Pikesville High School 410-887-1219
7621 Labyrinth Road, Baltimore, Maryland 21208
Fax: 410-415-7274
To Whom It May Concern: Have you ever heard of a “pro-mance?” To me, this term expresses a mutual admiration among professionals. The purpose of this letter is to convey why I believe that Joquetta Johnson deserves to be recognized as the Librarian of the Year, and why I admire what she is doing for her students and for the profession. First, a little history. In fact, that sums up all of the experiences I’d had with librarians. My grandmother was a librarian who taught me many things about ways to learn about history. When I started working as a school counselor, the librarian who worked at my first school was our resident historian for the school, and she cherished that role. Then, when I transferred to Pikesville High, I met my first librarian who was more concerned with using library resources as a means to create one’s future than she was to explore the past. Ms. Johnson’s immediate objective and vision for her library was to make a place for students to be comfortable among the resources, and the library/media center suddenly felt more like a book shop with its comfortable and trendy seats than a stodgy home for unused relics. Rather than introducing herself as the librarian, the brand that Ms. Johnson created for herself was as a “Digital Diva.” And trust me, she is. Throughout my career, colleagues looked askance at the efforts that I took to bring my school counseling programming into the 21st century, as though engaging students should be limited to my office. Seeing Ms. Johnson in action, she became my role model for using Web 2.0 tools to help students interact with the global learning network that is available to them. She showed me how we can use YouTube to provide resources, and found two solutions (http://tinyurl.com/GetAPFit) to a complicated problem that we had – how can we share video clips of teachers and students discussing the realistic expectations of Advanced Placement coursework, in such a way as to encourage students to pursue rigor without giving them biased opinions? By posting the videos online, of course, and using a shortened URL that is easy to add to documents that allow us limited white space for publication! When it became clear that one of our schoolwide objectives was going to be to increase the mean SAT scores for all of our students while encouraging all students to take advantage of this college readiness opportunity, Ms. Johnson amazed us with the resources that she catalogued using LiveBinders. In fact, Ms. Johnson’s use of LiveBinders was so influential that our AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) coordinator used the resource to maintain our site team’s recertification documents, and was recognized throughout the school system for the innovation. It also inspired me to use LiveBinders as a means of putting my state school counselor association conference’s program online for the first time. Without exception, every one of our faculty meetings begins with a “Tech in 10” session hosted with Ms. Johnson, when she takes the stylus from her Promethean board and dazzles the entire Focused on Quality
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staff with simple and effective ways to take their students’ achievement to greater heights by reaching them on platforms where they are comfortable. Through free and district-paid subscription-based resources, Ms. Johnson teaches the teachers about the many websites that help students engage with their texts, research papers, and collaborative opportunities. Ms. Johnson is the exemplar for technology in education for the purpose of student achievement and academic growth. Ms. Johnson’s influence is not only felt by teachers. In fact, she is the only school librarian I have seen who has embraced the opportunity to be a teaching librarian. One period of every day, she teaches our AVID 9 class. For a group as overwhelmed as this group is prone to be, and as needy as they could be, Ms. Johnson has used her charm and innovation to create a family atmosphere that allows her students to be supportive of each other like no other group in the region. In fact, I recently attended a meeting that sought to explore the “typical AVID 9 student.” Aside from wading through data focused on academic rigor, we had access to resiliency statistics for AVID 9 students across the 25 high schools in our school system. Ms. Johnson’s AVID 9 students are the most well-adjusted, and they report the least stress, throughout our school system. I must share that my favorite aspect of Ms. Johnson’s presence in our school community is her connection with the students who seek the library as their solace. Aside from her warmth and encouragement, she has established after-school programming to make the library a “#trendy” place to be for our students. In addition to the typical recommended reading, she has singlehandedly exponentially grown the graphic novel and anime selection, becoming a lighthouse for the otherwise unaffiliated students to connect with each other over common interests. She hosts an “appy party” whereby students come together to share their favorite mobile apps. She sometimes even connects a game console to her Promethean Board after school for students to connect with each other over their favorite gaming platforms. Through her many influences on school culture, Ms. Johnson is an integral member of our school community, and she is the image of the future of school library and media services. She is my role model for using technology in education, and for modeling ways that educators can use social media for forging connections. I believe that there could not possibly be a librarian more deserving than she of national recognition. Sincerely, Jeremy Goldman, NCC School Counseling Department Chair 2014 Maryland Secondary School Counselor of the Year
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