This past Thursday, I was a featured co-presenter at a conference for school librarians in the area I grew up in. Their one-day event was in its thirty-seventh year and my co-presenter, Stacey Rattner and I had been recruited over the summer to talk about books. With three sessions, we could divide them up or co-present, or both and because we often concurrently present, we chose to co-present all three sessions which was especially useful because many of the librarians in the audience work in small districts where they are the K-12 librarian.

Working with a partner is not new to me. As a high school librarian at a large school, I have always had a colibrarian. I’ve also presented at other conferences with librarians I’ve been on committees with (here’s to my Great Graphic Novels ladies!) and my colibrarian. Collaboration is not easy because you’re meshing two people, two opinions, two styles together. With Stacey, we often joke about how polar opposite we are in life and work yet together as librarian presenters with a passion for books and reading, it works, but we need to get on the same (pun intended) page. This means early morning coffee house meet ups or after dinner ciders.

And there are the countless hours I spend stewing in my head to wrap my head around preparing for a presentation from setting the right tone to celebrating book creators to eliciting collegial conversation. Plus the preparation of aids and tools to present and share.

I am a paper and pencil gal. The first ideas and concepts are always handwritten scribbles and lists. Then there’s days of thinking. Then maybe a Slide or two, then back to mapping it out on paper. I’ve come to love my process and rely on it because there are moments of panic that I’m not “there yet” but I trust the process. And the content embeds itself like a rehearsal for a play, though I have never acted before.

Ultimately, it was a valuable scaffold for this past Thursday’s conference because my co-presenter had a death in the family that didn’t allow her to present and I shared for the both of us. Thus, the entrenched preparation and rehearsal felt like second-nature and provides a level of comfort on the day of the event. I have always said that one of the reasons I say yes to presenting whether it be local, state, or nationally is because I have to learn so much more to feel comfortable sharing which makes me a better librarian overall. (And I have an excuse to read as much as I do).

What kind of process do you have for events or activities you do?