Partnerships & Collaborations

AASL’s partners and collaborators support the mission of AASL to empower school librarian leaders to transform teaching and learning. As partners or collaborators, we share resources and information, as well as the goal to advance the critical role of school librarians in K-12 education beyond.Partnering or collaborating with an organization does not infer an endorsement by AASL for all actions or efforts of an organization.

Collaborations

All4Ed
All4Ed is a national nonprofit advocacy organization committed to expanding equitable educational opportunities for students of color, students from low-income families, and other marginalized groups. We advance transformation from the classroom to Congress by advocating for federal, state, and local policies and practices that ensure all students graduate high school prepared for college, work, and life.

• Digital Learning Day: AASL extends an invitation to school librarians, their students and parents, to participate in national Digital Learning Day celebrated in February. Digital Learning Day celebrates innovative teaching practices that make learning more personalized and engaging and encourage exploration of how digital learning can provide more students with more opportunities to get the skills they need to succeed in college, career, and life.
• Future Ready Schools: AASL is a official coalition partner of Future Ready Schools, an effort to maximize digital learning opportunities and help school districts move quickly toward preparing students for success in college, a career, and citizenship. The effort provides districts with resources and support to ensure that local technology and digital learning plans align with instructional best practices, are implemented by highly trained teachers, and lead to personalized learning experiences for all students, particularly those from traditionally under-served communities.

Anti-Defamation League Education
ADL Education works in partnership with schools, organizations and communities to design and deliver anti-bias education through professional learning, educational programs, resources and strategies to build and sustain equitable and inclusive environments.

• No Place for Hate is a student-inspired school-wide program to create a more equitable and inclusive school climate, catered to a school’s unique culture and needs.
• Echoes & Reflections is dedicated to reshaping the way that teachers and students understand, process, and navigate the world through the events of the Holocaust. Educating students about its significance is a great responsibility. Echoes & Reflections utilizes unparalleled expertise and resources from three world leaders in Holocaust education: Anti-Defamation League Education, USC Shoah Foundation, and Yad Vashem.

ASCD
ASCD empowers educators to achieve excellence in learning, teaching, and leading so that every child is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.

• Whole Child
  ASCD's Whole Child approach is an effort to transition from a focus on narrowly defined academic achievement to one that promotes the long-term development and success of all children. Whole Child helps educators, families, community members, and policymakers move from a vision about educating the whole child to sustainable, collaborative action.

Ben's Guide to the U.S. Government
Representatives from AASL collaborated with the U.S. Government Publishing Office in reviewing the content for Ben’s Guide; in addition, AASL volunteers developed lesson plans using Ben's Guide as a resource.

Children’s Book Council
The Children’s Book Council (CBC) is the nonprofit trade association of children’s book publishers in North America, dedicated to supporting the industry and promoting children’s books and reading.

Consortium for School Networking
AASL joined with the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and other leading education associations in releasing a new report aimed at helping inform and guide education decision makers as they revise policies related to the use of mobile technologies and social media in schools.

Crayola Education
For decades, Crayola has partnered with educators to bring creativity to the classroom as creative teaching helps all students make their thinking visible. Crayola provides educational resources for students, educators, and families. Crayola Education works with it's partners to transform learning and build engagement, collaboration, and creativity.

• Crayola Creativity Week
  Annually, Crayola celebrates Crayola Creativity Week - a free program for schools and homes around the world. The week is designed to celebrate children’s creativity and the joy it brings to teaching and learning any subject. Crayola partners with artists, actors, authors, musicians, and athletes to bring educational content, giveaways, and virtual events to learners and educators everywhere. Sign up now.

Data Quality Campaign (DQC)
DQC is the only national nonprofit policy and advocacy organization dedicated to developing robust education data systems to give families, educators, and other decisionmakers access to valuable information on student performance and achievement over time.

Getting Better Foundation
The Getting Better Foundation's vision is to build collaborations with other organizations, with thousands of members empowering millions of people globally, communicating that the human race is becoming more resilient, trustworthy, responsible, empathetic, peace-seeking, and kind.

• "Trust Me" Documentary
  “Trust Me” is a feature documentary that explores manipulation and misinformation at the intersection of human nature and information technology. It explains how this intersection drives a need for media literacy and uses compelling human stories, facts, and experts to show empirical realities and the right way to consume media.

Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation
The HRC Foundation envisions a world where all LGBTQ+ people can participate fully in the systems that shape our daily lives. Through public education, research, and policy and practice change, the Foundation’s impact can be felt in schools, on factory floors and corporate suites, and in places of worship. It touches LGBTQ+ lives from childhood through end-of-life, people of all races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, gender identities, abilities and religious beliefs, in big cities and small towns, in the United States and across the globe.

• Project THRIVE is a multi-year national campaign to create more equitable, inclusive support systems and communities for LGBTQ youth. Project THRIVE will build the skills and capacities of all youth-serving professionals to better meet the needs of LGBTQ young people.
• Welcoming Schools is the nation's premier professional development program providing training and resources to elementary school educators to embrace all families, create LGBTQ+ and gender inclusive schools, prevent bias-based bullying, and support transgender and non-binary students.

Jumpstart
Jumpstart is a national early education organization working toward the day every child in America enters kindergarten prepared to succeed. The organization provides language, literacy, and social-emotional programming for preschool children from under-resourced communities and promote quality early learning for all children.

• Read for the Record
  Jumpstart’s Read for the Record brings together millions of people each year in classrooms, libraries, community centers, and homes across the US. This annual campaign was launched over a decade ago to highlight the importance of building early literacy and language skills for EVERY child, so that all children have the opportunity to enter kindergarten prepared to succeed.

National Association for Media Literacy Education
The National Association for Media Literacy Education unites a community of educators who provide resources to help people of all ages develop the vital skills of media literacy.

• National Media Literacy Alliance
  The National Media Literacy Alliance is a network of leading education associations united in an effort to advance media literacy education as a necessary element of a complete 21st-century education in America. The Alliance works to ensure that students across our nation have the critical thinking skills necessary to navigate our ever-expanding modern media landscape.

National Education Association
The National Education Association (NEA), the nation's largest professional employee organization, is committed to advancing the cause of public education.

• Read Across America
  The NEA's Read Across America is an annual reading motivation and awareness program that calls for every child in every community to celebrate reading on March 2, the birthday of children's author Dr. Seuss.

Pokémon Company International
The Pokémon Company International, a subsidiary of The Pokémon Company in Japan, manages the property outside of Asia and is responsible for brand management, licensing and marketing, the Pokémon Trading Card Game, the animated TV series, home entertainment, and the official Pokémon website. Pokémon was launched in Japan in 1996 and today is one of the most popular children’s entertainment properties in the world.

• Pokémon Clubs
  AASL has partnered with Pokémon to bring a new recreational activity called Pokémon Club to school libraries. During Pokémon Club, students can play the Pokémon Trading Card Game, do fun Pokémon-themed arts and crafts, and more. For more information and to apply, visit www.ala.org/aasl/pokemon.

Project Look Sharp
Project Look Sharp is a nonprofit, mission-driven outreach program of Ithaca College. Its mission is to help K-16 educators enhance students’ critical thinking, metacognition, and civic engagement through media literacy materials and professional development.

• ML3: Librarians as Leaders for Media Literacy
  Over the last 2 years Project Look Sharp has partnered with the New York State School Library System Association to provide professional development workshops for over 1,500 school librarians as part of the initiative ML3: Librarians as Leaders for Media Literacy. In fall of 2023, AASL and Project Look Sharp received a 2-year planning grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services to scale ML3 across the nation in collaboration with the National Association for Media Literacy Education. AASL Chapters will be critical to identifying the systems, organizations, leaders, and possibilities for future media literacy training in their state.

Project Tomorrow
Project Tomorrow is a national education nonprofit organization driven by an altruistic mission and vision for changing the lives of children through science, math and technology education.

• Speak Up
  The Speak Up Research Initiative is both a national research project and a free service to schools and districts everywhere. More than 5 million participants have made Speak Up the largest collection of authentic, unfiltered stakeholder input on education, technology, schools of the future, science and math instruction, professional development and career exploration. National-level reports inform policymakers at all levels. Educators from more than 30,000 schools have used Speak Up data to create and implement their vision for the next generation of learning.

Reading is Fundamental
Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) is the nation’s leading children’s literacy nonprofit. It focuses on disrupting the U.S. literacy crisis by bringing the joy of reading to children to create skilled readers.

• Rally to Read
  Rally to Read 100 is RIF's annual program focused on fostering a joy of reading among children across the country. The program contains six months of exciting themes, read-alouds fron authors and illustrators, and engaging reading activities.