Paige Jaeger – Recipient Of The 2013 Distinguished Service Award
The Distinguished Service Award is presented to a School Library System Director whose work exemplifies six areas of consideration: professional leadership, professional service, information sharing, collaboration, quality programs and creative service.
Rebecca Gerald, SLSA President, made the following comments at the SSL Banquet where the presentation was made:
Paige is the Coordinator for School Library Services at the Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex BOCES in Saratoga. She has written articles for professional journals on the Common Core State Standards, text complexity and school librarian evaluation. In the last 4 months Paige was published in LMC, School Library Monthly and School Library Journal. In addition to writing articles, Paige has a book accepted for print by Libraries Unlimited.
Paige is not shy or reserved when talking about the role of librarians. As a matter of fact she’s very vocal. When attending regional and statewide meetings she’s not afraid to speak-up and let others know about the expertise of school librarians and the resources available through the school library. To quote one of her colleagues, “In a very short time she has turned the library community on its head. I admire her never ending dedication, her self-confidence, and her ability to get us on the radar of groups who had never acknowledged our presence before.”
Personally, I admire Paige’s selfless behavior when working with SLSA. Her passion, dedication and persistence help to make school librarians and SLSA more visible across New York State.
In the letter recommending Paige for this award, her colleague wrote, “Paige has brought a tremendous amount of professional information to the attention of other school library system directors. Particularly her work with the committee on researching, writing, and revising the school librarian APPR rubric and pushing it forward so that it was formally adopted by NY State education as an option for school librarians was a huge coups for our profession. This document helps guide administrators to evaluate school librarians in areas that are distinctly their own; while they are teachers of library skills, there are so many other responsibilities that they have that are not recognized in other evaluation rubrics. We are now able to go into districts and encourage them to adopt this as a rubric for their librarians.”