Yearly Archives: 2019

513 posts

National School Library Month

BlogPosts Events

Hey guess what! April is not only Autism Awareness month, and National Poetry month. It’s also the best month ever… because it’s National School Library Month!

Created and hosted by the American Association of School Librarians, April is a celebration of school librarians and their programs. We encourage you to host activities to help your school and your local community understand the essential role that your library program plays in transforming learning for your students.

This year’s spokesperson is Dav Pilkey, and the theme is Everyone Belongs @ Your School Library.

Every Wendesday of this month, AASL is hosting webinars at 7:00 pm Eastern time:

The Power of Manga, Comics, & Graphic Novels through the Lens of the AASL Standards Frameworks for Learners
Wednesday, April 3, 2019 | 6:00 p.m. Central

Addressing the Gatekeepers: How to Turn Comic and Graphic Novel Skeptics Into Believers
Wednesday, April 10, 2019 | 6:00 p.m. Central

Comics Librarianship: Essential Tools for the School Librarian
Wednesday, April 17, 2019 | 6:00 p.m. Central

TBA
Wednesday, April 24, 2019 | 6:00 p.m. Central

For more information about School Library Month, and this years events, go to the AASL School Library Advocacy page.

Objects & Memory

Offair Listings

This program is about the otherwise ordinary things in our homes and museums that mean the most to us because of their associations with people and experiences. The film examines items recovered or offered in response to 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing and the Vietnam War, along with stories of people who find them important. Without the objects the stories would lack vibrancy; without the stories the objects would lack significance. Taken together, the commonplace is transformed into the remarkable and where the stuff of history is highly personalized.

Airs 4/3 at 4-5 a.m.

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National Poetry Month

BlogPosts Events

April is (among other things) National Poetry Month! Started in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets (poets.org), National Poetry Month has become the largest literary celebration in the world. There are a myriad of ways to acknowledge and celebrate the importance of poetry in our culture:

  • The Academy of American Poets hosts the “Dear Poet Project“, which invites students in middle through high school to write letters in response to poems.
  • You can request a National Poetry Month poster and hang it in your library.
  • You could sign up to receive a poem-a-day in your email.
  • Build a creative book display (and if you do, please send us a photo to liesl_toates@boces.monroe.edu and tell us whether we are allowed to share it on our blog!)

Check out this list of 30 ways to celebrate national poetry month.

The Central Park Five

Offair Listings

A film from award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns, tells the story of the five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem who were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park in 1989. Directed and produced by Burns, David McMahon and Sarah Burns, the film chronicles the Central Park Jogger case, for the first time from the perspective of the five teenagers whose lives were upended by this miscarriage of justice.

Airs 4/2 at 9 p.m.

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Autism Awareness Month

BlogPosts Events Multimedia

April is (among other things) Autism Awareness Month. PBS has a number of valuable programming for this purpose. Check out the following programs and use the request form for a recording.

POV #3011 “Swim Team” – Parents of teens on the autism spectrum form a competitive swim team, training them with high expectations. Follow the rise of three athletes as the film captures a moving quest for inclusion, independence and a life that feels like winning.

Airs 4/3 at 7 p.m.;

Spectrum: A Story of the Mind – Take a journey into the rich sensory experience of autism. Imagine a world where words taste and thoughts feel, where sounds swell with color and leaves on trees change tones visible to the naked eye, and where eye contact with another can cause physical pain. Spectrum: A Story of the Mind explores autism through the lens of diverse characters on the spectrum.

Airs 4/6 at 1:30 p.m.

America Reframed #514 “Deej” – the story of DJ Savarese (“Deej”), a gifted, young writer and advocate for nonspeaking autistics. Once a “profoundly disabled” foster kid on a fast track to nowhere, DJ is now a first-year college student who insists on standing up for his peers: people who are dismissed as incompetent because they are neurologically diverse. Will Deej be able to find freedom for himself and others like him?

Airs 4/13 at 10 p.m.

Autism: Coming of Age – In the next 10 to 15 years, an estimated 800,000 children with autism will age out of the school system and transition into adulthood. Then, they will look to ill-prepared state and federal governments for the support services and resources to meet their many needs – a situation autism experts refer to as the “coming tsunami.” The one-hour documentary AUTISM: COMING OF AGE provides an inside look at the lives of three adults with autism and includes interviews with their families and support teams. Autism and disability experts from Massachusetts, New York, Washington, Virginia and Pennsylvania also discuss the current system, impending challenges and possible outcomes for the future.

Airs 4/13 at 11 p.m.

Keep checking the Offair Listings portion our blog throughout the month as we post more information and links to request these.

Nicholas and Alexandra: The Letters

Offair Listings

Historian Suzannah Lipscomb explores the great love story of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra, more than a century after their execution. The two-part series focuses on the couple’s intimate correspondence, which chronicles their eccentric religious views, political ineptitude, and reliance on the mystic, Rasputin, in the lead-up to the 1917 Russian Revolution.

  • #101 airs 4/1 at 9 p.m. (repeats 4/6 at 4 p.m.)
  • #102 airs 4/8 at 9 p.m. (repeats 4/13 at 4 p.m.)

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Shots Fired

Offair Listings

Shots Fired is a short documentary about courage, communications and resilience in the face of a school shooting. Just before school started on an April morning a student with a .357 Magnum walked into the Commons, an area teaming with North Thurston High School (NTHS) students, raised the gun and fired into the ceiling. Chaos erupted. The student fired a second shot. What happened next is the best-case scenario in the face of such terror. No one died. Rather than taking sides in the gun control/rights debate, Shots Fired offers a rare look at a school shooting. Even with no fatalities, the residual trauma is palpable. Students, teachers, school administrators and staff along with first responders reflect on what happened, what went well and what could have worked better. School shootings often end in unbearable tragedy. In Shots Fired, tragedy is upended by unforgettable courage and resilience.

Airs 4/1 at 2:30-3 a.m.

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