Four years ago, I was what one would call an extremely active ALA and ALSC member. \u00a0In addition being a full-time graduate student, I was a guest blogger for ALSC, served on the ALSC Intellectual Freedom Committee, and served on the GLBT-RT’s Stonewall Book Award Committee, and unsuccessfully attempted to manage an EMIERT committee. \u00a0I attended conferences, participated in listserv discussions–the works!<\/p>\n
But then I got sick and I wasn’t able to attend Annual. And then, I had to step back from committee work, blogging, all of it. Personally, I found it disheartening and frustrating. \u00a0Over the past year, year and half, I’ve started to get involved again, but it’s difficult. \u00a0While I was healing networking and connections fell to the wayside, and I felt out of the loop.<\/p>\n
Deciding to get back involved with ALSC and ALA was an easy decision for me. \u00a0I wasn’t sure how to restart, so I retraced my steps. \u00a0I reached out to the ALSC Blog to see if I could start writing again, I filled out the ALSC committee volunteer form, and most importantly, I started chiming in and asking questions on listserv’s and roundtables I am a member of. \u00a0And you know what? A beautiful thing happened. People responded. \u00a0They answered my questions, gave me advice and encouraged me to keep going.<\/p>\n
I feel that all too often we are pitted against one another in society. Sometimes it seems that throughout the media and the world there is an us versus them<\/em>,\u00a0me versus you\u00a0<\/em> mentality. This dichotomous view- a\u00a0push to be the most successful or best\u00a0anything<\/em>\u00a0causes us to stop seeing the humanity in one another.<\/p>\n Maybe I am the only one who sees things this way, but for me it was one of the things that made me fearful of asking others, what do I do? \u00a0So, as I slowly get reacquainted with ALSC and ALA, I say thank you- particularly to those who have provided insight and guidance along the way.<\/p>\n If you are looking to get involved- particularly in ALSC, I encourage you to take some of the same steps I did; fill out the volunteer form, hope you get off the waitlist for the Institute (that may be a just me thing), ask questions, but most importantly, don’t be intimidated. \u00a0At the end of the day, we all have the same goal \u00a0to engage children and their families.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This post addresses the following ALSC Core Competency: VII. Professionalism and Four years ago, I was what one would call an extremely active ALA and ALSC member. \u00a0In addition being a full-time graduate student, I was a guest blogger for ALSC, served on the ALSC Intellectual Freedom Committee, and served on the GLBT-RT’s Stonewall Book Award Committee, and unsuccessfully attempted to manage an EMIERT committee. \u00a0I attended conferences, participated in listserv discussions–the works! But then I got sick and I wasn’t able to attend Annual. And then, I had to step back from committee work, blogging, all of it. Personally, I found it disheartening and frustrating. \u00a0Over the past year, year and half, I’ve started to get involved again, but it’s difficult. \u00a0While I was healing networking and connections fell to the wayside, and I felt out of the loop. Deciding to get back involved with ALSC and ALA was an easy decision for me. \u00a0I wasn’t sure how to restart,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":217,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[1211,1604,1613,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogger-alyson-feldman-piltch","category-competencies-for-librarians-serving-children-in-public-libraries","category-professionalism-and-professional-development","category-slice-of-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18875\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nProfessional Development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"