Bridging the Gap: USU Libraries Hosts Conference for High School Teachers

Utah State University Libraries hosted its first conference for high school teachers July 20.

“The Bridging the Gap Conference was created as an opportunity to begin a dialogue with local educators regarding USU Libraries’ resources, while also learning how to better support incoming USU students as they transition from high school to the university,” First-Year Experience Librarian Katie Strand said. “Our hope was that this day could help us make connections with our local secondary educators and find opportunities to support each other’s instruction efforts.”

Strand and Government Information Librarian Jen Kirk teamed up to organize the conference. Thirty-three local high school educators attended the conference.

“We had a fantastic mix of educators from all five high schools within Cache Valley in attendance. Everyone who attended greatly contributed to the lively and critical conversations we had throughout the day,” Strand said.

The half-day conference focused on three areas: information literacy, primary sources and digital resources. Attendees were able to attend three sessions with topics such as building students’ confidence as scholars, exploring government information as primary sources, and Open Educational Resources.

“We all want to support our students as best we can but often there is this gap in our understanding of what classroom experiences have come before and what will come after for our students,” Strand said. “Our goal was for us all to start to fill in those gaps to better support our students as they transition from high school to college.”

While this was the first conference of its kind, Strand hopes it won’t be the last.

“We hope this is the first step in building and maintaining relationships with some of our outstanding educators in Cache Valley. We are in awe of the work they do and were honored that they took time out of their summer vacation to learn with us,” she said.