How I benefited

It is an honor to serve on the CASL Board and support school librarians throughout Connecticut.  I enjoy being able to network with colleagues from across the state and share ideas/resources.  

As President of ASLA, I believed it was a great opportunity to encourage library media specialists and members of ASLA to attend AASL as the national conference for school librarians. As an affiliate, we stressed the importance of attending sessions, meeting authors, and how to build a national professional learning network to expand the abilities to collaborate and learning.

In addition, we worked with members to bring back learning to colleagues who were not able to attend as well as provide ideas for sessions at our annual state affiliate conference. 

I wish that more of us Californians could get to the AASL conference. Our CSLA conferences are wonderful for PD and networking, but AASL takes us to a national level. So, we can learn from the best of the best nationally, and we can also compare notes with our familiar California people. We can also take back some ideas for our own conferences, such perhaps, as the closing session brainstorming.

Biggest takeaways and presentation links for the sessions we attended thus far. Loved networking, too, because most of the time I see these colleagues only 1-2 times a yr. #MObrarianLove 

It has been fun to touch base with #VAASL (Virginia) members during the conference -- from seeing a familiar face to chatting over dinner. It's nice to exchange session learning with people in passing! The affiliate connection has also given me a bit of a sense of belonging at a huge conference!

Serving on the CASL Board is an honor. My colleagues across the state face the elimination of Library positions, and CASL works to demonstrate why every school needs a full time Library Media Specialist.