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

#TheLibraryStage #TakeTheStage #SchoolLibrarians #LibraryAdvocacy #HighSchoolLibrary #AASL #SchoolLibrary #TeacherLibrarian #LibraryLeadership #AdvocacyMatters #TLA #TxASL

The Library Stage is an independent podcast, not affiliated with TED Conferences LLC.

Episode 27: Twelve Days of Giveaway with Jennifer Brusenhan

For the last twelve days before winter break, Jennifer Brusenhan sends kids home with a book that's theirs to keep and the staff decides who gets one.

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes Jennifer Brusenhan, an elementary librarian in New Braunfels, Texas, building a library program from the ground up at a campus that opened last year.

A spreadsheet goes out to staff in November, and any adult on campus can nominate. The priority is kids who don't have much access to books at home, but nominations also go to kids who showed growth: a behavior turnaround, a jump in reading level, a good run on tests. Each certificate names the student, the reason, and who nominated them, so a kid learns the PE coach noticed them helping clean up.

Four or five names go out on morning announcements each day across mixed grade levels. Kids come pick any book from the stack and leave with the book, the certificate, and a goodie bag. Kindergartners ask if they really get to keep it.

Her advice for anyone building a program from scratch: don't roll it all out at once. Small things, one at a time.

Pillar: 🩷 Literacy

💡 Steal-this-idea: Who Am I cards. Clues about a historical figure i.e. birth year, accomplishments, details that don't give it away, posted on a hallway bulletin board with a guess box, or read over morning announcements.

🛠️ Resources:

• Who Am I cards and Guessing template — Jennifer's sets, ready to print
• Pebble Go — her pick for elementary research, and what students use to crack the Who Am I clues

Plus, stick around for her Curtain Call featuring:

• 📖 Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreño Played the Piano for President Lincoln by Margarita Engle — a true story kids don't believe is true until you pull up the research with them. Great for Hispanic Heritage Month, Women's History Month, or any time of year.

📌 Jennifer shares free resources constantly, including Beanstack templates — worth a follow for that alone.

Follow Jennifer: 📱 @TexasAggieLibrarian on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook | 🦋 Bluesky: @TXAggieLibrarian | ✖️ X: @AggieLibrarian1

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

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

#TheLibraryStage #TakeTheStage #SchoolLibrarians #ElementaryLibrary #BookGiveaway #LibraryProgramming #ReadingCulture #SchoolCulture #NewLibrarian #SchoolLibrary #TeacherLibrarian #TLA #TxASL

The Library Stage is an independent podcast, not affiliated with TED Conferences LLC.

Episode 26: Starting Over Is a Skill with Heather Hornor

Twenty-five years in, Heather Hornor got laid off and had to start over again.

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes Heather Hornor, an educator, librarian, and library administrator in public education for twenty-five years in Texas and now in Portland, Oregon.

She's started over a lot: classroom to a 300-student elementary library, elementary to a 5,000-student high school, campus to district admin, and now back again, and she's built a method for it.

Pick two to three goals for your first year, fully expecting to finish one or two. Half a goal is still movement. And don't measure your year one against someone else's year twenty.

Then lead with what you already know. Heather calls it flaunting your knowledge: she walked into a brand-new district in a brand-new state and landed on the leadership team because she showed what she brought to the table.

Pillar: 🩵 Discovery

💡 Steal-this-idea: Find your state's Law for Librarians trainer.

🛠️ Resources:

• ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom — how to find your Law for Librarians trainer
• Mentimeter — Heather's favorite tool, especially for adult learning and PD. Polls, simple presentations, and a real way to interact with an audience.

Plus, stick around for her Curtain Call featuring:

• 📖 The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker — the Trojan War retold from the women's side. An older title, accessible, and, from a self-described Greek mythology nerd, impossible to overstate. Especially good if the new Odyssey adaptation has you thinking about Homer.

Follow Heather: 📱 Instagram: @mrs.hornor | 🦋 Bluesky: @heatherpnwtx | 💼 LinkedIn

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

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

#TheLibraryStage #TakeTheStage #SchoolLibrarians #NewLibrarian #LibraryLeadership #IntellectualFreedom #Literacy #SchoolLibrary #TeacherLibrarian #LawForLibrarians #ALA #TLA #TxASL

The Library Stage is an independent podcast, not affiliated with TED Conferences LLC.

Episode 25: DINO-vember with Jacquelyn Wilson

Every November, Jacquelyn Wilson's elementary library becomes DINO-vember and it started because her coworkers were too good at their jobs.

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes Jacquelyn Wilson, library media specialist at Stonebridge Elementary in Spanish Fort, Alabama, and current president of the Alabama School Library Association.

When teachers at her campus took over Balloons Over Broadway and the Veterans Day read alouds during November, she went looking for something nobody else was doing and landed on the one subject every kid already loves. The promo is half the fun: a $35 inflatable T. rex, a Jurassic Park–style commercial filmed by her PE coach, and Jacquelyn greeting car line in costume while kindergartners wonder if a dinosaur is loose in the building.

Behind the costume it's a month of scaffolded research: fourth graders prompting an AI image generator to render their dinosaur accurately, first graders meeting research through Pebble Go, second grade doing media literacy, third grade guessing a fossil photo before anyone says what it is. Plus fossil rubbings, dino origami, and measuring how many second graders long a brachiosaurus is in masking tape across the library floor.

Pillar: 🩵 Discovery

💡 Steal-this-idea: Three from Jacquelyn:

• Teacher bookshelf
• Book of the day
• Musical chairs with chapter books

🛠️ Resources:

• Pebble Go graphic organizer — her dinosaur research organizer for early elementary
• Project Look Sharp — free media literacy lessons, including the one she uses on dinosaur imagery
• Her DINO-vember book list — constantly growing, fiction and nonfiction
• Pebble Go -- research for elementary students

Follow Jacquelyn: 📱 Instagram: @the_story_teacher

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

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

#TheLibraryStage #TakeTheStage #SchoolLibrarians #ElementaryLibrary #DinoVember #LibraryProgramming #Research #MediaLiteracy #PassiveProgramming #SchoolLibrary #TeacherLibrarian #ASLA #TxASL

The Library Stage is an independent podcast, not affiliated with TED Conferences LLC.

Episode 24: What It Costs to Stand Up with Charlotte Wood

*CONTENT WARNINGS: PTSD, BOOK BANNING & CENSORSHIP

On day fifteen of her first year as a librarian, the Charlotte Wood was given a list of books the school board wanted pulled. She wasn't even familiar with the collection yet.

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes Charlotte Wood, high school librarian at Monticello High School in Charlottesville, Virginia, and a thirty-year education veteran.

This is the story of what happened at Madison County High School in 2022–23, told in full for the first time since it happened. Twenty-one titles. A board member who read excerpts aloud but admitted he hadn't read the books. A librarian PLC meeting where Charlotte was the only person who spoke up for intellectual freedom, and board meetings where she was the only staff member who showed up at all. Teachers told her privately they supported her. None of them came.

But this is also a story about the people who did show up. Community members who followed her to her car when she was afraid to leave a board meeting alone. The public librarian who bought every banned title so students could still get them. A GoFundMe that put 210 books on her shelves, funded by strangers across the country.

Charlotte's motto, from Audre Lorde: "My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you."

Pillar: 🩵 Discovery

💡 Steal-this-idea: Call your public librarian. When Madison County's titles came off the school shelves, the public library director made sure every one of them was in her collection, then walked over with library card applications. Censorship at the district level doesn't have to mean a student loses access.

🛠️ Resources:

• Charlotte's slideshow and presentation — including the full list of the twenty-one pulled titles and interview coverage

• ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom — who she reached out to, and who supported her through it

Plus, stick around for her Curtain Call featuring:

• 📖 The twenty-one banned titles — Charlotte's recommendation is the list itself. They're still banned in Madison County and they're not coming back. Buy them, read them, and put them in students' hands somewhere else.

Email: charlottewood13@gmail.com

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

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

#TheLibraryStage #TakeTheStage #SchoolLibrarians #BannedBooksWeek #BannedBooks #IntellectualFreedom #FreedomToRead #SchoolLibrary #TeacherLibrarian #LibraryAdvocacy #ALA #TxASL

The Library Stage is an independent podcast, not affiliated with TED Conferences LLC.

Episode 23: Why Are All the Black Librarians Gathering in the School Library? with Erika Long

For generations we've asked why representation matters in books. Erika Long wants us to ask why it matters behind the circulation desk.

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes Erika Long, certified school librarian, adjunct lecturer, founder of Not Yo Mama's Librarian LLC, and editor of Why Are All the Black Librarians Gathering in the School Library? Stories and Lessons, out this month.

She names the paradox plainly: libraries champion diversity and build inclusive collections, yet the profession itself is 80 to 87% white, with roughly 6% of librarians Black and fewer still in school libraries. Her book collects fifteen voices, the librarian who found the profession because someone finally saw them, the Black male librarian who has never met another Black male elementary librarian, the one documenting microaggressions in a private journal. What surprised her: nobody centered their story on victimhood. Every contributor names a barrier and turns toward possibility.

Her closing ask: every student deserves to see possibilities standing in front of them, not just on the shelves.

Pillar: 🩵 Discovery

💡 Steal-this-idea: Lego book covers. Run a popular title's cover through a Lego-style generator, print it big, and hang it on the end of a shelving unit with a pad of sticky notes beside it. Kids post their guesses, argue with each other, and go check the book out when they figure it out. Erika ran it around Banned Books Week, and the community-building is the real payoff.

🛠️ EdTech tool: The Canva presentation remote. Control slides from your phone, plus emoji reactions, a drum roll, applause, timers, and music, and you're free to walk the room instead of standing at your laptop.

📖 Featured: Why Are All the Black Librarians Gathering in the School Library? Stories and Lessons, edited by Erika Long — with blurbs from Lauren Mobley, K.C. Boyd, and Becky Calzada. Don't skip The Quiet Part Out Loud at the end of each chapter, or Beyond the Page, her action items and discussion questions.

Plus, stick around for her Curtain Call featuring:

• 📖 Night Ride by Christopher Myers — a wordless picture book Erika loves to her core. Vibrant and completely quiet at the same time.

Follow Erika: 📱 Instagram: @notyomamaslibrarian | 💼 LinkedIn: Erika Long | 🦋 Bluesky: @erikaslong.bsky.social

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

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

#TheLibraryStage #TakeTheStage #SchoolLibrarians #Representation #DiversifyLibrarianship #SchoolLibrary #TeacherLibrarian #LibraryLeadership #AASL #ALA #TxASL

The Library Stage is an independent podcast, not affiliated with TED Conferences LLC.

Heather Schubert will tell you straight out that she has always struggled with book clubs. This is the version that finally worked.

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes Heather Schubert, librarian at middle school in central TX, who runs Battle of the Books across district lines, partnering with two middle schools in Dripping Springs ISD, and a fourth school joining this year.

Four rounds a year, two books per round, chosen by the librarians and voted on by the students. Heather buys each kid at least one book per round so they can write in it. They meet weekly during a 25-minute advisory period, all three grade levels together, which means eighth graders end up mentoring timid sixth graders who now have someone to wave to in the hall.

The battles themselves rotate between campuses, with a breakfast spread the kids sign up to bring. Questions go up on the big screen, each school huddles at its own table with a giant whiteboard, and everyone holds up their answer when time is called. A trophy for the winning school, medals for every participant.

Her real point is who shows up. These aren't the sporty kids. They're the quiet readers who don't have an obvious place to plug in, and this became theirs.

Pillar: 🩷 Literacy

💡 Steal-this-idea: Let the students write the practice. Heather's team members come up with questions they think might get asked, then build Kahoots to challenge each other between battles. They're doing the close reading work themselves, and it's more fun than anything she'd have assigned.

🛠️ Resources:

• Kahoot

• Heather's library website

📖 Heather's book recommendations

Follow Heather: 🌐 Her library website — she's not much for social media, so this is the place

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

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

#TheLibraryStage #TakeTheStage #SchoolLibrarians #BattleOfTheBooks #MiddleSchoolLibrary #BookClub #LibraryProgramming #StudentVoice #SchoolLibrary #TeacherLibrarian #TLA #TxASL

The Library Stage is an independent podcast, not affiliated with TED Conferences LLC.

Episode 21: Diamond or Dud? Weeding Is a Lesson with Heather Arguello

Heather Arguello adds about a thousand books to her collection every year. Which means every summer, a thousand books have to go.

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes Heather Arguello, school librarian at Almaden Country Day School in San Jose, California, a pre-K through eighth grade campus of about 425 students, where circulation has tripled under her watch from roughly 8–10,000 a year to over 30,000.

Diamond or Dud works like this: students fill out a half-sheet slip with the title, author, call number, and copyright year, then evaluate the book against five criteria and circle a verdict. Diamond, meaning it's been sitting there unnoticed. Or dud, meaning there's a reason nobody's checked it out. Heather wants five slips per book before she decides. If a kid falls for a book mid-evaluation, they can check it out that day and save it.

Her point: weeding isn't magic, and kids should know that. When they're part of it, the collection becomes theirs.

Pillar: 🩷 Literacy

💡 Steal-this-idea: Raffle the new releases. Students enter their name for the chance to be the first to check out an anticipated title, which means they learn what's coming out and when, and a new book arrives with a waiting list instead of sitting on a display.

🛠️ Resources:

• Diamond or Dud evaluation template — Heather's half-sheet student slip, ready to print

Follow Heather: 📱 Instagram: @borntobealibrarian

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

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

#TheLibraryStage #TakeTheStage #SchoolLibrarians #Weeding #CollectionDevelopment #ElementaryLibrary #MiddleSchoolLibrary #StudentVoice #LibraryLessons #SchoolLibrary #TeacherLibrarian #TxASL

The Library Stage is an independent podcast, not affiliated with TED Conferences LLC.