NoVa Maker Educator Meetup - Gretchen Hazlin, Kilmer Middle School

Gretchen Hazlin

Gretchen has been Head Librarian at Kilmer Middle School for the past ten years. After working in corporate and special libraries at Johnson & Johnson, Grey Advertising, and The New York Academy of Medicine, she is finally exactly what she wants to be when she grows up -- she loves teaching information literacy and critical thinking skills, sharing young adult literature, and collaborating with teachers. Gretchen also brought the Kilmer Library Makerspace to her library program, aiming to inspire messy and creative thinking in her students. She is passionate about offering her students opportunities to think and make, outside the bounds of a traditional curriculum and feels that the library is a perfect home for this. Together with colleagues from around the state, she has worked to revive #vaslchat, a monthly Twitter chat for Virginia school librarians. Gretchen and her collaborator, Corey Thornblad, developed the website and blog BubbleUp Classroom with the aim to share instructional ideas for writing, critical thinking, and creativity in all classrooms. She has presented with colleagues at conferences on the national, regional, state, and local levels, including the American Association of School Librarians, Computers in Libraries, Virginia Association for School Librarians, the Virginia Council for the Social Studies annual conferences, as well as at county-wide in-services and events. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and History from Boston College and a Master of Library Studies from Rutgers University in New Jersey. Gretchen was recently selected as the 2016 Virginia School Librarian of the Year, an award granted by the Virginia Association of School Librarians (VAASL).