Should School Librarians Track Attempted MGCs?

Short answer: yeah! It's a simple way to improve your impact and your quality of life.

But, for folks like librarians:

• Print a list of all students in the school, alphabetical by last name.
• Put the list someplace where you'll see it and be likely to use it (e.g., a binder, a clipboard, a set of clipboards)
• When students enter your space:
  • A) If you don't know them, ask them their name, telling them that you're working hard to learn the names and faces of all ___ students in your school.
  • B) If you do know them, attempt an MGC with them.

Sample templates:
–What's your taste in reading?
–What's the last good book you read?
–Do you ever read just for fun?

Some notes:
–When you've got whole classes in there and the classes are well occupied, use the time to attempt MGCs with the students and learn their names.
–When you've got whole classes in there and you're on duty to keep them occupied, do your main job first but still seek 1-3 MGC attempts in the midst of what you're doing; what we're trying to do here is make MGC attempts second-nature for us, something that we can do in any situation.

After a month or so of doing this, take inventory of your MGC sheets and estimate what percentage of students you've attempted to connect with at least 1x.

Now for the next month, set a goal for yourself: I want to attempt MGCs with 10 or 5 or 15 new students on my roster each day.

For this phase, you'll likely have to go out of your library/media center space (e.g., hallways during passing time) to add to your list. That's good. You're establishing yourself as an educator beyond the four walls of your space.

In this fashion, you will start to see significant differences in your librarian Credibility by the three month mark. And if you don't, email me and let's figure out what's going on.

All best,
DSJR