[LM_NET] HIT: Parent Library Sessions

[Toni Buzzeo <tonibuzzeo@TONIBUZZEO.COM>]

ORIGNAL TARGET:
A while back a few people wrote about their experiences of providing 
informative library sessions for parents--about research methods, 
reading and books, or general library orientations.

I'm writing an article about these types of parent sessions and would 
love to hear the sorts of programs you've offered in your library for parents.

RESPONSES:
When we do our fall open house, when parents follow their child's 
class schedule, parents come to the library during their child's 
study hall.  I show them all of our online resources that they can 
have access to for free!  For those who come it is well worth the time.

I use a laptop and an LCD projector and I take the parents right to 
our school's 
website 
<http://www.dce.k12.wi.us/midschool/imc.htm>http://www.dce.k12.wi.us/midschool/imc.htm
 


Then I give them the same instruction sheets that I give our 
students.  This information that is printed in our student's study 
buddy as well. I show them how to use each tool.  If I have time I 
show them some of the sites that will help them promote reading with 
their child.  I try to keep our website very simple.  When it gets 
too cluttered it seems to be to hard for students and parents to use.

***

One of my most successful session was a demonstration of our online
subscription databases.  Our school offers a "Parent Council" meeting once a
month and occasionally the Principal lets me make a presentation.  At one
session I demonstrated basic search methods in several of our subscription
databases: Grolier, World Book Online, EBSCO, and the Gale databases.  The
parents were shown how to access these databases through the media center's
webpage.  A quick reference sheet was provided for each database.  We also
gave them a bookmark listing the username and password required for remote
access to all of the databases.  The parents were very grateful to know that
this resource was available for their children to use both in school and at
home.

***

While I was LMS at a middle school (lost my job in Columbus Schools 
lay-offs 2 years ago)
I did a parent lesson as part of a PTA meeting.

The first PTA meeting is usually the best attended so I asked for the 
last half-hour of the meeting.  I was the program.  I explained what 
my job was, the difference between the LMS in the middle school and 
the aide they were familiar with in the elementary (they are always 
surprised to find out the person they called librarian wasn't a 
librarian).  I gave a short overview of the things I would be 
teaching their child.

We then adjorned to the computer lab.  I took the parents through 
several of the resources we used: INFOhio, Unitedstreaming, OPLIN, 
and Columbus Metropolitan Libraries.  They received a bookmark I 
created that had the URLs and passwords for everything.  The bookmark 
included my library phone number and my e-mail address for any questions.

Parents were always grateful for the information.  Some booked 
additional lessons on how to use INFOhio, how to help their child do 
research, how to cite sources, and, after we automated, how to use 
the school OPAC from home.

The additional sessions ended up being individual.  Depending on the 
person's schedule I'd offer to stay after school or after a PTA 
meeting. Many were e-mail.  I did my best to check my e-mail by 
certain times (I gave out those times as part of my presentation - 
never thought to put them on the bookmark until just now) and 
responded to all.  To those who included a phone number, I called if 
it seemed necessary.  Most of the questions centered around citing 
sources but some of them were requests to get a book for them.

***

My school district has a "Saturday Academy" at which I taught parents
how to use the online features our school library and how to access the
public library.

***

I'm preparing a library orientation right now for incoming 
kindergarten parents.  Our K students don't check out in class, and 
I've informally had parents check out for their K students if they 
come to me.  Now I am offering library cards for parents who bring 
their children before or after school.  At the orientation, I will present:

*       a tour of the library
*       a short PowerPoint presentation on the benefits of reading at 
home (and the relationship between standardized test scores and 
independent reading, since that's measurable and oh so important!)
*       a sheet with read aloud tips on one side and ways to make 
reading fun on the other
*       a pathfinder of books and websites for finding great books
*       information about our Birthday Book cart, from which parents 
can purchase library bound books to donate to the library
*      library card applications for the two public libraries our 
students can use, plus info on the libraries' websites and using the 
OPAC from home
*      a bookmark for their child

I'll be presenting this during K orientation, and plan on spending 
about 15 minutes.  I hope that it addresses questions parents have 
about the library, and gets them to the library, either ours or the 
public library.  I'm hoping to make it impossible for a parent to 
say, "We can't get to the library."

***

At my former elementary school I hosted an Internet workshop for 
parents to give them suggestions on how they might best help their 
children with homework assignments. I taught them search techniques, 
how to use district resources such as Nettrekker, our opac, etc. 
Afterward I had several parents tell me that they came even though 
they didn't think they would get much out of it and were pleasantly 
surprised. They learned a lot. Most of them knew nothing about our 
Opac being available on line, or that there was even a resource like 
Netrekker that they could use at home. (Of course, we had sent home 
several flyers with this information, but it obviously wasn't 
forefront in their minds)
This past year a couple of our elementary bilingual teachers and I 
hosted a session for our Spanish speaking parents. We got out our 
laptop computers and taught them how to sign on to the internet, 
showed them how to get to our public library web site, how to use 
bablefish to translate web sites. They also did their on line 
volunteer background check for our district so they could volunteer 
at our school. (Most of them had nver touched a computer before) We 
also showed them how to use our school library, and set up parent 
accounts for them. We've talked about doing more of this type of 
training, and I would LOVE to see more of it, but there just doesn't 
seem to be time.

***

In the past, I have presented sessions for our parents on the following topics:

How to use the Fee Based (Subscription) Databases our county purchases
Internet Safety
Helping your Child Select an Appropriate Book

The Internet Safety session I did was some years ago when it was an 
initiative of Baltimore County Public schools through a program they 
launced called PIE (Parent Internet Education).  Many of the ideas we 
shared came from Perry Aftab (sp?) who was brought in to speak to us 
about internet safety.  Since then, I have spoken to a couple small 
groups of parents (through the the PTA one year and to a private 
organization once).  I also talk about Internet safety with the kids 
in school, of course.

Currently, I am gathering feedback from our parents to see if there 
is enough interest in participating in an adult book club that I 
would facilitate.

  If I get enough response from the parents, we will begin the adult 
book club reading fiction not parenting books.  I posed the question 
to the parents in the upcoming school newsletter and I will see what 
kind of replies I get before proceeding.

***

In Connecticut we have access to a database paid for with our taxes. 
It has numerous resources including Kids InfoBits (found on the 
ICONN.org site). After introducing the site to the students and 
writing about it in our school newsletter I invited parents in after 
a PTO meeting to see what this site had to offer and how to use it. I 
included handouts about it and other resources found in the database, 
I explained how to access the site from home. It is open only to CT 
residents. I showed them where they could find out how to navigate 
the site to help their students and encouraged them to talk to their 
child about what they found when they were exploring it during their 
library classes. It was well received and I would do it again!!!

***

One time I had "fair night".  I gave some info on how best to help 
their child with the Science Fair (I taught science for 23 years), 
our Cultural Fair (which our entire 6th grade did for years until we 
outgrew the gym) and held a bookfair on the same night.

I had websites created, sample projects, project guidelines, and 
question and answer sessions.  I don't remember how many people 
attended, but it was well worth the time.

And on the "Fair Night", I had door prizes (book fair certificates) 
and light refreshments (furnished by the PTSA)

***

I called ours Palmerston Parent Participation Programs and the 
alliteration seemed to catch the
eye!!!!

I focused on 'helping your child with homework (without doing it for 
them)' and took them through the Information Lit process we use, and 
then specifically locating resources (including the World Wide Web) 
and selecting information from them (accuracy, currency, bias 
etc).  I offered sessions in the afternoon (when I had some 
administration time and which dovetailed into their pick-up time for 
their kids) and again in the evenings - usually a 7.00pm start.  Tea 
and biscuits  (that's coffee and cookies in your language) at each 
one, name tags and a quick introduction of self by each person if the 
numbers were small,.  Just to make it friendly.  Tried to make it 
interactive by setting them a specific problem to solve so they could 
learn by doing.  Maximum time span was two sessions. (We found from 
experience that parents were reluctant to commit to anything that 
extended for more than two weeks -so if something could not be 
covered in one 90 min session, it could carry over to the next week 
but not beyond that.)

As a staff, we passionately believed that to achieve the learning 
community we envisaged  (it was a new school in a new suburb) that we 
had a role in parents' education and this built huge support for the 
school. Most of the specialist teachers, particularly, ran parent 
programs, including the Reading Recovery teachers, the counsellors - 
even our PE guy had a regular parent/child games night. It was all 
done at no charge to parents in our own time as part of our 
commitment to the vision and very unusual in the primary setting.

I also invited pre-school parents in for some tips on reading to 
their child and how to select
books., and I had grab bags available which comprised seven 
pre-selected titles in a library bag so busy parents could nip in, 
grab a bag and sign it out and have a read-aloud a night for a week!


Toni Buzzeo, MA, MLIS <mailto:tonibuzzeo@tonibuzzeo.com>
Maine Library Media Specialist of the Year Emerita
Maine Association of School Libraries Board Member
Buxton, ME 04093
http://www.tonibuzzeo.com
Fire Up with Reading: A Mrs. Skorupski Story, illustrated by Sachiko 
Yoshikawa (Upstart 2007) BRAND NEW! 

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