortex works, too.

We were using these fun words he probably doesn't use all the time.

I could tell the moment we met him eight weeks earlier to the last time we saw him the program really meant something to him because he was so excited to come back and share what he did.

I love telling about hard pass kid because he is an example of how the program worked in the summer and kept him super engaged.

And you can see the -- I mean, I could literally see some of the kids brains growing as we did the projects in the outreach program.

The last thing I was going to talk about are the workshops we do.

Like I said, we have trained over 400 different librarians and library staff in Ohio.

And then we also, I have adapted this training for preschool, for step Up to Quality credit, early childhood educators have taken the class.

I turned it from a full day training to two and a half to three hour training.

I was able to offer elementary school teachers the workshop as well.

One big pieces of feedback from the elementary school teachers, it wasn't new concepts, like Michelle mentioned in the beginning, but a reminder of the things they had in their closet in their classroom.

So you know instead of reading about fairy tales, actually doing -- yeah.

Fairy tales.

Actually taking the three Little Pigs and having the kids create their own houses and try to blow them down.

Bringing those to life and giving them hands-on experiences to try and discover what some of the concepts they are learning about are like.

The elementary school teachers -- sorry, the early childhood teachers love to take it.

It gives them more background on the development of a child and also some activities they can do and hands-on things.

Then, of course, our trainings that we've been able to keep doing, thankfully, have -- we've done virtual and in person.

The virtual ones were filling up faster than the Taylor Swift concert sold out for a while, which is an awesome problem to have.

Our in-person ones fill up as well.

We try to do two or three every year because they are very popular.

So all in all in Ohio, we love the reimagining school Readiness Toolkit and you can see some of the things the library staff has done in the trainings.

I'm going to turn it back over to Michelle who I think is going to wrap it up.

>> MICHELLE: Thank you, Kate and Julia.

So we would love to hear your questions.

As Kate and Julia were talking I realized this type of webinar is tricky.

I really wanted you to have a lot of time to hear what was going on in the different states and it may be confusing because you don't know a lot about what the findings are in the Reimagining School Readiness original publication, but that's okay.

And one of the things I just wanted to call out is both Kate and Julia talked about growth mindset, which isn't one of the six key findings, but is a key finding in that research and all of the research that we do.

That this concept of growth concept by Carol -- you have probably heard about it.

Adults bringing a mindset to try something new and create growth mindset in children, to remind children their brains can grow, intelligence isn't a static thing.

Everyone can learn by doing and practicing.

And then I love that Kate and Julia both really hone in on these open-ended activites and the facilitation with adults.

I think those are really key things to bring in.

And the other thing I also was thinking about as they were both talking is that we definitely do workshops on Reimagining School Readiness.

We have had thousands of librarians participate in our workshops between what we have done in the museums and these 19 states or the 18 other states outside of California.

You don't have to participate in a workshop to use the toolkit.

Right?

You can go on, browse the resources and even looking through the resources and starting to use them, you will learn and get the tips yourself, but certainly if you read the position paper, that will give you the foundation you need or even the promising Practicing Booklet.

Don't be intimidated.

You don't need to participate in the workshop.

That said, many state librarians and even frontline librarians in the state who participated in trainings, who have been trained as trainers are still offering these workshops and some of them, Az R as Julia said, are offering them virtually and a lot of them are offering them at workshops.

Look out.

They are open to having people from different states.

If you are from one of the states we showed on the original map, you can reach out to me and I can connect you with the trainers in that state.

That happened at the last conference I went to.

People were reaching out saying, hey, I'm in this state.

Who is the trainer there?

I would like to bring it to my library.

But I want to emphasize you don't need to have the training to use the resources.

I don't know if Julia or Kate want to say anything else about that.

Again, everything is available for free.

We have these monthly tips you can sign up to get for one year simple tips about integrating the toolkit in your work.

A reminder in your inbox that you have the toolkit and simple things like getting down to the level of a child.

Talking at them like getting to their size, squatting down rather than talking from above them is valuable.

It shows you see them and it is really part of that important talk and play.

So questions or, Jennifer, I don't know if you saw questions in the chat you thought we should address?

Jennifer: Yeah.

There are a few that came through.

Feel free to post questions.

There was a question, I also am curious just in terms when we talk about bringing the conversation to caregivers, parents or caregivers and knowing there's so much to, you know, I mean, I would be tempted to give them all a stack of all of the great things that -- so I'm just kind of curious how you sort of maybe hear from all of you how it's rolled out, you know, how these facets are rolled out with caregivers.

I know that is something folks struggle with.

If you are doing a program or storytime, your focus is on the kids and if you shift focus.

So can you talk a little bit about how you have had luck in bringing the conversation to parents and caregivers?

>> I can speak to that a little bit.

It has happened quickly.

It is not something that happens overnight.

It has taken time to get staff to feel comfortable sharing these kinds of tips with families.

During storytime, it is part of the literacy message, so storytime usually has some literacy tip attached to it.

So the staff might be sharing it through that.

When we are doing messy play or other programming, it could be a one-on-one conversation that library staff have had.

Like, oh, you know, if you let your child use these stickers and let them place it, it is better for their fine motor or whatever.

And so hopefully sharing that with a parent.

And that has worked in some cases.

Sometimes it is just a big group message before a program starts.

This is why we are doing this program.

It is all open ended and here's why.

And let your kids explore, but also, you know, you can get into it, too.

Because they'll be more apt to learn and want to share in the learning with you.

And there's that bonding that happens when you do it with your child.

We have kind of done it in those different ways.

One of the ways we've done it with outreach, especially in the neighborhoods that don't have a lot of parent engagement is we do encourage parent engagement.

So they might get the kits to take home to do the activity.

There is a component where they have to work with a grown-up to complete something.

In the grant funded project we did specifically the parents got, the parents and children would get rewarded for that and eventually the reward wasn't what was bringing them back.

It was the activites and interactions with staff that were bringing them back, so I hope that answers the question.

>> Jennifer: That is super helpful.

What a range for sure.

>> MICHELLE: I want to emphasize because we run this into the museum all the time.

The museum  -- bay area Discovery Museum is a children's museum, modeling the question and asking.

We get a lot of parents and I'm sure you get this, too n the library, who say, oh, no, that tool is too dangerous.

They can't use the scissors yet.

They micromanage what the child does.

For us to step in and say it's okay.

Really emphasizing that process that Julia also talked about.

The process of engagement.

It is the trying.

It is not the product at the end.

It doesn't matter what actually is created at the end even if you say we are all going to make wind chimes.

It doesn't matter if the child makes a wind chime, sometimes just exploring the materials and modeling asking questions and creating growth mindset and saying, yeah, scissors are hard to use and it takes a lot of practice.

I think our role as adults is just showing that it's okay and that parents don't have to feel bad if their children aren't getting it, right?

It's okay to keep trying.

>> Jennifer: I think that whole example of using scissors takes practice.

All of this takes practice.

Being able to say, to feel comfortable commenting on how parents are interacting.

That takes practice.

And then certainly for the parents and caregivers to be practicing it.

So all of this is about integrating this and just getting, you know, it is like a muscle that eventually will hopefully we won't even be thinking about it.

We'll be teaching all these skills just in how we interact.

So excellent.

The other question that I saw come through is sort of around how you've been able to make the case for doing this work.

And, you know, both the comment maybe that you heard, Julia, you know, from some of the teachers, well, this is something we are already doing.

Are there ways that you used either data on your programming or, you know, how are you using this work in your advocacy efforts, you know, whether it is internal advocacy with your administrators or funders or community members?

But can you just talk a little bit about how you have been able to make the case for this work, especially as we send folks off to explore the toolkit further.

How can they tell the story of why this is such important work.

Let's start with Kate.

>> KATE: The thing I try to tell my librarians across the state is I try to remind them that they are the ones that they know this information already.

And that parents see librarians as the experts.

And so to a lot of times librarians are very kind of modest people and don't want to claim their power.

And I always encourage them that you are seen as the expert in the room.

So own that.

And share what you know.

And to make it your own, but realize that what you are doing really is modeling and making a difference.

And being able to explain that to parents, that what you are doing is benefiting their child and the parents see it that way.

So now the parents can be that expert as well.

So just trying to help the librarians see their value and to know that they're the ones that are passing on this wonderful information because the other side already sees them as the expert.

So that's what I do a lot of, is spending a lot of time reminding librarians that the families already look to you as the expert in this area.

>> JENNIFER: Really good.

Really, really good.

I find myself with the knowledge.

When you are aware of it and thinking about it, it is like, oh, wow, this is different.

You know, it doesn't come naturally to me so to have that be -- but I love that idea of empowering them as the experts, them with their kids for sure.

Any other thoughts on making the case and advocating for this work?

>> MICHELLE: Jowl yeah, do you have anything to share?

>> JULIA: I was going to say reading the research paper and the Promising Practices Guide I think really helped.

And kind of illustrated it.

I know when I have done trainings with my staff here at my library, they realize my child is doing growth mindset at school.

That is what they do.

They are seeing that this is what is happening in the schools or this is beneficial in some way, shape, or form.

Once you read those, if you haven't before, once you read them, it all tends to fit together and it becomes like the data you need to go back to your administration to say this is why this works.

This is the research.

It is really good research that was done and put together, I think.

So I think it speaks for itself almost.

And I love that part about empowering librarians.

Sometimes we need to be the cheer leader for librarians to say, no, we are the experts.

>> MICHELLE: Agreed.

Librarians, even a brief, quick interaction with a child or caregiver can make a huge impact.

So don't forget that.

You are very powerful and very knowledgeable.

And I also want to add in, yes, thank you for switching slides.

Here is our contact information.

Feel free to email any of us.

I want to add in like Julia said, a lot of librarians have read the resources and gone back to their administrators to ask for support in implementing it.

You could do a reading group in your library and you and your colleagues can read some of the resources together and have a book club over it or coffee chat about it.

And make a plan to try something new.

Librarians have definitely used the resources to go to their supervisors and said, you know, I want to reintroduce a STEM night at the library or something like that.

So the last thing I want to add in is there is so much evaluation we have done over the last years.

The IMLS grant has an evaluator who helped us with feedback.

The feedback was from families at libraries.

Our participants were out delivering programs in their libraries and they asked families to complete surveys that got sent to our evaluates and families.

Talking about how wonderful the programming was as they are incorporating the resources.

We can share that with you if you are trying to make the case to your administrators.

>> Jennifer: Case studies frame things as well?

Is 

>> MICHELLE: Definitely.

>> JENNIFER: We are at the top hour.

Thank you so much, Michelle, you and your team, thank them all and the fine folks at the California State Library as well.

You can see this has lots and lots of legs and is making its way across the country.

I know we also have international folks joining us, too.

So lots of great work to take out in the field.

So thank you so much.

A reminder to everyone I will send you an email later today once the recording is posted.

I will send you a certificate for attending.

You can always send colleagues to the recording and the catalog if they need certificates for their learning.

I'm going to send you to a short survey as you leave.

If you don't have time to complete it now, the email I send will also have the link.

We really, really appreciate your feedback on the session.

We will share with the presenters and helps guide our ongoing programming.

Thank you so much, thank you Michelle, Kate, and Julia.

>> MICHELLE: Thank you so much, everyone.

It was great.