On Friday, Oct. 6th I was so excited to attend my first ITEM conference in Brooklyn Park! I was looking forward to a day of learning, networking with school media and tech educators and hearing from some local authors. I was able to do that and more!
The conference began with a delicious breakfast and a presentation from the author and Macalester professor Duchess Harris. She talked about her personal connection to her book Hidden Human Computers which is about how “dozens of African American women worked for NASA as expert mathematicians from the 1940s to the 1960s and almost no one knows about it.” Her grandmother was Miriam Daniel Mann and “was one of the first black female computers employed by NASA’s predecessor,the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA).” Harris discusses this in more detail on this episode of the Historically Black podcast.
Then it was time for some chatting before heading off to our first sessions! I was able to hear from Tea Rozman-Clark, Executive Director of the organization Green Card Voices, and the amazing work they do with young immigrants. We learned about their behind-the-scenes recording processes and got to watch how they conducted a day of interviewing students from a remote location that just happened to be St. Cloud State University!
It was great to see the books that have been created that feature the stories of the students interviewed. You can purchase Green Card Youth Voices St. Paul, Minneapolis, or Fargo editions here.
Then we had to rush quickly off to the next session, one that I was excited about: learning about Creating Future Ready Media Centers!
This presentation from media specialist Amy Carney was definitely inspiring (she’s renovated two media centers in the last three years!) and full of great information that we’re happy to pass along to our members, especially since we know some of you may be working on redesigning or updating your media center! You can download a PDF of her presentation here.
We had some free time before the next round of sessions to check out the vendors, browse the bookstore (so many good choices!), and chat with each other. Then it was time for more learning! I got to hear from Outfront MN as they presented LGBTQ 101. We learned definitions and terms regarding individuals in that community and also ways to make interactions with students or our patrons more inclusive and respectful.
Next, it was time for lunch, entering drawings for books, and watching CMLE Board Member Maria Burnham present awards!
And the fun didn’t stop there! After awards were presented, we got to hear from a bunch of awesome local authors and illlustrators! They all answered some unconventional questions and we got to hear about the books they’ve created.
One of the authors on the panel was Lisa Bullard, author of the book Turn Left at the Cow, which Mary recently reviewed in our series CMLE Reads Across Minnesota! I was pretty excited to see her in person!
The afternoon sessions were very interesting as well. I attended a presentation from Dawn Nelson called “When ALL Means ALL: Partnership and Programming for Students with Special Needs.” This can definitely be a challenge for our members and I hoped to get some good resources to share. Dawn talked about her experiences working with students with physical special needs, like making her media center more wheelchair friendly, and also shared her experiences working with students on the autism spectrum. Check out her presentation here for suggestions and useful links!
The final session I attended was a presentation from Maria Burnham, who told us about how she encourages and works to create a culture of reading with both staff and students at Sauk Rapids-Rice High School. She had some great suggestions, like keeping your list of books that you are currently reading visible as an easy conversation starter, or to take part in a school-wide book challenge. Make sure to check out her presentation here!
I had a great time attending ITEM and can’t wait for next year! Hope to see you there! 🙂
The checking in process was fast and smooth! It’s always fun to go to conferences where things are so nicely organized. You can focus on the fun things to do, the sessions to attend, and all the interesting people you are meeting. And there were so many good things to do here – we were jam packed from start to finish!
It’s always valuable to attend conferences for your own professional development. The library profession is a fast-moving one, and the skills we used five years ago – or even last year – are not a match for the needs of today and into the future. Continuing education of all types is a must for providing good service. Conferences not only do that, they make it fun to meet people who like the same interesting things you do! (And I promise you: there is ALWAYS something interesting under discussion at conferences!)
We were in Rochester’s civic center, so the public library was easily accessible. Several of us toured through the building – and it’s always fun to see how different libraries arrange things. This library brings in a lot of great visuals, along with an interesting collection of materials, to provide service to their local community members. And they were very patient with the flocks of visiting library people who stopped in to ask questions and admire their stuff!
Conferences are not all networking and educational sessions – there is always time for fun! A fun thing at this conference is the silent auction, with a huge array of things you can bid on – library related and just fun. Yes, I did bid on this Nancy Pearl action figure; no, I did not win it. Drat. But last year I did win the wonderful bear, Orville, who became our Official Office Bear! (You can find his image all over our website – he’s a natural-born star.)
And there are always plenty of fun things to do outside the conference itself. The planning committee gave a lot of useful information on fun places to go, things to see, groups going to different restaurants, and other good suggestions. This was my first trip to Rochester, and it was really fun to check out their skyway and subway systems, trudge their walking trails (even in some rain!), and to enjoy meeting library people at all kinds of different restaurants! Attending conferences is educational in so many ways; and getting to know a new place is just one of the valuable things you learn!
