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Month: April 2023

Annual Reporting: Making the Invisible Visible

Annual Reporting: Making the Invisible Visible

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An annual report can be a powerful tool that gives a teacher librarian the ability to provide transparency, take accountability and advocate for their library. In this blog post I elaborate on these three concepts, detailing some of the ways an annual report can be beneficial to a school library and to the role of a teacher librarian.

 

For transparency:

Creating an annual report plays a part in making the invisible visible. Karen Bonanno (2011) describes how teacher librarians were viewed during the Australian Government’s Inquiry into school libraries and teacher librarians in Australian schools (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment, 2011), stating that many stakeholders:

“…referred to the profession as an invisible profession. They didn’t know what you did. They didn’t know who you were. They considered that you did not have any significant contribution to the learning experiences and the academic excellence of students because they could not see any direct evidence of that” (Bonanno, 2011).

An annual report gives a teacher librarian an opportunity to articulate and demonstrate the integral part a school library has in the teaching and learning of a school. It also brings to light other “invisible” areas that may go unnoticed, such as the impact volunteers have in the day-to-day functioning of library processes (McKenzie, 2009).

 

For accountability:

If teacher librarians are to convince school leadership to financially invest in their school library, they need to demonstrate how the allocated funds are used effectively and the impact on teaching and learning. The National Library of New Zealand (n.d.) has detailed some ideas on information to include within the report, such as highlights of the year, usage statistics, how your library has engaged students as readers, and how you have supported inquiry learning and digital literacy.

 

Teacher librarians are reflective practitioners and an annual report is a valuable opportunity to provide personal accountability by reflecting upon the achievements of the school library and your impact as the teacher librarian. In doing so, teacher librarians can identify areas of strength and areas of improvement to enact upon in the following year. This can also be used to demonstrate proficiency against the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, 2011), specifically the standards: 3.6 Evaluate and improve teaching programs, and 6.3 Engage with colleagues and improve practice.

 

For advocacy:

Advocacy is integral to the role of a teacher librarian. Having the data to demonstrate how your school library impacts the teaching and learning within your school is crucial in advocating for its importance, and an annual report provides key evidence of this. An annual report can be distributed to the executive leadership team. It can be repackaged using more community-friendly language and distributed to other stakeholders such as teachers, parents, carers and other community members.

 

Although it may be time consuming to create, an annual report has multiple capabilities to demonstrate the strengths of a school library and the teacher librarian. It brings to the forefront the invisible attributes and can also act as a way for a teacher librarian to embed reflective practice within their role, which can then be subsequently used for advocacy.

 

References:

Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. (2011). Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. AITSL.  https://www.aitsl.edu.au/teach/standards

 

Bonanno, K. (2011). ASLA 2011. Karen Bonanno, Keynote speaker: A profession at the tipping point: Time to change the game plan. https://vimeo.com/31003940

 

House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment. (2011). School libraries and teacher librarians in 21st century Australia. Commonwealth of Australia. https://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/house_of_representatives_committees?url=ee/schoollibraries/report.htm

 

McKenzie, D. (2009). Importance of creating an annual report. [blog]. Library Grits. http://librarygrits.blogspot.com.au/2009/06/importance-of-creating-annual-report.html

 

National Library of New Zealand. (n.d.). Annual Report. https://natlib.govt.nz/schools/school-libraries/leading-and-managing/managing-your-school-library/annual-report

Photo by Drahomír Posteby-Mach on Unsplash
Censorship and the school library

Censorship and the school library

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In the article entitled Selection & Censorship: It’s simple arithmetic (2002), Dave Jenkinson outlines the following three challenges when dealing with censorship in the school library. This blog post will analyse each challenge and identify if Australian school libraries face the same challenges around censorship.

 

1. The majority of school censors are parents, but in-school censorship from teachers and other school personnel is still significant.

While it is difficult to obtain statistics around who is censoring materials, there is no doubt that challenges towards resources is happening within Australian schools. Reflecting upon my own teaching career, I have personally experienced in-school censoring of resources. Early on in my teaching career, the Senior Leadership Team at the time were not happy with a picture book that was selected for the CBCA National Simultaneous Storytime that year. The book was subsequently replaced with another picture book that was read at the dedicated time. In hindsight, if I was the teacher librarian at that time, I could have approached the executive team with my concerns, referencing the school’s collection development policy and other relevant documentation from Australian and international library standards to justify why the deselection of the book is a form of censorship.

 

2. The level of principal involvement in the development of censorship policies and generating awareness around these policies.

Dave outlines how there is a guiding principle within the Vancouver School District that suggests “the principal should review the selection and objection rules with the teaching staff at least annually” (Jenkinson, 2002, p. 22). The Australian School Library Survey Report 2021 (Softlink, 2022) found that 26% of teacher librarians experienced a low to very low level of support from their Senior Leadership Teams (p. 4). This would mean that at least one quarter of principals within Australia would not be engaging with their school library at same level of engagement expected of principals of schools within Vancouver. This has prompted me to ensure that I make the effort to engage my future Senior Leadership Team in creation and promotion of the school’s collection development and management policies, particularly around the topic of censorship and challenges towards the collection.

 

3. Self-censorship

My initial understanding of the word ‘censorship’ involved the conscious and active suppression of information in order to influence or control. The most significant learning I gained from this article and Module 4 material (Gagen-Spriggs & Oddonne, 2023) is that a teacher librarian pre-emptively not including a resource in order to avoid dealing with a possible challenge to the collection from the school community in the future may find themselves inadvertently censoring their school collection. Relying on the collection development and management policies of the school, teacher librarians need to be courageous and justified in the selection of resources for their library, regardless of a potential challenge.

 

Although this article is written twenty years ago and from a Canadian perspective, challenges towards resources are not time- or place-bound and are still faced by Australian teacher librarians today. Regardless of how libraries evolve into the 21st century, challenges towards the information housed within will be an eternal minefield that teacher librarians will need to navigate.

 

References:

Jenkinson, D. (2002). Selection and censorship: It’s simple arithmetic. School libraries in Canada, 2(4), 22-23.

 

Gagen-Spriggs, K. & Oddonne, K. (2023). Module 4: Selection of Resources [Study notes]. ETL503: Resourcing the Curriculum. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au

 

Softlink. (2022). Australian School Library Survey Report 2021. https://www.softlinkint.com/downloads/2021_Softlink_School_Library_Survey_-_Australian_Report.pdf

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