LEADing the Way

Being named School Library Journal’s 2015 School Librarian of the Year could be considered the crowning achievement of any school librarian’s career. But Kristina Holzweiss is not one to rest on her laurels. If anything, that honor only heralded more inventive and far-reaching initiatives.

Holzweiss started her career as a seventh grade English teacher before deciding to segue into the school library to be able to “integrate technology with reading.” Since then, her knack for seamlessly weaving tech into teaching has been put to use powerfully, perhaps most famously with her 2015 brainchild, SLIME (Students of Long Island Maker Expo). The annual event now draws upward of 800 students, parents, educators, and administrators from dozens of school districts on New York’s Long Island and in Connecticut and New Jersey, as well as museum directors and librarians. There, you might see a student promoting her first book, alongside robotics club members displaying their gadgets, across from a “pitchfest” at which student teams compete for funding for their favorite charities.

Her newest creation is Long Island LEADS, a nonprofit that promotes learning with tech across multiple disciplines. Holzweiss and husband Michael established LI LEADS after she participated in the National Week of Making, sponsored by the Nation of Makers in Washington, DC, in 2016. “We [decided we] wanted to support the Nation of Makers as a nonprofit rather than as individuals.”

Holzweiss credits Michael for motivating her. “He exemplifies combining education with experience, using his mind and his hands to solve problems.”

In October 2017, at the first LI LEADS Maker Town Hall, local stakeholders dissected why the movement matters to businesses and the community. Holzweiss, who has written or coauthored eight Maker space books for kids, aims to keep those conversations going. “[I want] to connect these various entities to improve education and, ultimately, the economy, so that all our kids will be able to start their own families on Long Island,” explains Holzweiss. (Long Island is the second most expensive place in the United States to raise a family, according to 2015 calculations by the Economic Policy Institute.)

Anne Lundy, a K–12 library media specialist in Malverne, NY, and one of Holzweiss’s nominators, sums up her abilities: “Kristina has [a] passion to share. She [can] come up with an out-of-the-box idea and then bring people in to add to it. Her idea becomes everybody’s idea.”