Episode 28: Advocacy Is Problem Solving with Cherity Pennington

Nobody else wakes up in the morning thinking about the school library. Cherity Pennington built her whole advocacy practice around that fact.

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes Cherity Pennington, an Oklahoma educator for twenty-seven years and a teacher librarian for fifteen, now at Norman High School. She's past president of the Oklahoma Library Association, co-editor of the second edition of AASL's National School Library Standards, and a 2026 School Library Journal Librarian of the Year finalist.

Early on she thought advocacy meant making pretty charts for her principal. Then she realized teachers are thinking about classroom management, principals about achievement, superintendents about strategic goals, parents about their own kid, and every one of those is a problem the library can solve. Advocacy is making yourself the obvious answer to the problem someone already has.

Her three rules: build relationships long before you need anything, adopt other people's goals as your own, and tell the story behind the number.

Pillar: 🩵 Discovery

💡 Steal-this-idea: Ask every teacher one question: what's the one standard or learning activity you need the most support with? Then go solve it. It's a relationship, a lesson, and an advocacy win in a single conversation.

🛠️ Resources:

• AASL Standards Resources

Plus, stick around for her Curtain Call featuring three professional reads:

• 📖 Strengthening Library Ecosystems by Dorcas Hand, Sarah Kelly Johns, Michelle Robertson, and Aaron Duffy: how librarians across all library types can advocate for each other
• 📖 National School Library Standards, second edition including a full advocacy section built for reflection and planning real conversations
• 📖 Assessing Learners by Elizabeth Burns — short, practical, and the reference for proving your students are learning

Follow Cherity:

💼 LinkedIn: Cherity Pennington

Think your library story belongs on the stage? Pitch your talk: thenextgenlib@gmail.com

Hosted by Amanda Hunt, MLS (@TheNextGenLibrarian) 🌐 thenextgenlibrarian.com

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