An issue that I anticipate arising in my teaching in the near future is...teaching in the future.  How do I become a future-ready librarian in a future-ready school that prepares students for the challenges and opportunities that await them?  

The other day I was asked to speak at a monthly education committee meeting about the École Robb Road learning commons.  I decided to speak about future-ready students.  (I've noticed that people are much happier when I speak about helping students become "future-ready" than they are when I talk about "21st century learning".)  I planned to show the committee this UNESCO/World Bank infographic:​

I intended to follow the infographic with a reassuring discussion of the activities I've been conducting in the learning commons to prepare students for their uncertain futures.  Here are some keywords connected to the activities, just so you get a sense of what I've been up to:

• ​trades

• design challenges

• tinkering

• information literacy

• new literacies

• multimodal texts

• ​participatory learning

• 3​QPOC (you might know this as "CRAP detection")

• ​digital citizenship

• virtual collaboration

• 24/7 access​

Let's take a look at another infographic, Follett's Future Ready Librarian "pie" (Link to the Follett Future-Ready Librarians page).  Personalized Student Learning is at the centre.  Because instruction in a French Immersion milieu requires so much attention to finding just-right resources and further adapting them to meet a wide range of needs, personalizing learning is well underway in the SLLCs at both my schools.  
The green slice  denotes how we schedule time in the SLLC to work with students,which is an ongoing focus for me.  And I'm working on the ochre piece:  budgets and resources.  I hope that by "Data and Privacy" (lime green slice) they are referring to cloud-based storage issues and digital citizenship. Addressing these matters with students is underway as well, with TLs in my district having worked together on a K-12 scope and sequence of information skills.

• How can I lead professional learning that cultivates a broader understanding of skills for a digital age (critical thinking, information literacy, digital citizenship, technology competencies)?

• ​​​How do I wrestle with district tech guys to have a say in decisions about connectivity, digital devices, information, resources, programming and services?  (Do I even want to have a say in this?)

• What ar​e the best models for partnerships that promote community engagement and lifelong learning?

• ​​How do I weave SLLC goals and practices with school improvement goals to make the learning commons the heart of the school's strategic planning?

But look at all the other pieces!  Collaborative leadership?  Personalized professional learning? Robust infrastructure?  Community partnerships?  Follett says, "if properly prepared and supported, school librarians are well-positioned to be at the leading edge of the digital transformation of learning". Here are some questions I have about becoming thusly prepared:​

I am also preoccupied with the standards of practice for school libraries proposed by the Canadian Library Association.  (Link​ to the pdf copy of "Leading Learning") I have been using the CLA rubrics to chart a course for my schools' library-to-learning commons transitions.  I believe the direction the CLA proposes is sound, but some of the growth indicators will require new learning on my part.

For example, I wonder how it will look when "students and community lead special projects and initiatives in the LLC".  (Red theme: Facilitating collaborative engagement).  

And, of course, ​INQUIRY, INQUIRY, INQUIRY (yellow theme:  Cultivating effective instructional design). Inquiry comes up dozens of times in the standards.  I see so many different models of inquiry-based learning​ from ​​Kieran Egan's Learning in Depth to Michelle Hikida's playful inquiry.  How do I think inquiry should look in my SLLC/school?  How do I support colleagues who are reluctant to implement inquiry models, especially when I know too little about it to lead the way effectively?  I'm prepared to wade in, to dabble, experiment but if I look over my shoulder and no one's coming along with me then I'm not "leading learning".​

Such are my questions as we embark on ​​this learning process.  I did an initial database search using the search term "future-ready schools", and just reading the titles of the articles I found gave me ideas for new ways of working with colleagues to promote the learning commons as means to prepare students for a complex future.  You can view a list of articles I would like to explore here:  Future-Ready Schools.  If they aren't available to you through the UBC library, I can provide pdfs.

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