Equity Workshop: Transforming Our School Library Policies and Practices

Equity does not always mean equal. And the School-to-Prison-Pipeline
has infiltrated our libraries in spite of our intentions. Bring your circulation policies,
your most often used classroom management techniques, and your library space
layout. Together, we will deconstruct our libraries in order to share and workshop our
best ideas for centering equity in our library policies and practices. Most important,
bring your potential to create and embrace change and your willingness to ask, “Why
do we do it this way?”

Lani Blechman

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Lani Blechman is a white library teacher at Fort River Elementary School in Amherst, MA. She has over 4 years of preK-12 school library experience in public, private, and charter school settings; 13 years of working across the urban/rural and college-town/post-industrial-city divides of Western Massachusetts; and over 15 years of working for racial, gender, and social justice. She is the 2017 recipient of the Massachusetts School Library Association’s President's Award - West.