Karla Bame Collins

Steve Thomas: Karla welcome to the podcast.

Karla Bame Collins: Thank you. Good to be here.

Steve Thomas: Before we get into the content of the book, or I guess it’ll be probably be part of the story, but what led you into librarianship in the first place and then to focus on school librarianship and then further focused on the topic of the book?

Karla Bame Collins: I always knew that I would be a teacher, always knew I would be an educator, that was never a question for me. I never wanted to teach people taller than me. That was my goal in life was to just teach young people, little people. My undergrad was early childhood education. I ended up getting a minor in library science, so that added on that pre-K through 12 library piece so I could be a school librarian at any level.

My first job was as a school librarian in an elementary school. And from there I did a variety of other things. I taught preschool special education for half a year, which was an interesting experience. I taught eighth grade history a year. That was also an interesting experience. And I taught in the library at every level: elementary, middle, and high school.

And now I teach people to be school librarians. I always knew that my eventual goal was to teach people to be educators to do what I loved. And school library world is just where most of my career has ended up being.

Steve Thomas: What about your focus on kids with, I don’t like the term special needs either, but we’ll say special needs or disabilities. Where did that become of focus of yours that you wanted to write your dissertation on it, and then later now write your book on that topic?

Karla Bame Collins: I’ve always been interested in how to meet those needs of, especially the students in the classroom or in the library who might be struggling but to meet the needs of all the students. That’s always been a big concern of mine is what am I doing for each individual student? When I had my own children, it became very apparent to me that even within the same family, children are different. And I write in the book about my children a lot. They know that I talk about them a lot. They’re in their twenties now, so they’re not children anymore, but I’m not giving away any secrets ’cause they know, I tell ’em all.

But they, especially my twins, have dealt with a lot of learning difficulties throughout the years. They are both colorblind, have color vision deficiencies which is a genetic condition that I knew they would possibly inherit from me because both of my brothers also have color vision deficiencies. So that became the focus of my dissertation, looking at what school librarians in particular know about color vision deficiencies, and how they use color in the libraries because, you know, 90% of us use color as a way to organize things, but 10% of us organizing just by color means nothing. So I wanted to really focus on that and on the importance of that and bring that to people’s attention.

Steve Thomas: And the things like that that are important. You know, if you are doing signage and it’s not that you have to make everything in the world stark black and white, you can use the color, but you have to make it an accessible sign for everybody. You don’t just use text either. You want to use pictures that make it clear. So it’s to all people.

In the course of the book, how are you defining hidden needs and talents?

Karla Bame Collins: So that term came to me actually as I was walking one day. I was really struggling over terminology because people get agitated about different types of terminology and everybody has a different level of agitation about different. So I wanted to choose something that would really sum up what I was thinking and hopefully not put anything into a box if that makes sense.

So all of the conditions that I talk about in the book are things, most of them, are things that might not be apparent to us when the student comes in the library, walks through our doors. We might not realize they’re dealing with things. And all of them have certain needs that need to be addressed, certain ways of learning or certain ways that that condition might get in the way of learning and they all have things that because of, or in spite of maybe that condition, they have certain talents. They’re able to do things that others can’t. Using the color vision as an example, as I often do, my personal children don’t necessarily think of color first when they see something. And they come up with other words to describe something instead of just describing it by the color, where I might say, “Oh, he’s wearing a blue shirt.” They’re going to say many more descriptive words to describe that person and what he is wearing.

Steve Thomas: That’s interesting. And you always hear the example too of ADHD kids or people, sorry, not just kids, but ADHD people can also have that hyper focus. So like, you’re super distracted sometimes, but you can also be hyperfocused. So it’s like that condition is not named appropriately ’cause it’s not necessarily a lack of ability to focus. It’s a lack of regulation of your focus, but you can also be that, yeah, that hyper focus.

Karla Bame Collins: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s another condition that is mentioned in the book. Again, something that all of my children and quite possibly their mother deal with. And none of them have the hyperactive piece of it, which also tends to hide the condition more, if they’re not somebody who’s always acting up or always bouncing off the walls, people might just think that they’re ignoring the teacher or ignoring what’s going on, when truly, they’re trying to find what one thing is supposed to be their focus at the time when everything that’s coming at them is equally important.

Steve Thomas: And we talked about that a little bit, but to be clear to people who are looking at the book and thinking of the book, this is not all just about conditions that would put a child when they’re in school in a special education class. We’re talking about accommodating people in the school library, the entire school, and it will cover a lot of conditions that might have someone be in special education, but it’s not exclusively that. So don’t think that it’s exclusively like, “Oh, I don’t work with that population.” Number one. Yes, you do, but number two, it’s everybody. And we talked a little bit before we started recording too, that we’ll talk a little bit at the beginning about specific school library stuff but this is not specifically school library stuff. This is applicable across society basically, not even in libraries.

The first thing in the book is you talk about this is kind of the specific school library stuff, that there are other people within your school that you can collaborate with. Can you talk a little bit about how you find those people and how as a school librarian you would work with them within the school and within the profession as well, outside of your specific school?

Karla Bame Collins: Most of what this book is about is building relationships. So you find those people by talking to them, by asking them questions. In one of the classes I teach, I have our students find out what curriculum is taught throughout the entire school where they work. So if they’re in an elementary school, they need to look at the curriculum for every grade level and for the specialists or the electives or the encore teachers or whatever they happen to be called at that, at that level. And I encourage them to go and talk to those teachers to find out what it is that they really do. They often find out that the specialists, those electives teachers, are more excited than anybody to talk about what they do because people don’t ask ’em. People just assume you know what you’re doing in the art room, that’s great, but what they’re doing in the art room can really apply to what you’re doing in the classroom or the library, or anywhere else.

So build those relationships, ask those questions, go and observe them. See what they’re actually doing in their classrooms and how they’re working with the students.

Steve Thomas: Schools are already usually a collaborative environment anyway, and as you said, usually people want to collaborate with you, so it’s not that you’re pushing yourself on them.

I think school librarians are used to that anyway of having to kind of get into the classroom and get the teachers to bring their class into the library and stuff like that so this wouldn’t necessarily be a new thing, but this maybe a new thing to talk about of like this side of the librarianship of how are you approaching these students? And this is how I’m approaching these students so we can work together. When the general ed teacher comes in, they’re just as excited as a special ed teacher. They love the kids, too, and working with them and learning how to work with them. It is good that they all work as a team. Especially I think, in school librarianship, because often you are the only, you might have some clerks, if you’re lucky, but you likely, unless you’re in a very large school, don’t have another librarian with you. And maybe you don’t even have clerks except for student volunteers who are helping you out.

Karla Bame Collins: Yeah. And that makes it even more important to know people in the school that you can reach out to, and not just because there’s a particular need that in the classroom or there might be a specific need for a student and you might say, “I need to go to the special ed teacher and talk to that special ed teacher.” But it could be that you have an idea for a lesson, but you really want to incorporate some sort of music or something like that with the lesson. So talk to the music teacher. You might have some movement ideas for a story that you’re working on. Talk to the PE teacher. My favorite collaborations in the elementary school especially were with those other specialists. We worked together all the time. Ate lunch together every day and planned collaboratively all the time.

Steve Thomas: Just like you want them to support and recognize your expertise and what you bring to the table, to the school team, as the librarian, you need to recognize that they have their own special expertises and they can bring to you, like you said, if it’s a movement thing, probably the PE teacher has some better ideas than you, or at least different ideas than you.

Karla Bame Collins: It makes my job so much easier if I don’t have to know all of that. I can rely on them to know that part of it. I only need to know my piece.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and I think it also helps to know school librarians elsewhere, within your school system especially, but then just getting involved professionally so you know people around the country that you can say, “Hey, you know, I’m dealing with this situation. I gotta talk to another librarian about it.” And making those connections is always important too, I think.

Karla Bame Collins: Absolutely.

Steve Thomas: And then you talk about using universal design. Can you describe what universal design is just for some of the people who may not know what it is and then how you would use it to assist students?

Karla Bame Collins: Sure. So Universal Design for Learning is an idea that really stemmed from Universal Design in architecture. In architecture, things are designed for everybody to have easy access or everybody to have better access, and because you design a ramp in a sidewalk, so somebody who needs to use that ramp for a wheelchair, for example, because it’s designed that way, when somebody’s pushing a stroller, that’s gonna really help them. It’s not necessarily specifically designed for their need, but it absolutely helps everybody. When my knees are hurting me, having that ramp really helps me instead of having to take the steps. So that’s the idea of Universal Design in architecture.

Putting that into learning, Universal Design for Learning is that you think from the beginning of how you will design your instruction and your instructional space to meet the needs of as many people as possible. So you don’t know what needs a student is going to come in with on any given day. I think the example I probably use in the book, that I usually use, is if a class comes in and you have a really exciting, fun dance participation to go along with the story, and a student comes into the room and has hurt themselves in soccer practice the night before and is on crutches or in a wheelchair for that day, if you haven’t planned universally, then when that student comes in the room, you’re like, “Oh no. Now what am I gonna do with that person? They’re not gonna be able to participate.” If you have thought about it universally then you’ve thought about different things that students could do. So when that student comes in the room, you say, “Ah ha! I know who’s going to be our beat keeper as we’re dancing. They may not be able to do the dance, but they could definitely keep the beat for us, which is really important.”

So it just changes your perspective from the beginning and it improves the instructional experience for everybody. Like that ramp, everybody can use the ramp so if you design the instruction with these different needs in mind, everybody can use that instruction, whether they have that specific need or not. It’s really important when we’re talking about hidden needs and talents because you don’t know what those students are coming in with and you don’t know who it is that might need that so-called ramp for that instruction.

If you’ve thought about it from the beginning, then you don’t have to take time out of your instruction to think about it when that need shows up. Again, a lot of the conditions, I guess we’ll call them, that are in the book might not be things that the kids wanna talk to you about either. There are some emotional things. Trauma is mentioned. That’s not necessarily something they’re gonna come in and say, “Hey, I had this really traumatic experience last night. I’m not going to be ready to do this event!” But if you have options for them, and that’s what Universal Design for Learning is all about, is giving them options, that all lead to learning and demonstrating their learning.

Steve Thomas: You also talk about making sure to have the physical space be open and designed for everybody. Things like, again, the wheelchair ramp , but like, just the person again, who breaks their leg playing soccer, how can they make their way around the space? What are other ways that you need to be considering your space besides those kind of more obvious, big things like that?

Karla Bame Collins: So think about how everybody can have access to whatever physical things are in your space. For example, at tables. Is the table height at a level where everybody can use it? One of the libraries that I worked in was a brand new school, beautiful space, but they had this big round computer, we called it the mothership ’cause it was this giant computer table, I guess, that the keyboard level of the computer table was at my shoulder height. Then the monitor was another 12 inches above that. It was a high school, so people are taller in high school, but not everybody. And our students had their hands up at their mouths trying to type on the computers and there was no wheelchair accessible computer station. The contractor for the building company that built this school had a child in a wheelchair. So I brought him in and said, “Where is your child going to use a computer in this library?” And so changes were made.

But how can they access the books? Can they get to the bottom shelf or the top shelf? What resources are you putting where? Also when you’re thinking about the types of books that you have, not just print books, but what about eBooks? If you’re using eBooks in your library, do students have access to a device that will get to those eBooks? Can they still use that after school hours or off school property? Is your website set up where it’s accessible to everybody? And with accessibility features in mind?

Steve Thomas: Even things like what we talked about at the beginning of having the signs in different colors and pictures and things like that, there’s all kinds of stuff to be thinking about. In a modern school library where we’re more aware of things and more sensitive to things, would you have sensory things around?

Karla Bame Collins: Absolutely, absolutely. And a lot of school libraries now have quiet rooms or sensory rooms or a place where students can go with lower lighting comfortable seating , and definitely different tactile items for students to have, different sensory items for them to have. The library is just a great place to allow students choice and an opportunity to experience things that they might not have time in the regular classroom to experience.

So I always had puzzles and games and craft items. Maker spaces are big right now, and a makerspace can be as simple as those things I just mentioned, or it can have robots and higher tech things in it as well, but just having different opportunities for students to experience.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, more experiential kind of learning, hands-on learning kinds of things.

Karla Bame Collins: I find a lot of teenagers and young adults now are very interested in getting back to handcrafts: crocheting, knitting, sewing, drawing, paper crafts, all kinds of things like that. It’s very popular with them right now, and that’s a great thing. I know a lot of teenagers have missed out on some experiences early ’cause they were always on their devices and always on their computers and they missed those fine motor skills, so bring it back.

Steve Thomas: We talked about collaborating. Can you talk about some of the people in a school that you might reach out to if you’re trying to think of how to reach out in a different way?

Karla Bame Collins: I always tell new school librarians, the school counselor should be your best friend and on your speed dial. So that, I have to say, is the very first person that you need to be in touch with. Students will come in and tell the school librarian things that they would never tell anybody else, including the counselor. You need to have a close contact with them. So that’s the first person. You can also do some really cool collaboration with the counselor. Lots of great books that get into emotional things that counselors are connected with.

Any of the art teachers, elective teachers, art, music, P.E., But also the speech therapist or speech pathologist in the school. They are amazing resources. One thing in the book that I try to do for each of the specialists I talk about is I try to show their professional associations and their professional standards. It’s really interesting how much the speech pathology professional standards mesh with school librarian standards. They’re talking about language, they’re talking about understanding, comprehending language, using language. They do reading activities, all kinds of great things. So that would be another person that I would definitely wanna connect with.

In the middle school where I was a librarian, the gifted resource teacher had her office in the library, so that was wonderful ’cause we collaborated all the time together and the reading specialist was right around the corner. So I pulled her in all the time too. So definitely.

Steve Thomas: You have a section in your book that’s called “Are These Hidden Needs and Talents?” What kind of things are you talking about in that section?

Karla Bame Collins: I think I did that because the particular things I talk about in there, deaf and hard of hearing vision impairments medical conditions like chronic illnesses and things like that, might not be hidden. They might be very obvious by looking when they come in the door. But it also is really important for it to have a place in the book. These are things that absolutely impact learning for these students, but I wasn’t sure about the whole “hidden” term. They might be, the students themselves might not know. You know, when I talk about color vision deficiencies, my brothers didn’t know that they didn’t see color like everybody else until they were in their teens or twenties. So it was hidden to them.

Steve Thomas: Where would a school librarian get started to self evaluate and figure out how to get started?

Karla Bame Collins: An excellent question. I think with anything you do, you need to start just with a piece. Is there a lesson that you really want to analyze to see if you’re addressing needs the way that you could? Start with that one lesson. Or if you want to start with collaboration, pick a person in your school, and in the first chapters of the book, I have some built in “take a minute” times where I just suggest, okay, make a list of people that you work with or that you like, that you talk to, make a list of those people and start there. What are some things that they might be teaching that maybe we could work together or just bounce some ideas off of each other? You just have to start small.

And what happens with collaboration in a school is when other teachers see something cool happening and they’re not part of it, they wanna be part of it. It doesn’t take long before you add more people to your schedule. So start small let people know what’s going on. I would always invite the administration in when I knew there was a really cool lesson coming up. I would say, Hey, this is a good time for you to come on in. I know you have to observe me anyway, so come see what’s going on.

I would also get them involved in the lesson. So one of the things I talk about in the book is the principal who every time she saw me pull out iPads or whatever I was using at the time for QR code lessons where they had to do a scavenger hunt, if she saw that going on, she would run into the library to grab her device because she wanted to do the scavenger hunt too. Because I got her involved when she was observing me, I handed her the device and said, “You’re not just gonna watch. You need to try it.” That’s how people know what you’re doing is they get involved with it.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. And there’s a hidden good tip in there too: invite your administrators to come when you want them to come, because they’re gonna come observe you anyway. So if you have a particularly cool thing you want to do, have them see you do that, not just, “I’m gonna explain the Dewey Decimal System to you blah, blah, blah.” No, you try to make it exciting, but it’s not the most exciting. Bring them, tell ’em to come in for this super cool QR code scavenger hunt!

Karla Bame Collins: Yeah, and in the process, you’re building an advocate in that administrator. So if they’re doing something fun and they’re seeing the kids actively engaged and learning, and they’re learning in the process, then when you go to them and ask them for more money, for more books, hopefully they’re gonna be a little more on your side.

Steve Thomas: Yep, yep. And that’s what a lot of this is. I mean, all these people you’re collaborating with will be your champions.

Karla Bame Collins: Yeah, absolutely.

Steve Thomas: The last question I was gonna ask you was about the “take a minute” sections. Can you talk about why you added those in and what you see the value in those are in the book?

Karla Bame Collins: I think it’s just important as you’re reading through information to stop and think about it and reflect on it. So I wanted to have opportunities for people on the way to just as they’re reading, to say, “Okay. How does this apply to me?” Knowing that people will be in different places when they read this book. In our program we have students who have taught for 20 years and are moving into the library. We have students who are right out of undergraduate and have never taught in a classroom. So they’re in different places, so they needed a chance to make that information relevant to them.

So that’s really why I had those little breaks in there. The “take a minute” came from my nephew’s son who just needed a break in the middle of his little living room soccer game. He just squatted down and had his little head in his hands, and his mom said, “Do you need a minute?” And he said, “Yeah. I need a minute.” It was just the cutest thing. So I was like, oh, there you go. That’s what I’m gonna do. So, I mean, we all need to just, we can’t just take in information without processing it.

Steve Thomas: Yeah and you put them in strategic places in the book where you’ve just absorbed some big lesson. Now, hold on, take a second. Do this and then let’s move on. Put the book down for a second, even. Come back to it.

Karla Bame Collins: Yeah. Make it apply to you. Make this information apply to your situation.

Steve Thomas: Right, ’cause this is not intended to be a theoretical book. This is not your dissertation that was about all this research that you did. This is the practical application of this now. This is how you put that all to work.

Karla Bame Collins: Yeah. I don’t often write theoretical things. I like it to be practical. There has to be a little theory added in there, but….

Steve Thomas: And I’m sure that’s helpful for you as a professor teaching new school librarians and things like that to have them practical examples ’cause a lot of times you come out of a class and like, “Well, I don’t know how that’s gonna help me in my actual job someday, but okay.”

Karla Bame Collins: Right, we try very hard to make everything that we are teaching practical and things that they will be doing when they’re school librarians.

Steve Thomas: Hopefully you’re seeing a lot of good new school librarians coming through, a new generation coming out there into a very tough world for school librarians!

Karla Bame Collins: We just had the National American Association of School Librarians Conference earlier this fall. We have a state conference also that’s huge. And it’s so encouraging to see in these conferences, people excited about what they’re doing, sharing what they’re doing with other professionals. As you said earlier, often school librarians are the only one doing their job in that building. So it can be isolating, but having these communities, of other professionals, your professional network, having those people that you can reach out to and say, “Hey, I have this problem. How are you dealing with it?” is so important.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, as interesting as I find when I go to the ALA conference, I’ve learned new things. Sometimes it’s from academic librarians or all kinds of different kinds of people. What I love going to is the public library conference because those are my people, and so that’s the same kind of thing. It’s like you can learn from other types of librarians and you should, but sometimes you just wanna be among your people and who understand what you’re going through and can learn directly from them rather than, “What can I take from this practice of an academic library?” I can take something from it, but this other place, “Yeah, you got me. We know how that patron acts.”

Karla Bame Collins: A great example of that at our state conference, one of my colleagues and I, we really wanted to find out what was current in school libraries right now. What are the things that school librarians right now are dealing with? So we turned it into a presentation where we didn’t really present anything. We had all these people who showed up for our presentation and we told ’em, “We’re not giving you information. You are talking to each other and getting information and then sharing with each other.” So instead, we just had three big questions, did a big question at a time. They talked about it at their tables. They wrote down their ideas and shared them in an electronic tool. We got their ideas from them, but one question at a time. So just three big questions. They had 10 minutes to talk about it, and we had so many people who told us later how beneficial that was because they had that time just to talk with other people who were doing their jobs.

Steve Thomas: That’s great. And again, that’s that collaboration we’re talking about again.

Karla, thank you so much for coming on the show to talk about your book and related topics. I think listeners, again, of all types of libraries, can learn lessons from this. The book again is called School Libraries Supporting Students with Hidden Needs and Talents from ADHD to Vision Impairment. So go out and grab a copy.

Karla Bame Collins: Thank you.