You will receive a link to download both reports in your email.
If you don't receive it, please check your spam folder.
The "COVID Slide" refers to the inevitable loss of learning that will happen while schools are shut down or shifted to online learning. This term originates from the idea of the "Summer Slide" where children tend to lose ground during the summer break from school. Most educators expect a similar loss due to the COVID-19 shutdown.
In July 2020, the EveryLibrary Institute published "School Librarians and the COVID Slide" as an overview of contemporaneous work by school librarians during the depths of the pivot and made recommendations for administrators to fully utilize their school librarians in a disrupted learning environment. In February 2021, "School Librarians and the Second Wave" looks to follow-up with dozens of school librarians to learn about and showcase their successes and to highlight for policymakers the investments that should be made in creating and sustaining effective school library programs.
School librarians, long thought of as thought leaders in school communities, provide invaluable services and resources to children in times of crisis. With educators facing unprecedented challenges presented by COVID-19, school librarians and their libraries play a more important role than ever. School librarians provide critical services for children in distance education as well as in-person. Now that COVID-19 shutdowns have impacted a full year of learning for children around the nation, school librarians are needed more than ever, and they deserve our support.
But there more to the story. Read both reports as a complementary series or dive into the February 2021 "Second Wave" update to see what critical steps smart school and district leaders took to get their students back on track.
Please register now to receive a PDF of both reports.
About the Authors
Allison Mackley (COVID Slide and Second Wave) is the Director for Curriculum Development at Elizabethtown College in the School for Continuing and Professional Studies. She has 28 years of experience in K-12 schools as a National Board Certified Teacher librarian and English teacher. She is a former American Association of School Librarians Board Director and serves as a past-president of the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association. In addition, she is appointed to the Pennsylvania Department of Education Governor’s Advisory Council on Library Development and represents school librarians as a member of the ISTE Librarians Network Leadership Team.
Heather Lister (Second Wave) is a school librarian and the Founder of Construct Learning, a STEM and maker education consultancy and professional development provider. She has worked with teachers and students around the world on implementing library makerspaces and integrative STEM programming. She is the Past-President of the ISTE Librarians Network and a former Board Director of the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association.
John Chrastka (COVID Slide) is the executive director of the EveryLibrary Institute and EveryLibrary. He is the co-author of Winning Elections and Influencing Politicians for Library Funding and Before the Ballot: Building Political Support for Library Funding with Patrick “PC” Sweeney (ALA / Neal Schuman). He has contributed chapters to Planning our future libraries: Blueprints for 2025 (2014), and Re-envisioning the MLS: Perspectives on the Future of Library and Information Science Education (2018). He is a frequent keynoter and speaker at library conferences in the United States and abroad, is a sought-after trainer for state libraries, and is a regular guest lecturer for MLS / MLIS programs where he speaks on the topic of "political literacy".