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Leadership
Significance
Admittedly leadership is not my strongest attribute. If something needs to
be done I do it, but I am less likely to be at the head of a group project.
The leadership role is one that I not very comfortable with assuming. While
at the iSchool, I have worked to develop stronger leadership skills through
work on group projects and opportunities at my Directed Fieldwork.
During my internship at the Shorewood High School Library I organized
a Poetry Jam, with the theme of poems celebrating diversity, at the
library. Over the course of this project,
I learned a great deal about how to take a vision for something that you
would like to see happen in the library and make it happen in the real
world. This is very different from the more abstract planning processes we have
engaged in within our courses at the iSchool, though I found the
project planning skills I gained through work on group projects in many of
my classes quite useful. The additional project planning and leadership
skills I have gained in subsequent classes such as LIS 586 Public Library Advocacy and LIS
523 Advanced Information Services will be of great help to me in planning
future projects. Organizing this event was certainly a "learning
experience". While we were exposed to many ideals and styles of leadership in LIS
580 I don't think you can teach leadership. Though the best leaders serve as
inspiration to achieve a high ideal of leadership, I think we must each
learn through our own experience.
Organizing the Poetry Jam
The idea for the Poetry Jam came out of informal
discussions I had with
librarians and teachers about the possibility of doing some events in the library to
celebrate Black History Month. The librarians were enthusiastic and supportive about the idea of my doing a
Poetry Jam at the library. A "poetry jam" is an event
where people gather to read and share poetry. It can also include
sharing "spoken word" pieces, which are impromptu pieces created as the
poet speaks. A "poetry slam" on the other hand is generally a poetry or
"spoken word" competition. Although I had
originally wanted to schedule the Poetry Jam in February, we ran into too many scheduling
conflicts so we rethought things and decided to schedule it for March instead.
In preparation for the Poetry Jam I designed a
flyer for the event, and
sent out an
e-mail to all of the language arts
teachers asking them to let their students know about the Poetry Jam. I
followed up the e-mail by sending a note to each
of the language arts teachers with a copy of the event flyer attached. The
note contained the information from the e-mail about the Poetry Jam, and
asked them to make an announcement to their classes about the event and
hang up a copy of the event flyer in their classroom. Many of the language
arts teachers were interested in encouraging their students to participate and
some even offered students extra credit for attending as an added
incentive. We put up
flyers advertising the Poetry Jam on the bulletin boards in the entrance to
the library, and the event was included in the morning announcements the
week of the event. I asked my mentor, Betty Brennan, to help with
getting a microphone and refreshment for the event. We requested a small
public address system from facilities, with a microphone and CD player.
Betty was able to purchase snack food and drinks for the event out of
the reading group budget. To highlight poetry representing a diverse range of cultures
in the library collection, I put together a book display
of poetry from
around the world. This included poetry by African American, Native
American, Latino & Hispanic, Japanese, and Middle Eastern authors.
The Event!
The Poetry Jam was a lot of fun! We set up for the Poetry Jam in the
reference area,
where library classes are normally
held, but moved aside the tables to set up rows of seating. We had the PA system set up at
the front of the room with
music and a microphone, snacks and drinks, and lots of books of cool poetry. Betty Brennan and I started things off by reading some poems highlighting the diversity of
peoples and ideas represented in the poetry in the library collection. I was really
pleased that the students who came brought some original poetry to read. They also
joined us in exploring some of the poetry collections from the book display I had put
together to find more poems
to read aloud. Some of us really got into doing dramatic reading. We all had fun
sharing poetry and learning about some new poets. Turnout was lower than I hoped, but I have
learned some things from this about advertising events and getting people invested in
participating. Next time I will:
- Be more active about advertising the event, advertising directly to individuals as
opposed to relying mostly on flyers and announcements,
- Seek out people who might be interested directly,
- Talk the event up to patrons at the library, and
- Work harder on getting people to commit to the event, using a sign-up sheet where
people interested in participating can leave an e-mail address so that I can send out a
reminder about the event.
I would love to do this sort of thing again, perhaps as a bi-weekly
or monthly library event so that it was possible to build up and add to a group
of people
who got together regularly to share and enjoy poetry!
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