Where are the books? This was the question I asked myself very early on in this process. Before I started this course I had a mental model of myself settled into the school library, surrounded by books, happy to be the stereotypical librarian, bun and everything! The children’s book section would be my forte, there would be nothing I didn’t know…after all, I would be the ‘master’ in it. My first blog entry(17/2 The beginning of a journey) backed this up in that my greatest role model for TLs so far was my primary school TL and she was all about the books! It didn’t take long for my mental model to start changing.
“I waver between thinking I'm entering a dying profession to feeling daunted by the mammoth task ahead of us as we reinvigorate/reinvent the TL profession and place of libraries in the school community.” (Claire Treloar, ETL 401 – Topic 1, 14/4). As I moved through the topics and took on more and more information, this quote became more applicable to me. Reading about what a TL can do and should do made me doubt my ability to do it. Have I chosen the right path? Can I do this? Can I meet the standards for professional excellence? And the big one…will there be a job for me at the end of this?
The role of the teacher librarian. What is it? I have already touched on my mental model; not at all the reality. According to the literature that I have been exposed to so far, the teacher librarian should be a leader, a mentor, a media specialist, an expert in all areas of the curriculum; the list could go on. According to ASLA, teacher librarians “support and implement the vision of their school communities through advocating and building effective library and information services and programs that contribute to the development of lifelong learners” (ASLA, 2004). To me, that is what I want to be. I want to have the kind of impact that is implied from this statement. Teaching, to me, has always been about the effect we have on our students. It reminds me of the bumper sticker “if you can read this, thank a teacher!” Too often our profession is denigrated in the media and who hasn’t had to defend the amount of holidays we apparently enjoy? But, without us, where would the world be? My point to this is that I have started to see the role of a TL as the ‘teacher’s teacher’. The TL has access to all to these amazing skills and resources that can make the life of a teacher better, not just in their own practice, but for the students that they teach. Through collaboration, the units of work that are planned can be real and meaningful for the students, as well as teaching them skills that they will need, not only as they move through their education, but also for life. In an earlier blog entry, (16/4 Topic 3 - Teacher Librarians (TL) and curriculum development) I explored this after the question was posed ‘how are students disadvantaged in schools that exclude the teacher librarian from curriculum development?’ I believe that if a school is fortunate enough to have a TL on staff, then they should use him/her to their fullest capacity. Through this topic I was also introduced to the writings of Sue Spence. What she has achieved is phenomenal and really helped me to develop a more realistic view of what a TL can do and is capable of, as opposed to my original mental model!
A lot of evidence that has been presented regarding the impact that TLs can have on student achievement; both in Australia and overseas. However, so much of this literature is not read by those who should be exposed to it; the principals of our schools. If they are unaware of what a TL is capable of, then the school will miss out. Watts (1999 p. 29) made this clear in her article entitled “The teacher librarian past: A literature review” She stated that “there is no shortage of experienced, informed, and enlightened writers charting the evolution and future prospects of the Australian teacher librarian…the basic flaw is in its limited audience.” Since I have been made aware of this flaw, I have been discussing my learning with my colleagues and principal. In our school the TL role has been non existent in the past and I am determined to reverse that. I believe that our students can only benefit from this.
REFERENCES FOR PART C
Australian School Library Association (ASLA) and Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) (2004) Standards of professional excellence for teacher librarians. Retrieved on 23 April 2009 from http://www.asla.org.au/policy/TLstandards.pdf
Schaap, T.L. (2009), A Journey Of Discovery. http://tltania.blogspot.com/ (various entries)
Spence, S. (2005). The Teacher librarian toolkit for an information literate school community. In J. Henri and M. Asselin (Eds.), The information literate school community 2: Issues of leadership (pp 135 – 145) Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.
Treloar, C. (2009, April 14). Re: Daunted. ETL401 forum posting-Topic 1 –School libraries in Australia subforum. Message posted to http://forums.csu.edu.au/perl/forums.pl?task=frameset&forum_id=ETL401_200940_W_D_Sub4_forum&message_id=3774704
Watts, J. (1999).The teacher librarian past: a literature review. In J Henri, The Information literate school community: best practice (pp 29 - 42) Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.
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