Every year, the CSLA leadership gets together to bond and create their focus for the year. This year, President Katie McNamara focused the summit on building leadership skills, leading with empathy, and cultivating a culture of belonging. The Board was encouraged to dive into their own leadership strengths and weaknesses as well so they could be better not just for CSLA, but also their schools and any other leadership roles. With COVID-19 ruining any in-person plans, the Leadership Summit went digital. It started off with a social hour on June 21st for the roughly 40 participants to connect and get to know each other. The bulk of the work happened June 22 and 29, with “homework” and learning happening “Between the Mondays.” There was also a Movie Night on June 25th where participants and all of the CSLA membership was invited to watch Just Mercy and participate in a #CaLibChat Twitter Chat hosted by member Sara Smith and President Katie McNamara.
There were many informative presentations, including tenets of good leadership from guest speaker Ann Kozma, bullet journaling from CSLA Historian Heather Gruenthal. Sarah Young-Sheppard, Founder and Director of SEWI (Social-Emotional Wellness Initiative), also shared a presentation on Compassionate Leadership, and an Advocacy update was provided by our VP of Government Relations, Glen Warren.
Leadership members also had many discussions throughout the Mondays with strategies like design thinking - HMW (How might we), and Inquiry design, using tools such as Zoom Breakout rooms, Jamboard, and lots of Google Docs and Slides, tools that librarians can use with their students and colleagues during online learning. There were lots of powerful and important conversations on a variety of topics, including making improvements to membership engagement, recruitment of non-members, utilization of honorary and retiree members, providing Professional Development opportunities for members, revamping the utilization of our various online platforms and social media accounts, creating position statements, and incorporating tenets of Anti-Racism into our organization and libraries. Our movie night viewing of Just Mercy also focused on how to improve libraries as Anti-Racism organizations.
Committees and elected officers had a chance to annually reflect and set goals for their committee work and offices. These reflections and goals are what we hope will improve CSLA in the upcoming year, even with all the challenges we will see. Between all the great connections leaders have made, and the work that was done, this should be a great year for CSLA!
If you would like to become a part of the CSLA mission, work, and leadership, your involvement is welcome! Please consider becoming a committee member. You can sign up here: https://bit.ly/CSLACommittees
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