Category Archives: Conference

Bethany’s Report from Teen Lit Con 2019!

This is a guest blog post written by Bethany Kauffman, CMLE Board Member and Media Specialist at Rogers High School. Need a mini grant to help fund a program for your community? Apply now!

What is the Teen Literature Convention?

“The Twin Cities Teen Lit Con is where authors, books, teens, & fun collide. There will be amazing authors, breakout sessions, & an action-packed Exhibit Hall (book arts, book signings, & much more). Teens have the opportunity to connect with their favorite authors, explore other aspects of being a part of a reading community, & attend workshops for writers.” (https://teenlitcon.org/faqs-2/)

We had another great day at Teen Lit Con on April 27, 2019.  “We” is our group of three high schools that attended together through a grant from CMLE.  Upsala High School, Sauk Rapids Rice High School and Rogers High School staff and students road one bus together to Henry Sibley High School in Mendota Heights for the big day!

The three high schools had 30 students attend and three adults which we considered a good turn out on a busy Saturday.  The bus ride gave students and staff a chance to chat and get to know each other which was one of our goals in riding together.  There aren’t enough opportunities for students from different areas of MN who share a love of reading and writing to meet each other.  Thank you to CMLE for making this possible!

Once at Sibley High School, the fun began.  We attended a panel discussion with the nationally known authors Lamar Giles, Tomi Adeyemi, Becky Albertalli and Jarrett Krosoczka.  What an entertaining and informative group of authors! The attendees did a lot of cheering. You would have thought we were at a rock concert.

There were numerous sessions students could attend throughout the day including Book Fued, Writer’s Studio, Social Justice and Activism in YA Lit, Pie Club – Finding Your Next Book, Graphic Storytelling and more.  Students also participated in a variety of exhibits and hands-on activities. Waiting in line to get the authors’ signatures was a part of the day for almost everyone, too.

We all arrived back at our individual school by late afternoon/early evening feeling really tired but happy.  Thank you again CMLE for making this trip possible for our teens!

Report from Teen Lit Con 2019!

This is a guest post from Stephanie Schlangen, Instructional Coach – Technology Integration at Sauk Rapids – Rice High School. Need a Mini Grant to purchase materials or try an interesting new program at your library? Apply today!

Thanks to CMLE, Sauk Rapids-Rice, Upsala, and Rogers students were able to attend the Teen Lit Conference, an annual event held at Henry Sibley High School.  At this fantastic event, we were able to meet several different authors writing for young adults.  All of the authors talked about how they worked to bring new perspectives to the forefront of young adult literature. 

Lamar Giles talked about his #weneeddiversebooks movement.  A pivotal point for him was when he was a young adult and went to his local librarian to ask her for a book featuring an African-American protagonist, and the only books she could lead him to were Roots and the Autobiography of Malcolm X.  When he showed the following image, it became very clear that this sort of experience is common for many.

Tomi Adeyemi, the author of Children of Blood and Bone, also emphasized the need for literature to feature characters with diverse perspectives.  She said one of her main goals was to make people fall in love with a character that was different than them. 

Becky Albertalli, author of Simon vs. The Homosapien Agenda, and What If It’s Us? spoke about how she drew from life experience in her writing, including difficult situations with her father and with current political events.

Likewise, author of Hey Kiddo, Jarrett Krosoczka, in his graphic memoir, also drew from painful memories in order to write this book.  He likened the writing experience to Harry Potter writing with the blood quill, where it hurt a lot to go through the memories of growing up with a mother addicted to heroin. However, after he finished he felt a great burden was lifted off of him.  It was also very interesting to hear him speak about how the choices he made with the illustrations in his book were intentional down to the specific colors he chose, and the fact that he made them with ink rather than digitally.

All of these authors offered new perspectives to our students and reinforced the idea that, in a library, we need to provide windows and mirrors for all of our students.

Recap of the 2019 LibTech Conference!

We were lucky enough to be able to present again at the LibTech Conference at Macalester College this year! We gave a joint presentation with Sarah and Zach from Minitex. CMLE talked about how we were able to teach ourselves podcasting and the Minitex staff talked about their experience teaching themselves how to make videos.

We also attended several great sessions throughout the day. Mary learned about creating Moodle classes and I got to hear about one academic library’s experience with their VR equipment. This conference is so informative and filled with friendly library people from all over the country.

Chatting about books, making new friends!

While we were at the conference, we were able to record some episodes of our Book Bites mini podcast with conference attendees! We did have to overcome a few small equipment challenges, but podcasting onsite is always such a great learning experience, and it was worth it because we were able to meet a bunch of interesting library people!

You may remember last year at the LibTech conference, the library on campus was unveiling their recently renovated makerspace. I was so excited to go back and check it out to see how it had changed! There were so many fun things to try out and look at, I ended up staying for quite awhile!

We definitely recommend this conference to anyone working in a library and dealing with technology. Thanks to our co-presenters for an awesome experience!

Student-Powered Conference Report: Neil Andruschak

Connections – Logan’s (LFCS student) keynote presentation

This is a guest post written by Neil Andruschak, Digital Learning Specialist at Little Falls Community Schools. Need a mini-grant to help purchase new materials or help fund a program? Apply now!

A group of central Minnesota educators (MidMN EDU) put together the 2nd annual Student Powered Conference – A MidMN EDU Event on the morning of February 6th at the Sartell Community Center.

Logan, a Little Falls Community High School student, gave the opening keynote presentation and he knocked everybody’s socks off with a great talk about “Connections” and how important student-adult connections can be at school and how those connections can change your life in positive and dramatic ways.

Following the keynote, there were 3 breakout sessions (with 4 rooms and poster sessions in the gym) for students to choose from. All main and poster sessions were led by student presenters.

Elementary Art Educator Internship – Emily’s (LFCS student) poster session

To wrap up the morning, we had a get up and get moving activity that generated a lot of laughs and fun.

Last year was a great success with middle school students as our “beta testers” and this year we have opened the conference up for students grades 4-12. The range of presenters signed up was all the way from 4th through 12th grade. In addition, we had a number of students just attending. They were not required to present. We had a great turnout and are expecting even bigger numbers next year!

The requested grant funds covered Little Falls Community Schools transportation and our share of the building rental. Thank you for supporting unique, personalized learning opportunities for Central Minnesota students!


Report from the Student-Powered Conference: Amanda Holstrom

This is a guest post written by Amanda Holstrom, Instructional Technology Specialist and Apple Teacher at Sartell Middle School. Need a mini-grant to help purchase new materials or help fund a program? Apply now!

At the Student Powered Conference, Sauk Rapids, Sartell, Little Falls, St. Cloud, and Albany students got together to share their ideas and learn from each other. Logan, a senior from Little Falls, presented the opening session, discussing his path into coding and how it has changed his career options and his high school coursework. He set the tone for the day to be open to learning new things and sharing knowledge.

The students ran the show, creating and presenting their knowledge and
passions. Some of the student led sessions covered topics on Astronomy, How to Become an Author, Breakout Boxes, Coding, Virtual Reality in the classroom and more. These sessions offered the Tech Team students the opportunity to learn and experience education in a way that is not available in every district in central Minnesota.

Students that attended these sessions took the ideas presented to them
back to their schools to discuss as a tech team how we can implement this type of learning into our curriculum. Our Tech team decided to focus on bringing more VR/AR (Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality) options into our school. The students looked into finding VR experiences that covered topics they were currently learning and shared them with their teachers. Another group of students is learning about Merge Cubes and what they can create using CoSpacesEDU to show our staff how education can reach beyond the classroom.

Our next step to share what we learned is at Education Done Differently at Sartell Middle School in April. The Sabre Tech Team will be presenting alongside other staff and students on the ways we have changed the way we educate our students.